A $250M price tag: How SEC coaches will pay their football players

DALLAS — Within the third-floor convention space of the Omni Hotel, SEC banners cover the walls during the conference’s annual media days.

Plastered on one is the league’s iconic pinwheel of school logos. On another is a reminder of the SEC membership count: “Now, 16 strong,” it says. And on a third surface, the largest and most elaborate wallpaper stretches from floor to ceiling displaying the league’s trademark slogan.

It just means more.

While the catchphrase is mostly rooted in the conference’s passionate fan bases, in the impending era of athlete revenue sharing, it holds a most fitting significance: It means more money, a lot more.

In fact, according to estimates from many of the conference’s head football coaches, SEC schools are expected to spend as much as one-quarter of a billion dollars annually as a league on their football players, or about $15 million per school a year.

“Do the math,” Florida coach Billy Napier told Yahoo Sports. “We’re talking $20 million (in allotted revenue sharing). In most athletic departments, football is 70-75% of the revenue. That’s $12.5-15 million. That’s the number we anticipate.”

LSU coach Brian Kelly describes his expected football roster budget: “I’d say between $14-17 million.”

Can every school afford such a price tag?

“Everybody in the SEC,” he said with a smile.

Lording over this year’s media days — the four-day extravaganza comes to an end Thursday — is the historic concept permitting schools to directly pay their athletes. While the exact figure remains a mystery, athletic departments are expecting to operate with a revenue-sharing cap in the low-$20 million range when the model is implemented next fall.

How schools plan to distribute that money is coming more into focus. At least in the SEC, a majority of schools plan to earmark three-fourths of those dollars to the sport that generates most of the revenue: football.

Many of them also expect to continue utilizing their booster-led NIL collectives as a “sweetener,” one coach says, for their players. There’s more, too: Coaches believe the new football roster limit will settle at around 105 players — a figure that will permit schools to offer 20 more scholarships for the sport than the current NCAA maximum of 85.

It means more money. More scholarship players. More collective involvement. And, quite possibly, more of the same issues lingering over the sport now.

“I don’t know that collectives go away,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said. “They are not under any umbrella that we are under. Nobody is going to be able to say, ‘You can’t have those.’ The point of rev-share was to take that part out of it, but I don’t see it going away.”

Still, so many questions remain unanswered as attorneys work to finalize the long-form agreement of the NCAA’s landmark House case settlement — a brokered two-part deal that pays $2.77 billion to former athletes in back damages and opens the door for schools to share revenue with athletes in the future. While lawyers were working to complete the agreement by the end of this week, the document’s filing with the court may be delayed until next week, plaintiff’s attorneys told Yahoo Sports last week.

But the long-form document is unlikely to answer some of the most pressing questions. That includes uncertainties around Title IX, the federal law requiring schools to offer equal benefits to men and women athletes.

Within the SEC, conference executives like commissioner Greg Sankey, as well as school administrators and their coaches, are hoping to learn more about that subject from how plaintiff attorneys distribute the back damages. According to past interviews with plaintiff attorneys, they expect to distribute about 90% of the $2.77 billion to power conference football and men’s basketball players. That’s a 90-10 split for men.

“We want to learn from the approach taken at the court level or the reaction to that,” Sankey said.

“It depends on how the court pays back the $2.8 billion,” Kelly said on Title IX’s application. “If it’s paid back percentage wise 85 (men) and 15 (women), then the ADs have cover moving forward (on an unequal split) with rev share.”

While Title IX attorneys are dismissive of such a plan — they believe that schools, and not courts, are subject to Title IX — the SEC is steadfast in its plans.

For weeks now, school administrators have begun developing plans for the revenue distribution. They’re exploring multiple models, some at a 50-50 split with men and women athletes as well as more drastic 70-30 or 80-20 models that distribute more to men, as the SEC coaches acknowledged.

A 50-50 revenue-sharing split could mean a windfall of cash for certain women athletes whose sports loses millions annually, especially in the leagues with fewer overall sports and athletes. For instance, schools in the SEC, as well as the Big 12, sponsor a smaller number of sports (18-20 on average) than those in the Big Ten and ACC (often more than 25).

If schools choose to distribute 50% of the some-odd $20 million annual revenue dollars to women athletes — something few expect within the SEC — the third-party collectives will be used to subsidize salaries for football and men’s basketball players, coaches say. Even with an unequal revenue split, collectives will remain in existence.

