Wait, isn't this a college sports salary cap? What to know about House-NCAA for now

New York Times

10-06-2025

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Today in college football news, the 28-minute electronic album 'Revelation' by The Knocks and Dragonette is on loop.
'We crafted the term student-athlete, and soon it was embedded in all NCAA rules and interpretations as a mandated substitute for such words as players and athletes.'
That was Walter Byers, writing in his 1995 book 'Unsportsmanlike Conduct: Exploiting College Athletes.' Forty-four years prior, he'd been named the first executive director of the rapidly expanding NCAA. (Obviously, his mind had changed along the way.)
Why'd the NCAA concoct 'student-athlete'? Because those are just college students who happen to play sports, not people employed by athletic departments as revenue generators … your honor. ('South Park' was all over this in 2011, months after an Auburn student named Cam Newton paused his studies to seek full-time employment.)
Years later, Byers' confession remains one of the starkest reasons to mistrust the NCAA's favored jargon. And lately, another term has appeared a lot in college sports contexts. It strikes me as curious, the way it's being used right now:
'Revenue sharing.'
The term has emerged as the most important part of the long-awaited legal settlement that will greatly reshape college sports, following its approval late last week. This is that House v. NCAA thing that'd been drip-dripping in the news forever, the Colleges Can Now Pay Their Athletes Actual Money thing.
Except technically, according to the people who define what 'technically' means, these transactions amounting to as much as $20.5 million per school aren't payments. Technically, they're merely revenue being shared.
The term 'revenue sharing' makes total sense to me when we're talking about 32 teams in a professional league pooling their money as veritable equals. But when we're talking about powerful humans passing portions of money along to the less powerful humans who are doing the heavy labor that is the core attraction? That's 'sharing'? Jeff Bezos 'shares' with delivery workers?
To make a little more sense of this, let's turn to The Athletic's Justin Williams, who's been on the House beat for a long time now. He will maybe soon be free to write about things besides courtrooms. But not yet, because for now, he has been turned to by us.
Why is this called 'revenue sharing,' and who was it that decided 'salary cap' is a dangerous pairing of words that must never be uttered? Was it the NCAA? The courts? Doctor Strange?
The answer, as usual: lawyers. It's helpful to remember that the House settlement was born out of the NCAA and power conferences attempting to avoid yet another high-profile defeat in court — and the financial ruin that could have come with it. Some of this is about progress, sure, but a lot of it is about the top stakeholders in college sports trying to mitigate the onslaught of legal battles in recent years.
It's 'revenue sharing' because the pool of money that can be paid directly from colleges to athletes under the settlement is calculated using the revenue that power conference athletic departments generate through television contracts, ticket sales and sponsorships. The reason it's a 'revenue cap' and not a 'salary cap' is because 'salary' would imply that the athletes are being paid for their services — or as employees — which remains taboo for the leaders of college sports. The settlement has ripped away the facade of amateurism, but the NCAA and power conferences still want to classify athletes as students, not employees.
Got it, thank you. I'll keep calling it a 'salary cap' until I am sued. (Since, after all, the NFL's salary cap is also calculated based on that league's revenue.) Speaking of lawyers, surely this was the last court battle on the subject of college athlete compensation, right?
Unlikely. Even the settlement's most ardent supporters acknowledge that it is not a fix-all. There are still plenty of unresolved questions about things like Title IX, conflicting state laws, athlete employment status and whether the settlement's efforts to curb third-party NIL deals violate antitrust laws. This is why the NCAA and power conferences continue to lobby Congress for antitrust exemptions and federal legislation that will preempt state laws and help set the settlement terms in stone. What that congressional intervention looks like — or whether it's even a realistic option — remains to be seen. Until then, expect more lawsuits. Billable hours remain undefeated.
Thank you to Justin. For more from him, try out his full story on how college sports money works now, which is packed with details like this:
'The top (football) teams are going to cost $40-50 million a year,' said one power conference personnel director. 'That's where this is going. Anyone who thinks different is nuts.'
Okie dokie. Below, we have plenty more House ramifications, after a quick break for non-House news.
(Side note. Now that I think about it, the term 'revenue sharing' feels OK, on one condition: The NCAA's most powerful member schools admit the sharing of revenue is exactly how employer-employee relationships have worked since many thousands of years ago, when one caveperson first paid another caveperson in berries to go trade an axe for a hammer.)
💎 Women's sports just keep cooking: 'A record 2.4 million watched Texas' win over Texas Tech in Game 3 of the Women's College World Series.'
📺 TNT will keep paying ESPN in order to air some ESPN-produced College Football Playoff games. Need to keep this going until your good friends at The CW are airing a thoroughly fried meme of a burned DVD-R of the Fenway Bowl.
🦬 From this newsletter's poll late last week, the first in our 2025 season countdown:
Reader Sarah R. proclaims, 'I'm going to go out on a limb and say a team from the Dakotas without the word State in their name,' while Joe believes in 'Villanova's pope-fueled title run.'
(And yes, the mysterious figure who always casts one vote for Thanasis Antetokounmpo in every poll by our NBA newsletter wrote in to reveal Giannis' brother will somehow cause South Dakota State to win it all.)
One: The Power 4 conferences suddenly have their own mini-NCAA in addition to the NCAA that is basically already theirs.
Two: Prepare for 'the NIL clearinghouse' to be a non-stop punchline.
Three: Politicians.
Four: After one of the biggest changes in college sports history, college sports will remain college sports.
Ready, break! Friday, we'll talk about things that might happen on actual football fields. Email me at [e-mail]!
Last week's most-clicked: Never any doubt about this one: Grace Raynor's ranking of every No. 1 recruit since 2000. Travis Hunter, No. 2!