Schools can now directly pay their athletes after the House Settlement in the House vs. NCAA lawsuit was approved on Friday. NIL has already completely changed the landscape of college sports as it allows the athletes to get paid, but this adds an entirely different layer. It will be big for schools like Michigan.
The University of Michigan is one of the biggest brands in college sports, and it is a school that is not lacking in money. The Wolverines have roughly $20.5 million to distribute to their athletes, and to no surprise, the Michigan football team will be getting most of it.
With this new revenue sharing model, the programs that bring in the most money are going to get paid the most money. The Michigan football team is by far the biggest program at the school, and basketball is in second.
“It’s football, then men’s basketball, then women’s basketball, and then we’re sprinkling in a couple of others at this present time,” Warde Manuel said, according to an article from 247Sports. “We’ll see where that goes. It’s really following what [the judge] is doing in this particular case of the back damages because the case was brought by those three sports because of the revenue generation of those three sports — not only in the Athletic Department here, but nationally within the NCAA. … The revenue distribution model is following what she’s doing because it also follows the amount — for the most part — of revenue generated by each of those programs by percent.”
Another topic that Warde Manuel discussed was one that is very important to Michigan football fans. Michigan Stadium, commonly referred to as “the Big House”, is one of college football’s most iconic venues. Wolverines fans don’t want to see advertisements in the stadium, but it might come to that.
“[We’re] trying to figure out what’s the best choices for us to make as Michigan, as we move forward,” Manuel said. “Now, I will say what I’ve always said: I played in that stadium. I don’t want to have to do advertising in Michigan Stadium. But there’s a time for us to actually have to think about what is in the best interest for us moving forward in how we’re gonna build the revenue we need to sustain championship programs. And that’s the question that we have there.”
College sports are changing, and this is a big move. It will be interesting to see how big athletic departments like Michigan perform in the next few years.
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