“People at our place think a lot of [our collective] and don’t see them going away,” South Carolina’s Shane Beamer said. “We’re trying to figure out what’s the best avenue going forward. Whether merged [with the school] or still separate, I don’t see them going away.”

“You’re a long ways away from having a system that has a salary cap and no collectives,” Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin told Yahoo Sports.

At Ole Miss, Kiffin’s collective, The Grove, is transitioning into a marketing agency that is structured to accept school funds and distribute them to athletes who satisfy NIL deals promoting the school or the school’s foundation. Missouri’s collective, Every True Tiger Foundation, has operated this way for months.

LSU recently announced a relationship between its collective, Bayou Traditions, and its donor foundation — a marriage expected to permit boosters to receive priority points for NIL-related donations. It’s the first step toward the path of boosters receiving the ultimate prize for NIL giving: tax deductions. “Then you’d have a clear conduit for NIL donations,” Kelly said.

Kelly believes the evolution of collectives at LSU, Ole Miss and Missouri — with more on the way — are likely short-lived plays. They are a “bridge” until revenue sharing arrives next fall with contracts that expire once the sharing of revenue begins. At that point, he expects collectives to “shrink,” but not completely fold.

“They become front-loaded contracts that expire in recruiting,” he said. “They become the sweetener that gets you [to revenue sharing]. I don’t see it being this big of an operation as it is right now.”

Sankey too suggests that the evolution of his schools’ collectives “may be interim steps” before revenue sharing begins. The “theme” within his league meeting rooms is to have NIL activities be driven “through our athletic departments” and with “oversight and transparency” through the terms of the settlement.

While enforcement in any new model remains undecided, the long-form settlement stipulates that any disciplinary action for violating the new revenue-sharing system will come from a neutral and independent arbiter, not the NCAA, a plaintiff’s attorney told Yahoo Sports.

College leaders contend that the settlement-related injunctive relief grants them the ability to continue their near century-old fight to prevent performance-based pay for athletes through boosters. According to the term sheet, the settlement prohibits recruits or current athletes from entering into any arrangement with a booster unless the deal can be expressly proven as a genuine agreement for use of the player’s likeness.

Deals must be “true NIL” and pay what is described as “fair market value,” something officials hope to determine based on disclosure data and an NIL-type clearinghouse to verify deals. Whether such an enforcement mechanism stands the legal test is unclear.

The SEC has created five working groups to explore solutions heading into college sports’ new model. Athletic directors, school presidents and general counsels encompass groups studying (1) roster structure; (2) distribution of revenue; (3) enforcement and governance; (4) SEC rules and state legislation; and (5) congressional relations.

While those are SEC-only working groups, administrators from the SEC and Big Ten continue to work together as part of their joint advisory board. They met as recently as June, Sankey said.

No matter the outcome of this new revenue-sharing model, the structure’s primary goal should be to incentivize parity, said Nick Saban, the former Alabama coach who now works as an analyst for ESPN.

The NIL era, Saban contends, has created a lack of parity within the sport. The industry is on the way to a “caste system” of haves and have-nots, he said.

“I think players should be compensated, but I think they should be compensated in a way that, you know, this player is compensated under the same set of circumstances as that player is compensated that you’re playing against,” he said. “That’s not the case now.”

But has there ever been true parity in college football? Perhaps not. One of the hallmarks of the sport is a century of high-resource powers — the Alabamas, Ohio States and Texases — using their wealth and history to gain an advantage in recruiting and, thus, create dynasties on the field.

The continued existence of collectives poses a threat to any equal footing. The third-party entities operate outside of schools, are difficult to police and allow institutions a way to mitigate Title IX and other legal risks.

Already, one coach gestures toward the two new collectives in the league.

“You’re adding two teams to the SEC [Oklahoma and Texas] that I think, it’s pretty well known, have pretty good collectives,” Kiffin said. “It would be like the NFL adding teams that have a higher salary cap.”

Back and forth, the debate goes.

Amid the logo-splashed walls of the Omni Hotel, the head football coaches of the 16 schools maneuver through the maze of print, radio and television interviews. Intermingled with the usual media day questions — How’s your new coordinator? What’s up with your tough schedule? Can you make the CFP? — SEC head coaches are faced with another big inquiry: How much will you pay your football players?