Memo Gives Vanderbilt Commodores First Look at Revenue Sharing Number
The Vanderbilt Commodores, like the rest of the SEC, are sifting through how they’ll start sharing revenue with their student-athletes, assuming the House vs. NCAA settlement is fully approved next year.
The initial approval was in October and on Friday Yahoo Sports reported that the four power conferences (ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC) distributed a memo to each of its schools giving them an initial glimpse of what the so-called salary cap could be for revenue-sharing starting July 1.
The initial cap, per the memo, is $20.5 million.
That’s a bit below some projections of $22 million and is by no means final. The cap will be 22% of Power Four revenues in the previous year. That revenue is expected to increase by 4% each season.
Vanderbilt, like every power conference school, is looking for every way to generate revenue to prepare for that sharing. But, the SEC does have a bit of an advantage in that its overall television contracts are among the richest in college sports.
Schools may also distribute the revenue however they see fit. But, Yahoo reported that many schools are planning to use the formula used to determine the back damages in the House settlement, which would allow 90% of revenue to football & men’s basketball.
It was a busy week on the memo front, as Vanderbilt and the rest of the NCAA’s member schools received a Q&A memo about the settlement.
The memo reinforced a few key areas. First, schools can opt-in or opt-out of revenue sharing, but they cannot do so on a per-program basis. For instance, Vanderbilt can’t choose to share revenue with its football players but not its Olympic sports teams.
Another piece relates to NIL. The new settlement won’t prohibit student-athletes from leveraging NIL, but they will need to report any deals valued at $600 or more.
The House v. NCAA settlement is actually a combination of three different cases brought by current and former student-athletes that will change the face of college athletics if fully approved.
It will allow for $2.75 billion in damages will be paid to thousands of college athletes over 10 years as part of restitution for their inability to access things like Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) opportunities.
The settlement also caps scholarships and, in some cases, expands them for certain sports through roster limits.
Those limits will exist for all sponsored sports, with the most notable being 105 for football, 15 each for men’s and women’s basketball, 34 for baseball, 25 for softball and 18 for volleyball.
