Major NCAA conferences are allowed to pay players, so what's next?

Players are allowed to get paid directly from schools, but what does it mean?

Mar 28, 2024; Detroit, MN, USA; Detailed view of the “NCAA” logo during NCAA Tournament Midwest Regional-Practice at Little Caesars Arena. Mandatory Credit: Rick Osentoski-USA TODAY Sports / Rick Osentoski-USA TODAY Sports

On Thursday night, the NCAA agreed with its Power Five conferences to allow the schools to pay players directly for the first time in the history of American college athletics.

First, the NCAA is expected to pay more than $2.7 billion in damages over 10 years to past and current athletes, settling three different pending federal antitrust cases. The Power Five conferences also agreed to a revenue-sharing deal that will give each school around $20 million per year to share with its athletes, according to an ESPN report.

Top executives from the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, SEC and Pac-12 have agreed to the deal, confirming that this will involve only the major conferences initially. This obviously widens the gap between leagues like the Mountain West, MAC, Sun Belt, AAC or C-USA.

This is the first step in a long journey of completely reshaping the future of college athletics. The revenue-sharing aspect of this deal is not expected to begin until fall 2025, according to multiple reports. The $2.7 billion settlement is expected to be spread out over the span of 10 years.

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There are more questions than answers in the fallout of this report. In the meantime, this $20 million revenue share will not come into effect until the 2025-26 college sports season, so it will have zero impact on this year's college football or college basketball seasons.

My major takeaway from this news is it all but confirms that schools in major conferences are now playing a different sport than those in mid-major conferences. Every Big Ten institution like Minnesota will be given $20 million per year, while schools in the MAC like Western Michigan will be given, what? Nothing?

Questions like scholarship limits, roster sizes and determining how much each sport gets from this $20 million pot are the biggest questions left to be answered. There will be a lot of rules and regulations to be fine-tuned over the next 5-10 years, but this is the first step in a long journey.