It’s Monday morning so it’s time I let you all know what’s been on my mind the past week.
And since today is the day of a House vs. NCAA hearing in front of Judge Claudia Wilken, that’s going to be what I talk about the whole way.
More specifically, Mizzou athletic director Laird Veatch put out a video talking with Mike Kelly on Friday and I started writing a Said and Unsaid for it, but by the time I had 1,500 words with half the video left, I figured it might be better to just find six key points Veatch made and talk about my thoughts on them here.
Just to be extra clear, NCAA president Charlie Baker said this weekend he doesn't expect Wilken to officially approve the settlement today, but he does expect it to pass soon and possibly get an idea of Wilken’s leanings today.
House settlement thoughts
1. First off, here’s Veatch talking about the settlement itself.
“That is projected to be formally approved in the coming weeks, possibly as early as next week. So let me kind of recap some of the basics,” Veatch said. “First of all, in place of NIL through outside collectives, we will now be permitted, all athletic departments will be permitted to share in our revenues directly with student athletes for the first time and that will be up to a cap of $20.5 million for this next year. And of course, being in the SEC and wanting to compete at the highest level, we intend to maximize that.”
First things first, the Tigers are going to do whatever they are allowed to do with the new revenue sharing plan.
They have done well in the NIL space and that space doesn’t fully go away with the passing of revenue sharing. But it does become more regulated through oversight bodies. I think, overall, it’s a reasonable change to make.
There are some issues like the current players not getting active representation in the room, but without an athlete union, I don't see how that would have worked anyway. Whether this leads to a college athlete union is an interesting next step to consider. A salary cap is essentially being implemented, which the MLB players union has fought for decades to prevent in their sport and it gets to just be implemented here without a conversation really.
But this isn't going to be a final step. Things are going to keep changing, it's just the next step in a long process.
