Four years ago, the NCAA implemented a policy allowing student athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness (NIL) for the first time in collegiate athletics. 

Now, after a settlement between the NCAA, its Power Conferences and lawyers who represented all Division I athletes, college athletes are entitled to direct compensation from their universities.

Over the summer, Federal Judge Claudia Wilken approved the House vs. NCAA settlement, which now allows universities to pay its student athletes directly.

The $2.8 billion settlement comes after three antitrust lawsuits “claimed the NCAA was illegally limiting the earning power of college athletes,” according to ESPN. 

Universities that opted into the settlement will get an annual salary cap that represents 22% of the average revenue gained in the Pac-12, Big Ten, ACC, SEC and Big 12. According to the College Sports Commission (CSC), that revenue stems from media rights, sponsorships (like Nike and Adidas) and ticket sales.

In year one, participating universities have a salary cap of $20.5 million to spend on its student athletes. The cap will increase by 4% over the next two years. The CSC said it will publish the calculated amount of revenue shared each spring.

Participating universities are not required to meet the $20.5 million salary cap, and rollover won’t accrue after each year. Madison Stein-Mason, Wichita State’s deputy athletic director of external affairs and revenue generation, said she is hopeful that the university will reach its cap, however. 

Athletic Director Kevin Saal said he thinks that WSU is in a unique position, given that there is no football program on campus. In an interview, he estimated that universities within WSU’s “peer group” are already investing 75-80% of the salary cap into football programs. 

“Because we’re not doing that,” Saal said, “we’re positioning our basketball program and our other 15 sports — as it relates to scholarships, as it relates to roster resources, as it relates to operational dollars — in a position to be incredibly successful based on where our peers are now, and where they’ll be in the future.” 

WSU declined to share with The Sunflower how it will invest the salary cap across its 16 athletic programs. 

But based on WSU’s annual report, most of the money will go into the men’s basketball program. The university is budgeting $20.4 million to spend on all 16 of its athletic programs, but the men’s basketball program takes up nearly 32% ($6.5 million) of the allotted budget. WSU is also expecting to earn a combined $11.2 million from student fees, media rights, sponsorships and ticket sales.

Administrators of WSU Athletics were aware something like this could happen almost a year in advance, from information provided from the NCAA, federal government and the American Conference.

“We are consistently fed information on the happenings in college athletics,” Stein-Mason said. “The same mechanisms were in place. I would just say the frequency and the level of information is probably the most robust and extreme that I’ve seen in my time in college athletics.”

Stein-Mason said that transformative changes like this are the norm in college athletics, but the scale of this change and the opportunity it presents is challenging to navigate.

“How can you really bridge the gap the best, to help people help you support the great opportunity?” Stein-Mason said. “That’s no different than how you would fundraise for a capital project … I just think that this is a little bit bigger scale than what I’ve experienced so far. 

“There’s always going to be some change, and I think that’s what makes it exciting for me. I think the biggest thing on the pressure piece is we just want to make sure we do right by Wichita and student athletes with the opportunity that’s in front of us.”

As a result, Stein-Mason said the Athletics Department has had to increase its budget “significantly,” but couldn’t say by how much. She also said that Saal and university President Richard Muma had conversations to ensure WSU was “in a good spot going into the new era.”

Along with payments made directly from the university, student athletes can still accept third-party payments based on their NIL.

Athletes will now have to go through NIL Go, which is utilized by the CSC, to determine if payments made over $600 meet associated status, valid business purpose and range of compensation guidelines. Student athletes must submit items for review before they accept any deals to ensure they aren’t accepting “pay-to-play” incentives.

Stein-Mason said that WSU Athletics is there to aid in the process of getting third-party NIL deals approved for its student athletes through ongoing processes, through its beginning of the year meetings and email updates to student athletes.

“For NIL Go, what we’ve done is, no matter what, everything comes to our compliance office first,” Stein-Mason said. “Because that’s the mechanism that really legislates a lot of these things. We’re helping them (student athletes) double-check their information to make sure that everything that comes into NIL Go, that they’re checking all those boxes.

“It’s almost like a safety net to make sure that they’re adhering and complying with everything they need to do, and do it correctly.”

Another part of the settlement establishes that former student athletes, who participated or graduated from the year 2016 to now, can apply for back pay as compensation for their time with the program, even if they didn’t play at all.

Former student athletes can apply for back pay online to see if they are eligible. Wichita State notified former and current student athletes about the release of their personal information to the court and what to do should they not want it released.

The notice says that the information will be “education records, as required by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (‘FERPA’),” and that “while WSU is not a party to the legal proceedings, the court order obligates” WSU “to provide specific information that may include your personally identifiable information.”

Scholarship limits are now essentially a thing of the past, with every program reaching the maximum amount allowed per roster spot. With the new change, Saal said that the Athletics Department now has an additional 50 scholarships to distribute across all NCAA-affiliated programs.

“We really went through a process with our coaches of going, ‘Okay, what’s going to make you the most competitive and successful in your sport, given the maximums and limits that the NCAA gave us?’” Stein-Mason said. “We can say that every sport took an increase in their scholarships this year.”