House v. NCAA Settlement Gets Final Approval: How Will This Affect Georgia Tech Athletics?

There is a lot to get to in this and how it affects each school. Let's break it down.

With this settlement, Georgia Tech and other schools are now allowed to share $20.5 million of their revenues with players and the settlement will also include $2.8 billion in back payments for athletes who competed from 2016-2024. The new revenue-sharing cap will increase by at least 4% each year during the 10-year agreement.

Per Brandon Marcello at CBS Sports, "The power conferences are expected to soon announce the College Sports Commission, an organization tasked to oversee the settlement's terms and enforce new rules. The power conferences hired Deloitte and LBI, major players in revenue management for professional sports, to develop software to dissect NIL deals and track players' revenue-sharing contracts. The CSC will police NIL deals over $600 with a new clearinghouse called "NIL Go," sources told CBS Sports. Deloitte will use data from past endorsement deals with athletes to review boosters' NIL deals and determine whether an agreement exceeds an athlete's fair market value."

According to multiple reports, the college sports commission has already found a leader.

More from Marcello:

"NIL deals under scrutiny will be subject to an arbitration process, which could speed up decisions on eligibility and penalties under the new system. The NCAA, which had become toothless in NIL enforcement as it was challenged legally state to state, will not be directly involved in enforcing NIL deals."

How will each school distribute the funds? According to Ross Dellenger at Yahoo Sports, "Most power conference programs are planning to distribute 90% to football and men’s basketball, as those are, for the most part, the only revenue-generating sports for an athletic department. In Year 1, that’s about $13-16 million for a football roster and $2-4 million for men’s basketball, with the remaining amount shared with women’s basketball, baseball, volleyball and other Olympic sports"

Georgia Tech has not publicly said how they will distribute the funds.

Last May, Georgia Tech President Angel Cabrera, and former athletic director J Batt released this statement once it seemed that the house settlement was on its way to approval:

"As you might have seen in the news, the governing boards of the NCAA and the Autonomy Five conferences – ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC – voted this week to approve settlement terms in a number of class-action lawsuits related to student-athlete compensation (House v. NCAA, Hubbard v. NCAA, and Carter v. NCAA). While the settlement still needs to be approved by the court and many details are yet to be fleshed out, it is fair to expect a major shift in how college athletics will operate.

"At Georgia Tech, we will use this as an opportunity to invest further in our student-athletes and remain competitive at the highest level of intercollegiate athletics, without compromising our academic standing among America’s leading universities. We are well-positioned to establish ourselves as one of the nation’s premier intercollegiate athletic programs and to compete for championships, while supporting our student-athletes athletically, academically and in their preparation for careers after graduation.

A key to our success in the new environment is already clear: we need your support to keep Georgia Tech athletics among the best programs in the nation. Please continue to support our student-athletes through the purchase of season tickets, donations to the Alexander-Tharpe Fund and backing of The Tech Way collective. With the support of the entire Georgia Tech community, we will reach our objective of competing for championships at the highest level of intercollegiate athletics!

Thank you for your continued support and Go Jackets! "

Tonight, NCAA President Charlie Baker issued this letter about the settlement:

"Many looked to April's hearing about the House settlement as a culmination of sorts, but the court's final approval of the settlement in fact marks a new beginning for Division I student-athletes and for the NCAA. For several years, Division I members crafted well-intentioned rules and systems to govern financial benefits from schools and name, image and likeness opportunities, but the NCAA could not easily enforce these for several reasons. The result was a sense of chaos: instability for schools, confusion for student-athletes and too often litigation. Sometimes member schools even supported that litigation — some of which spurred hastily imposed court orders upending the rules.

Approving the agreement reached by the NCAA, the defendant conferences and student-athletes in the settlement opens a pathway to begin stabilizing college sports. This new framework that enables schools to provide direct financial benefits to student-athletes and establishes clear and specific rules to regulate third-party NIL agreements marks a huge step forward for college sports.

