SBJ College: Antitrust cases shaped 2024 -- and will again in 2025

I’m no lawyer, but all the legalese that sports writers have had to parse through this year makes me think law school might’ve deserved more thought than I gave it.

If you’re looking for the biggest sports business story of the year in college sports, it almost certainly has to be the proposed settlement in the House, Hubbard and Carter antitrust cases. The House settlement would provide a crucial framework for college athletics to work from over the coming years related to back pay, scholarship limits and direct revenue sharing with athletes.

There are myriad major shifts that an approval of this settlement would bring, but chief among them is the ideological change from paying players being taboo or downright outlawed by the NCAA to schools touting players reaching deals to return to school -- a dizzying difference that’s only going to persist into 2025.

College sports has spent decades fighting against the idea of paying players. Now it’s out in the open. The direct revenue sharing that would be imposed via the House settlement would also mark a foundational shift for the entire enterprise, while, in theory, charting a path toward a more sustainable path forward.

What’s next with the House case?

Judge Claudia Wilken granted preliminary approval of the House, Hubbard and Carter settlements earlier this fall and has since set a hearing date for April when she could potentially sign off on it all.

Most within college athletics will tell you they are optimistic the settlement will go through (plaintiffs' attorney Jeffrey Kessler and NCAA President Charlie Baker basically said as much last week in Las Vegas at SBJ’s Intercollegiate Athletics Forum).

Still, how schools divvy up their revenue shares between football, basketball and Olympic sports, along with to what degree those within the Power Four share up to the $20.5 million cap remains to be seen.

Texas Tech AD Kirby Hocutt and Deputy AD Jonathan Botros also became some of the first administrators I've seen publicly explain their revenue sharing strategy, telling the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal the school would divvy things up roughly "74% to football players, 17-18% to men's basketball, 2% to women's basketball, 1.9% to baseball and smaller percentages to other sports."

Doing some quick math, that equates to around $15.2 million for football, $3.6 million for men's basketball, $410,000 for women's basketball, $390,000 for baseball and $923,000 for everything else.

There are also other trends around the cap worth monitoring. In just the last week, Brian Kelly, Mike Norvell and Mike Gundy all took pay cuts to varying degrees to put that money initially earmarked for their pockets toward NIL. They likely won’t be the last.

Think of it this way: Mike McCarthy doesn’t get paid more than Dak Prescott annually. College coaching salaries, meanwhile, dwarf what athletes are receiving -- though obviously, this is an evolving space and previous limits to player payment is part of that.

I mention all this to say at some point, there will likely be a time when the nexus between coaching salaries and player payment might meet. I don’t know that it will come as soon as 2025, but it feels like something to keep an eye on as athlete compensation becomes more mainstream.

How will the expanded College Football Playoff do in viewership? And will we get more CFP expansion?

The college sports enterprise has its share of issues, but, folks, football is booming. ESPN’s "College GameDay" saw record viewership. The SEC’s deal with ABC saw massive gains throughout the fall. Next up: a new 12-team College Football Playoff that has everyone giddy.

The final four of the CFP will almost assuredly rate well (we have evidence to the effect). Last year’s semifinals averaged more than 22 million viewers between Alabama-Michigan and Washington-Texas across ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU.

What I’m most curious about is how the first round (half of which is sublicensed to TNT Sports) and the quarterfinal round draw. TNT Sports has made an increased play in college sports, and landing a sublicense for half of the first round from ESPN feels like a savvy business play.

CFP semifinal doubleheaders have averaged 20.7 million viewers since 2015 -- including at least 19 million in four of the last five years. It's doubtful the first round gets that high, but there are some major draws this weekend (with the added novelty of being on-campus games). But the afternoon TNT Sports games on Saturday are getting no reprieve, having to go up against what are essentially two NFL playoff matchups on broadcast TV. 

Beyond the early rounds, early 2025 will give us a holistic look at what an expanded playoff does in viewership. Then, the powers that will are going to take a look at whether the 12-team structure worked, and whether there needs to be tweaks (including the potential to add more teams). 

Will conference realignment continue to spin?

This year’s college football preview centered on my deep dive into conference realignment over the last three years and the wave of change set off by Texas, Oklahoma, USC and UCLA. But the information on realignment in that story didn't hold long once the reborn Pac-12 started grabbing schools, followed by movement among the Mountain West and Conference USA. 

Where will the carousel stop? Not anytime soon.

The Pac-12 is a fascinating piece to all of this. The league currently has eight full-time members, but Gonzaga doesn't play football. That means the Pac-12 needs one more football-playing school to reach the FBS threshold.

As my colleague Mollie Cahillane pointed out in her newsletter on Monday, the Pac-12 media deal is also one of the more intriguing situations on the market. It’s no secret former Commissioner George Kliavkoff’s inability to net a media deal in the realm of the rest of the Power Four led to its inevitable downfall. What will this reborn version of the Pac-12 net? I’m genuinely curious.

There’s also the lingering curiosities about the “Will they, won’t they” nature of the SEC and Big Ten. Those leagues haven’t been shy about wielding their influence over the rest of college athletics, and if push comes to shove, they have the voting power in the new CFP system to rewrite the rules as they see fit.

Ideas of super leaguesand the like have been floated in recent months. It’s unlikely any of those proposals reach the goal line sans a sign off from SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey and/or Big Ten’s Tony Petitti. I’d like to think neither Sankey nor Petitti wants to blow up the entire ecosystem. Then again, I also never thought Rutgers would be playing a conference game at the Rose Bowl or that the Red River Rivalry would be an SEC showcase. 

Never say never -- especially in college sports.

• Coming off of SBJ's Intercollegiate Athletics Forum last week, college leaders have ideas, but what comes next in the space is just about anyone’s guess.

• ESPN on Saturday night saw the best Heisman Trophy ceremony presentation audience since 2019, with Colorado WR/DB Travis Hunter beating out Boise State RB Ashton Jeanty, reports SBJ's Austin Karp.

• SBJ is out with our list of the Most Influential People in Sports Business, and among those with ties to the college space are the NCAA's Charlie Baker, Big Ten's Tony Petitti, SEC's Greg Sankey, ACC's Jim Phillips, Big 12's Brett Yormark, attorneys David Berman and Jeffrey Kessler and Judge Claudia Wilken.

• In an op-ed for SBJ this week, Izell Reese, CEO of RCX Sports and executive director of NFL Flag, writes under the header, "The rise of girls’ flag football and its path to the NCAA."