Paul Finebaum rips Tennessee adding 10-percent talent fee on tickets: 'Utterly disgraceful'

Paul Finebaum ripped into the Tennessee Volunteers and athletic director Danny White during an appearance on Get Up for the 10-percent talent fee being added to football tickets.

This comes after Tennessee announced that it would be adding the 10-percent fee to help cover the cost of raising money to distribute to athletes following the House Settlement. That settlement, which has been agreed upon but not approved in court, figures to reshape how schools compensate athletes.

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“Utterly disgraceful,” Paul Finebaum said. “By the way, they’ve already raised ticket prices on top of that. These are the people who support the program, the folks of Tennessee who buy tickets whether they can afford them or not because they love the Vols, and the athletic director there just slapped this on as a surcharge.”

The decision from Tennessee comes amid a time of uncertainty in college athletics. NIL has changed how athletes are compensated and how donors spend their money on the program. Meanwhile, the House settlement, which is currently waiting for approval from a federal judge, would allow for revenue sharing between schools and athletes of about $22 million annually. That would be a different thing from NIL in that it would come from the school, instead of a collective, and this is one approach to covering that expected cost.

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“They didn’t ask,” Finebaum continued. “They can raise the money independently but now they’re forcing good people who buy tickets and support the program to pay more money so young players can get NIL. I realize it’s a sign of the times and will probably happen other places but it still makes me sick to my stomach.”

As of now, the plan for Tennessee is to begin charging the additional fee on games starting in 2025.

The cost of the House Settlement will likely be in the range of $30 million a year for a school like Tennessee. So, Danny White and Tennessee are hoping to recover about $10 million of that in this added fee.

“You’re trying to solve a problem when you don’t know a lot of the details. We’re doing different scenarios all the time, but we can’t just put a 10 percent fee in the laps of our fans with a month before the season starts,” White said. “We have to be prepared. There are financial realities. In any scenario, it’s going to become more expensive to compete at the level we want to compete at.” 

Whether or not the House Settlement itself is approved, it appears that a revenue-sharing model is on the horizon in college athletics. For fans and analysts like Finebaum, the added cost might be an issue but from Tennessee’s perspective, it’s important to get as quick of a start as possible.