As revenue sharing approaches, Big Ten schools evaluate budgets, modeling distribution

INDIANAPOLIS – Tuesday at Big Ten Media Days was Day 23 on the job for Ross Bjork.

The new Ohio State athletic director stepped into one of the premier collegiate sports jobs, taking over for Gene Smith. The former Texas A&M athletic director has eased into the job, working with Smith in the months leading up to July.

The Buckeyes emerged as a power player in the NIL Era, touting one of the nation’s top budgets. But Bjork has spent much of his first 23 days on the job focusing on the House vs. NCAA settlement.

“It’s an understatement to say it’s never been a more transformational time in college athletics,” he told On3.

The long-form settlement, expected to be filed Friday in the Northern District of California, will agree to pay $2.77 billion in back damages to athletes over 10 years. But for Bjork and his fellow Big Ten athletic directors, the second piece of the settlement is crucial. Revenue sharing allows institutions to pay $20-22 million annually to athletes beginning in 2025-26.

How to distribute the revenue has been a top question for many this summer. Multiple SEC coaches told Yahoo! Sports last week the figure was somewhere between $14 to $17 million. On3 previously reported that 75% of TV revenue will be paid back damages to football. From there, 15% would be funneled to men’s basketball, 5% to women’s basketball and the final 5% divided by the remaining athletes.

That model, if certified, is expected to be used as a framework.

“There’s going to be three categories,” Bjork said of the next iteration of college sports. “Financial aid for athletes, the traditional scholarship, academic award money, cost of attendance. There’s going to be revenue share for some sports, not all sports. And then you’re going to have the third bucket, which is the NIL ecosystem.”

The new Ohio State athletic director has yet to make any cuts to his athletic department. The Buckeyes are open to outside revenue opportunities, such as on-field sponsorships. They already have a title sponsor inside the Horshoe but could add additional advertisements.

Bjork isn’t only focused on addressing revenue sharing, he has his eye on how that number will exponentially grow in the following years.

“Here’s the thing that people aren’t really talking about is that’s only the first year number,” Bjork said of the $20-plus million figure. “The first year number is roughly $22 million. The second year, it grows to $24 million, and then it grows about a million a year. So I think it’s way too early to put a number on the first year. I think it’s way too early to put a number on the second year, we need clarity on Title IX.”

Ryan Day believes NIL collectives sticking around

The top-funded NIL collectives are spending between $13 to $20 million annually on football rosters at the moment. Ohio State is at the top of that spectrum. The Buckeyes landed quarterback Will Howard, running back Quinshon Judkins and safety Caleb Downs out of the transfer portal this winter. They also return nine starters on the defensive side of the ball.

That does not happen without an aggressive NIL budget. It also gives Buckeyes’ football coach Ryan Day the talent he needs to deliver a national championship. After three consecutive losses to Michigan, pressure in Columbus is high for Day to deliver a win over the archrival and deliver a national title. Even when he touts a 56-8 record.

The sixth-year head coach believes NIL collectives will be imperative even when revenue sharing arrives in a year.

“I still think they’re going to be a part of this until there is more overall structure in terms of cap and all those things,” he said. “Until something happens that leads us to think they’re not going to be a part of this, I see it continuing the way it is right now.”

How Ohio State football manages its revenue distribution is something Day has not been able to wrap his head around yet. Bjork didn’t go into details but acknowledged a general manager or revenue cap specialists could be in the cards.

“That I don’t know, and I don’t quite understand how they’re going to regulate that,” Day said. “The only way to really do that is to hire a third party to enforce that because we have enough challenges in enforcing things. The only way to do that would be a third party. Until that conversation even comes up, I don’t see how that happens.”

This comes as conference commissioners remain confident the settlement introduces new enforcement to curb the role of collectives. How that is put into place and what it will look like remains a major unknown. As Day alluded to, could it be a third party? Or will the NCAA or a government-mandated clearinghouse step in?

Big Tens schools all-in on revenue sharing

Illinois athletic director Josh Whitman was named the new chair of the NCAA Division I Council in May. It’s a chief position in the hierarchy of NCAA committees and makes him a voting member of the NCAA Division I Board of Directors.

So trying to navigate his new role as chair while making sure Illinois remains on top of the House settlement repercussions has taken some time to adjust. As he joked to On3, “This isn’t the first experience where we’ve had to make some decisions and develop some strategy without having a complete picture of what the landscape is going to become.”

Whitman said Illinois plans to fully fund the $20-plus million in revenue sharing. How that will be split is an answer he doesn’t have yet.

“We’re still like most schools identifying where that money’s going to come from and how we pay for that, but our plan would be to fully fund the $22 million,” he told On3. “How we divvy that out amongst our teams and our student-athletes is still very much a point of discussion for us.”

UCLA athletic director Martin Jarmond said the school is modeling three to four different scenarios of how the school will disperse revenue sharing. He also emphasized the Bruins are coming from the Pac-12, where they pocketed $33.6 million in conference payout in 2023.

New Nebraska athletic director Troy Dannen describes the situation as a dike bolted shut that has suddenly opened. Over the course of the past years, the topic has shifted from cost of attendance to NIL to revenue sharing.

Dannen is confident that the Huskers will be aggressive in funding the $20-plus million figure in Year One of revenue sharing. A key concern is how to address the new model when recruiting high school athletes. The 2025 cycle will be the first where revenue payouts will be included in financial packages.

“I don’t think we at Nebraska would be in a position where, from the revenue sharing model, we would be outspent, nor will we outspend,” he said. “We’ll find a fairly common landing spot. But I think there’s a lot more work to be done on what those numbers are… We’re going to be signing recruits soon. The transfer portal is going to open soon, and those numbers have to be solidified in short order. I do know, within the Big Ten, it’s an everyday talking point.

“There’s some contention on campuses that’s going to lie ahead as we operationalize the House settlement.”

Roster limits leading to budget questions

Roster limits for the next model of college sports were finalized Wednesday and will be included in the long-form House settlement filed Friday. Football will now have a roster limit of 105, a scholarship increase of 20. The expectation is the 105 requirement will not begin until the start of the season.

Baseball is nearly tripling its scholarship limits, jumping from 11.7 to 34. Men’s and women’s basketball programs will have a roster limit of 15. The current limit is 13.

Will the revamped scholarship limits have an impact on budgets? And will every school go to the roster limit?

One athletic director alluded to On3 this week that a tier system could be coming to college athletics. Funding for one sport could look drastically different than another.

“The movie ‘Rudy‘ will be hard to explain to our grandkids because they’ll be like, ‘What’s a walk-on?’” Nebraska coach Matt Rhule said Wednesday. “It’s just really hard because we have so many great in-state players who could walk on for us. I’ve had a hard time doing that. But if it’s mandated, I’ll find a way… I do want to protect those parts of it.

“I think sometimes we’re so worried that someone’s going to take advantage of the rule that we just blow up everything else.”