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College sports has been upended by athletes gaining rights to profit off of their Name, Image, and Likeness. What was not long as close as high-level sports got to pure amateurism now has essentially unlimited player movement and compensation.
Other than a few big exceptions, most of the NIL compensation nationwide has gone to male athletes in major sports like football and basketball. But, with direct revenue sharing likely coming to college athletics next year, the Department of Education has issued guidance that could mean a huge financial windfall for female college athletes.
In case you’re behind, a legal settlement between NCAA member institutions and former athletes is not only going to pay out huge backpay damages to former athletes whose NIL rights were denied by NCAA rules, but will allow colleges to share up to $22 million in revenue with their student-athletes.
The consensus among schools that planned on opting in to revenue share was that the vast majority of the revenue share money would be spent on the athletes in the two main revenue sports, football and basketball. Upwards of 80% of total revenue share money would be spent on athletes in those two sports at some schools, with the rest of the money to be divvied up among other sports.
But, new guidance issued by the Federal Department of Education states that revenue share needs to be distributed with Title IX, the regulations mandating gender equality in sports, in mind. Here’s Sportico with more.
The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has issued guidance regarding college athlete name, image and likeness, putting the onus on schools to ensure their male and female athletes receive propionate NIL opportunities and resources—regardless of whether the funding comes from external sources.
In a nine-page “fact sheet” released Thursday, OCR clarified that, under Title IX, NIL money paid to college athletes should be held to the same gender-equity standards as athletic scholarships. dollar amounts of athletic scholarships. Specifically, it stated that the amounts paid to athletes through NIL deals should be considered part of a school’s athletic financial assistance, just as grants-in-aid and cost-of-attendance funds are.
OCR’s release comes two weeks before settlement objections are due in House v. NCAA, a monumental case the parties have reached an agreement to resolve by allocating billions in future revenue sharing for college athletes, with an overwhelming portion favoring male athletes in football and men’s basketball.
It needs to be said that the Donald J. Trump administration could change this guidance at any time once Mr. Trump is sworn into office on Monday at noon. And, this is going to go through the courts regardless. But, as it stands now, female athletes are set to get a huge financial windfall in the form of revenue sharing payments.