That huge step comes with significant change. Going forward, the defendant conferences will be responsible for implementing several elements of the settlement, including the design and enforcement of the annual 22.5% cap (approximately $20.5 million in year one) for financial benefits a Division I school may direct to student-athletes. In addition, the court maintains jurisdiction over the implementation of the settlement, and the plaintiffs will continue to track progress. The defendant conferences are also responsible for launching and enforcing a series of rules regarding the third-party NIL contracts student-athletes may enter into. With these reforms, along with scholarships and other benefits, student-athletes at many schools will be able to receive nearly 50% of all athletics department revenue. That is a tremendously positive change and one that was long overdue.

With the defendant conferences leading administration and enforcement of the now approved settlement terms related to financial benefits, we will increasingly shift our focus at the NCAA away from enforcing rules prohibiting and limiting financial benefits in college sports, which has been the source of many of the recent challenges. We can now turn toward what most agree is our primary function: providing a world-class academic and athletics experience. With these changes in place, including release from future litigation on these subjects for the next decade, the foundation of college sports is stronger than at any point in years. The NCAA can increase focus on reforming clunky governance structures and, most importantly, prioritizing fair competition, academics and student-athlete well-being.

Beyond the rules that will be managed by the defendant conferences, Division I will continue to regulate in key areas (e.g., eligibility, playing seasons, sports betting and minimal recruiting rules) while prioritizing educational success through setting and monitoring academic standards. The NCAA will finance the back damages portion of the settlement. To do that, we are both reducing costs and generating more revenue, all while investing in the student-athlete experience.

Together the NCAA, the defendant conferences and the Division I membership have identified the existing NCAA rules that must change to reflect the settlement. These include replacing scholarship limits with roster limits — a change that will enable schools to vastly increase the scholarship opportunities student-athletes receive and potentially double the number of athletics scholarships made available to women.

The NCAA and Division I leaders are designing a new governance system that reduces the number of committees and streamlines the process to set rules governing competition, championships, eligibility and academic standards. While there will be more to come on the Division I structure, it is clear it must be far simpler with far fewer layers, and student-athletes must have more votes on the committees that deal with issues that impact them.

This is an exciting moment for everyone involved in college sports. As the defendant conferences now own several facets of rulemaking and enforcement related to specific settlement areas, the NCAA will be able to move away from certain enforcement activity that, despite the best efforts of many, wasn't working well. Rather, we will focus on further enhancing what is working: elevating the student-athlete experience and maintaining fair playing rules and eligibility and academic standards. Student-athletes will benefit from the rich opportunities they enjoy now, plus far more scholarship opportunities, landmark financial benefits and a streamlined NCAA to support them.

Significant challenges remain, including attempts to force student-athletes to be classified as employees despite their leadership at all levels opposing this. In addition, attacks persist on college sports' ability to set national rules regarding years of eligibility — the policies that enable the next generation of young people to access educational and athletics opportunities. And states continue to undercut one another in a race to the bottom by challenging the ability of the NCAA and conferences to establish and enforce rules that maintain level playing fields. The NCAA and college sports leaders have made tremendous, positive change in recent years, but only Congress can address these issues.

In the weeks ahead, we will work to show Congress why the settlement is both a massive win for student-athletes and a road map to legislative reform. The Division I Decision-Making Working Group will complete its work building the new governance structure, and the Division I Council and Board of Directors will take action on the necessary policies to implement the settlement.

Yes, this all means change, and change at this scale is never easy. This is new terrain for everyone. Given the defendant conferences' new ownership of complicated pieces of rulemaking and enforcement, there will be a transition period and certainly bumps in the road. Opportunities to drive transformative change don't come often to organizations like ours. It's important we make the most of this one. We have accomplished a lot over the last several months, from new health and wellness and academic requirements to a stronger financial footing. Together, we can use this new beginning to launch college sports into the future, too."

It is a new world in college athletics now for Georgia Tech and everyone else.

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