Revenue Sharing is Finally Here, and It’s Already Making an Impact Across Collegiate Athletics

By: Jonathan Tunney

September 23, 2025

Photo Credit: Associated Press

As part of the landmark House v. NCAA settlement, schools are now allowed to directly share athletic department revenues with varsity student athletes. In 2025, the first year of revenue sharing, schools are allowed to share up to $20.5M in revenue across all varsity sports. This annual cap will increase to around $32M over the next 10 years. Due to this, scholarship restrictions have been removed and replaced by roster limits. At most schools, football and men’s basketball make over 90% of the athletic department’s revenue, and this shows in revenue-sharing data. Based on an NCAA study involving 20 power conference schools, 75% of revenue-sharing money was directed to football, and another 16% was directed toward men’s basketball, leaving roughly 9% for all other sports. While football has by far the most total amount of revenue sharing per team, men’s basketball has the highest amount of revenue shared per athlete due to a much smaller roster size.

Revenue sharing will have a tremendous impact on the landscape of college athletics in a variety of ways. First, NIL agreements will be regulated much more strictly than before. Due to the advent of revenue-sharing, the NCAA has created an NIL Clearinghouse called “NIL Go” that is managed by Deloitte and will assess all 3rd party NIL deals that exceed $600. The goal of NIL Go is to ensure that NIL deals are legitimate, meaning they involve actual marketing services instead of being merely pay-for-play agreements, and compensate the athlete at or near their “fair-market value”.

Per the NIL-NCAA website, Deloitte has reportedly shared data that roughly 70% of past NIL deals facilitated by NIL/booster collectives would have been denied by NIL Go, while over 90% of deals by public companies would have been approved. Additionally, “revenue” as it is defined by the NCAA does not include donations from boosters to the athletic department, meaning these donations wouldn’t be shared with athletes directly. This will greatly reduce the influence NIL collectives and boosters (such as Michigan mega-booster Larry Ellison) will have in shaping college rosters. Boosters will most likely go back to their traditional role of donating funds for institutional needs like facilities, coaching payments, or other administrative funds. After a period of large spending, schools may see booster fatigue because of this. It’s much easier to get someone to donate $12M when it's used to pay the quarterback instead of build a practice facility.

Many proponents of revenue sharing have argued that it will greatly increase parity in college athletics. This is true, to a degree. Almost every power conference school has committed to sharing the maximum amount of $20.5M. With a newly level playing field, parity is almost sure to increase at the power conference level. However, the athletic departments of non-power conference schools make much less revenue, and very few, if any, will be able to pay the maximum amount of $20.5M in 2025. The NCAA estimates that the average power conference school (Big 10, SEC, ACC, Big 12) will pay its average athlete roughly 8x more than the average Group of 5 conference athlete (MW, AAC, Sun Belt, C-USA, MAC). This will drastically reduce parity and widen the gap between power conference schools and all others.

Additionally, I believe parity in men’s basketball will be affected in a greater way than almost any other sport. This is because certain schools play men’s basketball in a power conference, but play football at a much lower level, if at all. This means that if their athletic department generates enough revenue despite the absence of a power conference football team, that school could theoretically pour much more money into men’s basketball than their counterparts. For example, Gonzaga is set to join the revamped Pac-12 in 2026 alongside Boise State, Colorado State, Utah State, San Diego State, Texas State, Fresno State, Washington State, and Oregon State. All members are allowed to share $20.5M in revenue across all sports, per NCAA rules. Unlike everyone else in the Pac-12, however, Gonzaga doesn’t have to pay for a 105-player football team because they don’t have one.

This means that, unlike any other team in their conference and very few in the nation, they could put a large majority of their revenue-sharing money, potentially upwards of $15M, toward men’s basketball. This imbalance could drastically change the landscape of the sport. On a national level, the Big East could become the premier men’s college basketball conference. Only one school, UConn, plays FBS college football. Villanova, Georgetown, and Butler play in the FCS. Marquette, DePaul, Providence, Seton Hall, St. John’s, Marquette, Xavier, and Creighton don’t play football at all. This means that many, if not all, Big East schools will primarily use their revenue-sharing money to fund men’s basketball, while teams in other conferences, such as the Big 10 and SEC, will be forming their rosters using football’s leftovers. By not playing football, schools like Gonzaga and St. John’s could benefit their men’s basketball teams in an unprecedented way.

Due to the roster limits and lack of scholarship limits implemented as a result of revenue-sharing, walk-ons will be greatly impacted across all areas of college athletics. Schools will now be able to offer every athlete on their team a scholarship, but often have to adhere to smaller roster limits. In football, for example, teams used to be able to offer only 85 scholarships, but could carry a roster of about 135 players. This means there would be around 50 non-scholarship, or walk-on spots. Now, football programs can offer 105 scholarships for 105 roster spots, meaning there could potentially be no room for walk-ons.

This same phenomenon is occurring across all sports. Track & field rosters are now capped at 45 athletes per gender, and cross-country is capped at 17 athletes per gender. Roster sizes for both sports were previously unlimited with stricter scholarship limits, meaning programs could take as many walk-ons as they saw fit. This development is already reducing the number of walk-ons in collegiate athletics, and could totally eliminate them in the future as schools learn to navigate these new rules.

While revenue-sharing primarily impacts compensation to student-athletes, we have also seen unintended effects on coaching salaries. Numerous power conference college football coaches have given back some of their salaries to support revenue-sharing and NIL compensation. Most recently, Oklahoma head coach Brent Venables gave back $1M of his original $8.55M 2025 salary, joining Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy, who gave away $1M of his salary for the same reason in 2024. Additionally, LSU head coach Brian Kelly matched $1M in donations to the Tigers’ NIL collective at the end of 2024, and Mike Norvell of Florida State agreed to put $4.5M of his total salary toward a fundraising campaign for the Seminoles.

I believe that this is only the beginning. More and more coaches will be pressured to give back some of their exorbitant salaries negotiated before the NIL and revenue-sharing era. Once contracts are up, schools will inevitably try to re-negotiate them with lower salaries to make up some revenue-sharing expenses. Despite only being in its infancy, revenue-sharing is already affecting college athletics across the board, from NIL deals for the biggest stars to how many walk-ons make the track & field team, and everything in between.