MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The world of big-time college athletics is about to change. Starting this fall, colleges and universities will be able to pay players directly for the first time. That is if a major legal settlement is approved as expected. That means schools have some big decisions to make over the next few months. NPR sports correspondent Becky Sullivan is with us now to tell us more about this. Good morning, Becky.
BECKY SULLIVAN, BYLINE: Good morning.
MARTIN: So the biggest change coming this fall is what's essentially a salary cap for schools of up to $20 million to pay players. At least that's where it starts. How's that going to work?
SULLIVAN: Yeah. This is the big question. I think there's a lot of things for schools to consider. Take an athletic program like Ohio State. This is one of the biggest in the country. I spoke to their athletic director Ross Bjork. He says there's an effort to make sure that a portion of the money is distributed evenly to male and female athletes to satisfy any Title IX concerns that might require proportionality there. But most of the money will be allocated based on a sport's market power. And so for many big-time programs like Ohio State, that, of course, means football. The Buckeyes just won the national title this past January. Here's how Ross Bjork put it to me.
ROSS BJORK: Those of us that have a robust football program, you know, a big brand like Ohio State football, we have to feed that. That's the economic engine that drives the rest of our 35 sport. We have 36 sports. Thirty-five of them, even men's basketball to some degree, relies on the economic success of football.
MARTIN: OK. So what does that mean? Like, how might that break down?
SULLIVAN: Yeah. He says Ohio State is still sorting that out, but I have seen some other estimates floating around for other schools, allocating maybe 70, 75% of the money to football players. The rest of it - most of the rest of it - to men's basketball; some to women's basketball. Maybe a little bit to baseball. For most schools, that is in alignment with which sports are bringing in how much revenue.
MARTIN: And it - look, 'cause you just told us, Ohio State is one of the biggest athletic programs in the country.
SULLIVAN: Yeah.
MARTIN: OK. But what about smaller schools?
SULLIVAN: Yeah. So for a lot of these smaller schools that are outside sort of what are known as the power 4 conferences have to choose whether to opt into the settlement, basically sign on to get to distribute some of that, you know, $20 million revenue share money. Dozens, so far, have announced that they're going to. So we're talking programs like UC San Diego, Youngstown State, Grand Canyon University. They don't have to pay out that full $20 million, but they can - you know, they can, if they want, and that presents some interesting questions. Think basketball schools like Gonzaga or St. John's, they don't have football teams. That kind of money goes a lot further when your main focus is a 15-person men's basketball team, not a much, much bigger football team. So maybe there's a competitive advantage there as a result. We'll just have to see.
MARTIN: OK, so another big change that you've been telling us about with this settlement is the introduction of roster limits to college sports.
SULLIVAN: Yep.
MARTIN: How would that work?
SULLIVAN: Yeah, yeah. So just to give some background, college sports, traditionally, manages team sizes with a limit on scholarships. You could have as many players on the team as you wanted. If some didn't have scholarships or if they - you know, if you split cholarships (ph) between multiple people. But under this legal settlement, schools will be able to give as many scholarships as they want. On the other hand, teams would now be subject to a roster size limit. So to stick with Ohio State, they say they're adding more than 90 new scholarships - a few to football, but mostly to other sports. That's good. On the other hand, the roster limits mean a bunch of their teams will shrink. Ultimately, they could lose around 10% of their total athlete number - that's a lot. And mostly out of teams like rowing, swimming and track and field. Now, the settlement isn't finalized yet. Some of that roster limit stuff could change, but it is significant.
MARTIN: So what other changes could be coming?
SULLIVAN: Well, schools are hoping this legal settlement brings some stability to college sports, which have had a lot of changes over these last few years brought about by lawsuits. So a lot of big-time college's athletics officials were in Washington this past week to lobby Congress to pass legislation that shields the NCAA and all of college sports from future lawsuits and other legal issues coming down the road.
MARTIN: That is NPR's Becky Sullivan. Becky, thank you.
SULLIVAN: You're welcome.
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