As The NCAA Moves To Implement The House Settlement, Things Are About To Change In A Big Way

And it may not be good, at least in the short term.

We didn’t have time to get to this Monday, but the NCAA is proposing to junk 153 rules about amateurism that will pave the way for the House settlement.

If you don’t know, the House settlement will require revenue sharing with athletes.

We don’t fully understand this part: ”Proposed legislation also includes sport-specific roster limits and allowing full scholarships to all student-athletes on a declared roster — a move the NCAA said will double the scholarships available in women’s sports.”

Does that mean that all walk-ons will get scholarships? What will that mean for football? If you’re, say, Alabama with 25 walk-ons, are they all now to be on scholarship?

Well, as it turns out, football rosters may go from 85 to 105 if the school so desires. Baseball could go from 11.7 to 34.

As we understand it, schools could choose to increase roster sizes without increasing the total amount of money for scholarships. In other words, if your baseball program budgeted, say, 100,000 for 11.7 scholarships, it could still budget 100,000 for 34.

And naturally, big football schools will push money into football. There are surely Title IX lawsuits coming if that happens, and it almost certainly will happen, especially in the SEC.

The House settlement will provide $20.5 million to participating schools to dispense to athletes. Again, much of this will go to football, then men’s and women’s basketball. Expect Title IX lawsuits on this, too.

The NC State/Will Wade concerns should start here: “the NCAA has proposed rules to help add stability and accountability. All players will be required to disclose their NIL agreements if they are greater or equal to $600. Agreements between the player and a third party outside of their school will be reviewed.“

Kentucky’s old $100 dollar handshake might move to the $1,000 dollar handshake. Who says cash is dead?

For State fans still giddy over the Wade hire - Wade is going to win, but if you think cheating is over because the rules have changed, better think again. He’s already proven to be a clever boy and may find ways around the system if it means competing for talent needed to win. And he wouldn’t be the only one.

The bad news - cheating will move out of the NCAA’s old enforcement system, which was limited to member schools punishing each other, and into things like fraud, wire fraud and tax evasion.

Apparently too, according to ESPN, “[a]n enforcement group that will be created and operated by the defendant conferences will aim to ‘provide oversight for rules relating to the terms of the settlement, including third-party NIL and the annual benefits cap.’”

So basically, if we understand correctly and of course we might not, the regulation of college athletics will go from the NCAA’s capricious and erratic pattern to one where the major conferences are regulating themselves, aka the fox guarding the hen house.

The influx of money from the House settlement and NIL are going to give incentives to coaches to find ways around the system - sound familiar? - that will push cheating from a relatively minor social issue to legal issues with serious consequences.

We agree with Jay Bilas on the basic problem. The NCAA makes huge amounts of money from these kids and they haven’t seen any of it. It was one thing when the income basically covered the athletic department’s expenses and scholarships provided real opportunity for people who didn’t have a path towards higher education.

Now of course, the NCAA makes billions and since the athletes are the product, they should be getting a share of the profits too.

This isn’t going to solve the other problems though. Cheating will get more creative as the pressure gets higher. Look at what just happened with Nico Iamalavea, the quarterback who left Tennessee for UCLA for more NIL money. He’s entitled to do that, but the pressure on Tennessee to either keep a guy like that or find a replacement is going to be intense.

On our side of the athletic fence, Auburn’s Chad Baker-Mazara has entered the portal. He had a great season and a great role at Auburn, helping lead the Tigers to the Final Four. Again, if he wants to enter the portal, that’s his business.

Was there tampering involved? It’s very hard to say from the outside in any particular case, but if you ask coaches, they’ll tell you that tampering is rampant. One writer broke the portal down into early portal, the lull period and tamper portal, which is about now. You can easily imagine a coach who lost his star QB poaching one from another school. And then that coach who was poached looking for his next one. Poaching carousel?

A lot of this will get sorted out as the new realities settle in, but the pressure to win will never go away. In fact, it’s just going to get worse because the stakes are higher. And human nature being what it is, people will break the new rules, just as they broke the old ones.

The Wild West analogy has been bandied about a lot since NIL and the new transfer rule took effect, but the corollary to that is that eventually, order was imposed. It will emerge in this too, but almost certainly, as in most aspects of life, power will be centralized and many people will be on the outside looking in. We can already see this with the transfer portal as many young athletes enter it and suddenly find themselves without a team or, worse, an academic path to a better life.

Things change and evolve and indeed must, and money to players is fair. Still, college athletics has lost something.

Last point: we have only heard from the gamblers so far when they berate or threaten athletes on social media after poor performances. Their stakes are going to go up as well, and soon enough, they’ll be heard from too.