With Big Ten TV payouts set to climb, revenue sharing with players is on horizon

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Friday marks the one-year anniversary of the NIL era in college athletics. For a year, student-athletes have been able to make a profit for their performances on the field. The NCAA’s move to allow NIL was thought to be the most revolutionizing move the organization has made in its 116-year existence.

Turns out, Friday, July 1, marks the beginning of the new world of college sports. The largest bombshell of the offseason dropped Thursday afternoon, which went from a possibility to a done deal in just a few hours. Starting in 2024, the Big Ten will be a 16-team conference with the addition of West Coast staples USC and UCLA.

College football is hurtling toward a pyramid system where the Big Ten and SEC control all the power. Thursday was just the latest remainder. Those two superconferences will have a hold on the television money — the real reason why there’s been historic realignment the past two summers. The Big Ten now holds three of the largest media markets in the country — Los Angeles, Chicago, New York City — and no signs point toward expansion slowing down.

No concrete payout projections have been released, but there’s a reality where the Big Ten brings in north of $1 billion a year. Even better for the Big Ten and commissioner Kevin Warren is the fact they’re in the midst of negotiating their next TV contract. ESPN has the SEC wrapped up, and FOX obviously seem to be to land the Big Ten. But, heck, Apple wants to reengage in talks with the conference for media rights following Thursday’s jaw-dropping news.

And with restructuring of the College Football Playoff only a couple years out, there’s a real question being talked about behind the scenes. How much longer until players are demanding a cut of that TV revenue? Unionization and collective bargaining have been whispered about ever since Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh ripped the NCAA following the Alston ruling.

Student-athletes want a piece of the pie. And Thursday’s news only fast-tracked that. Will conference commissioners and university administrators hop aboard is the real question.

“You know, I think they’re two separate issues,” Ohio State President Kristina M. Johnson said in a Friday morning press conference when asked if the Big Ten’s move impacts this looming debate. “They’re connected in a way that will be connected. There will be things that we have to consider as presidents and athletic directors. But I do see them as two separate issues.”

What possible TV-revenue sharing model could look like

Victoria Jackson is a sports historian and clinical assistant professor of history in the school of historical, philosophical and religious studies at Arizona State.

She’s also published a report, titled “Want College Sports Reform? Start with Paying Power Five Football Players”, which lays out a possible model for TV revenue sharing. In her report, Jackson discusses Power Five conferences share have a collective revenue just shy of $4 billion today. But the COVID-19 pandemic displayed how college football players are truly workers, she writes. While all other sports sat out in the fall of 2020, football went on.

“The anticipated athletic department budget shortfalls, anxieties around enrollment and retention, and the perception of a recruiting disadvantage and resulting competitive and financial hits after the other Power Five conferences greenlit the fall season proved that football athletes were essential to the businesses of intercollegiate athletics and higher education,” Jackson said.

This latest realignment move exemplifies this even more. Los Angeles is more than 2,000 miles away from Columbus — the heart of Big Ten country. But now these football players will be expected to fly maybe three or four times a season halfway across the country. Possibly on back-to-back weeks.

“The Power Five conferences should see that the changes they have made to grow the business of college football into a multibillion-dollar industry have made 50-50 revenue-sharing with athletes inevitable,” Jackson writes. “They should also see that 50-50 revenue sharing is coming because of broader, external forces.”

Fear surrounding pay-to-play model

Johnson v. NCAA, the federal case arguing players should be paid as much as their work-study peers, is currently playing out in the Third Circuit. Johnson lead counsel Paul McDonald hypothesized to Sportico what a pay-to-play structure could look like. If athletes are paid $25 an hour, they would earn $500 a week. The thinking follows the NCAA’s 20-hour per week limit. Theoretically, athletes would make $2,000 a month during a four- or five-month season.

But in amicus briefs leaked earlier this month, the SEC made showed just how alarmed it is by the possibility of athletes being paid directly by the institution. The most powerful conference in the nation insisted in its brief that athletics should be categorized as an extracurricular activity, opposed to employment. “The overwhelming majority of colleges and universities,” the SEC’s amicus brief notes, “must subsidize intercollegiate sports from other revenue sources.”

A final decision is years away from happening. But the SEC’s amicus brief displays just how alarming the notion of pay-to-play is for these conferences.

The new Big Ten signifies official change in college athletics

When TV revenue sharing becomes the law is unknown. There’s no timetable. The aftershocks of the Big Ten’s unprecedented move are still being felt.

But when new TV contracts are signed, the conversation surrounding a pay-to-play format will be had. Athletes have more power than they’ve ever had in the history of the NCAA. NIL is a workaround for athletes to receive financial compensation from third parties for the brand they built while in college, which can obviously benefit from their accomplishments on the field. 

But eventually, they’re going to want more. That’s how the world works. That’s just natural curiosity for human beings.

This conversation is coming. And it will only be a crisis if college administrators approach the subject with animosity.