For most of its history, the NCAA barred colleges from paying athletes anything beyond scholarships. Since July 1, 2025, however, Division I colleges that opted into the House v. NCAA settlement can pay them directly from athletic department budgets. Each college may distribute up to 22% of the average revenue that schools in the five power conferences earn from media rights, ticket sales and sponsorships. That cap was $20.5 million per school in 2025-26 and increased to about $21.58 million this year. The payments are separate from endorsement deals with outside companies, known as name, image and likeness (NIL) deals.
Participation is voluntary. An accounting honors thesis at the University of Arkansas (U of A) counts 319 of 365 Division I programs as opting in for 2025-26. All eight Ivy League schools declined. Schools that stayed out cited costs, roster limits and the risk of Title IX lawsuits. Title IX is the federal law barring sex discrimination in education programs, including athletics.
That last concern points to the model’s central feature: the cap is a ceiling, not a formula. The settlement doesn’t say how a college must divide the money among sports, and the thesis finds that Title IX is the only constraint beyond the cap itself.
Schools that have disclosed plans have steered most of it to the two biggest moneymakers. Louisiana State University (LSU) committed its full $20.5 million last year, with 75% for football, 15% for men’s basketball, and 5% for women’s basketball. The last 5% was split among every other sport. CBS Sports reported before the first payments that more than 70% of power-conference money was expected to go to football.
“With women’s sports, Olympic sports, and other sports losing scholarships and roster slots every year, it is time to reverse the damage,” Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) said in March, when she and Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) released a draft bill on media rights.
Executive Orders Point Toward the Same Rules Congress Is Debating, but Can’t Enforce Them
Two presidential orders on college sports sit alongside the settlement and the Senate bill. Neither carries the force of a statute.
President Trump signed the first, “Saving College Sports,” on July 24, 2025, a month after the settlement was approved. It described a “rudderless system in which competing university donors engage in bidding wars for the best players, who can change teams each season.” The order declares it the executive branch’s policy that third-party “pay-for-play” payments to athletes are improper. It also says athletic departments with more than $125 million in revenue should add scholarships and roster spots in non-revenue sports. Departments with more than $50 million should keep at least their 2024-25 levels. It directs the U.S. Education Department, the Labor Department, the National Labor Relations Board, the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission to act on athlete status, enforcement, and scholarship protections.
The order’s own wording limits it, though. It says it creates no right “enforceable at law or in equity.” A Saul Ewing legal analysis noted that it is unclear how agencies could direct scholarship and roster numbers within their existing authority.
A second order, “Urgent National Action to Save College Sports,” followed in April 2026. According to the White House, it calls for five years of eligibility and one free transfer, two of the terms in the Senate bill. It also directs the Federal Trade Commission to enforce rules on sports agents. The administration paired it with calls for Congress to pass legislation.
What the Settlement Protects
The settlement’s safeguards for smaller sports concern roster spots, not dollars. It lifted the NCAA’s scholarship limits and replaced them with roster limits. Judge Claudia Wilken initially refused to approve the deal in April 2025 because those limits could have pushed thousands of athletes off teams, ESPN reported. The lawyers revised it so that no athlete would lose a spot as a direct result. Objectors had also raised Title IX concerns. Wilken said those could be addressed outside the settlement, according to a summary of her ruling by Optimum Sports Consulting.
A New Expense on Thin Margins
The money has to come from somewhere. The U of A thesis found the cap exceeds the total 2022 revenue of 81 of the 232 Division I schools with public financial data. Even at the SEC and Big Ten, average 2024 expenses, about $196 million, slightly exceeded revenue, approximately $194.4 million, before any revenue sharing. The thesis counts student fees and institutional support as revenue. LSU, which reported an $818,000 operating loss in 2024, froze hiring.
Outside the power conferences, the thesis says state appropriations, student fees and university transfers already cover 56% of operations at Group of Five schools and 69% at Football Championship Subdivision schools.
Colleges are looking for new money. Ten had signed jersey-patch sponsorships by April, and the University of Tennessee added a 10% “talent fee” to ticket prices. Others are trimming. U of A, which cut 10% of its athletic staff in 2025, announced in April that it would discontinue men’s and women’s tennis. In 2023-24 the two teams earned less than $10,000 against more than $2.6 million in expenses. The athletic director cited long-term sustainability. Minnesota’s proposed $200 student athletics fee drew backlash from students and alumni.
For lower-revenue programs, “the model compounds an existing structural imbalance rather than introducing a manageable new cost,” wrote Cal Dunham, the U of A thesis author.
What Congress Would Change
The Senate passed the Protect College Sports Act on Sept. 28 by a 77-22 vote. The bill would write the cap into federal law and keep it in place after the settlement expires, adjusted yearly for inflation. It would also add what the settlement lacks: a floor for smaller sports. Schools reporting at least $80 million in annual athletics revenue would have to keep at least as many scholarships and roster spots for sports that don’t cover their own costs as they offered in 2024-25, with limited one-year waivers.
The bill protects spots, not payments, so it sets no minimum share of the cap for any sport. It now goes to the House, where law firm Morgan Lewis noted there is limited floor time before the current Congress ends in January.
