Texas Tech athletics plans to allocate more than 90% of its projected $20.5 million revenue-sharing distribution next school year to the Texas Tech football and men’s basketball teams, reflecting the amount of money the two programs generate for the department.
Though the House v. NCAA settlement proposal allows for it, Tech won’t increase its number of athletic scholarships, athletics director Kirby Hocutt said, because new spending would cut into revenue sharing.
In a joint interview Friday, Hocutt and deputy AD Jonathan Botros said Tech will distribute about 74% to football players, 17-18% to men’s basketball, 2% to women’s basketball, 1.9% to baseball and smaller percentages to other sports. In dollar amounts, it’s about $15.1 million to football, $3.6 million to men’s basketball and less than $500,000 each to the other teams.
Schools nationwide are preparing for the new way of doing business assuming a federal judge gives final approval on April 7 to terms of the House v. NCAA settlement. Judge Claudia Wilken gave preliminary approval on Oct. 7, another step toward schools directly paying athletes a portion of the funds they generate. The several months between are for affected athletes to be notified and objections to be filed.
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As part of the agreement, scholarship limits are replaced by new roster caps with schools allowed to put every player on scholarship if they choose. However, any new spending on scholarships up to $2.5 million must be deducted from the $20.5 million revenue-sharing pool, so Tech will keep football scholarships at 85, the current maximum, not go to 105, the proposed new roster limit.
Revenue-share implementation and the new roster caps would take effect July 1.
“In consultation with coach (Joey) McGuire,” Hocutt said, “we have decided to keep our scholarship awards at the same numbers as they are currently and not increase scholarship awards. The primary decision factor behind that is providing our coaches with as much flexibility as possible as we move forward, because if we added scholarships, we would be required to deduct that from the revenue-share amount.”
Tech plans to eliminate Alston awards at the end of the 2024-25 school year for the same reason, Botros said. Alston awards are education-related benefits of up to $5,980 per athlete per school year. Tech makes payments at the end of full semesters to qualified scholarship athletes making satisfactory progress toward a degree, in good standing on a team and not in the NCAA transfer portal on the last day of final exams.
Tech has been budgeting about $1.7 million annually for Alston payments the past three years. Next school year, that money would count against the revenue-sharing cap.
The House settlement would make all scholarship equivalencies, allowing schools to offer partial or full aid to any of its athletes. Thus, 85 football scholarships could be used to give aid to everyone on a 105-man roster.
“Kirby used the word ‘flexibility,’ ” Botros said. “Football will already have some additional flexibility with those 85 since they’re equivalency scholarships versus full aid.”
The Southeastern Conference announced in November a league-wide decision to keep football scholarships at 85 for next year, and other FBS programs have made similar determinations.
Hocutt said Big 12 ADs discussed a conference-wide measure, “but decided at this point in time not to take any action and to let each campus make their own individual decisions.”
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Tech’s decision to not add scholarships goes for all sports. Tech baseball, a four-time College World Series participant over the past decade, will remain at 11.7 scholarships for the new roster limit of 34.
Asked about funding for the Tech baseball program, Hocutt pointed to revenue sharing and what he called “true NIL.”
“I would believe that as popular as baseball is in West Texas, as important a program as it is for us,” he said, “there would be additional — and I would think numerous — true NIL opportunities for those young men in our region if they choose to explore those. So I would expect that coach (Tim) Tadlock’s program will continue to remain nationally relevant for the future.”
College athletes have been able to monetize their name, image and likeness since July 2021 when state laws and the NCAA’s choosing not to fight them changed the landscape. That led to the rise of collectives, donor groups established to crowd-source money among fans to attract players.
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Assuming the House settlement is approved, NIL offers of $600 or more will face a fair-market-value assessment by an independent clearinghouse. The firm Deloitte has been chosen to fill that role.
“We heard from them (this past week) at a Big 12 ADs meeting,” Hocutt said. “That was our first engagement with Deloitte. They presented their plans and general concepts as to how this would operate. There’s still a lot of work to be done over the next six months to get that operational.”
In preparing for the revenue-sharing era, Hocutt said in August Tech needed to be mindful of the potential implications from Title IX that mandates opportunities for women in proportion to a school’s enrollment ratio. To what degree, if any, Title IX applies to revenue sharing hasn’t been determined.
“I’ve probably learned nothing new related to that,” Hocutt said, “other than that I believe the way we are strategically approaching revenue-share distribution is consistent to all other power-four universities that I’ve talked to and for certain those within the Big 12.”
Texas Tech University has budgeted a transfer of up to $14.71 million to athletics this fiscal year in institutional operating and debt support. Referring to revenue sharing, Tech President Lawrence Schovanec said he’d attempt to help any department that was “facing a 20-something-percent cut in their revenue.” He said some of the $14.71 million is for debt service on facilities and the amount could be reduced if athletics generates new revenue streams.
Hocutt said cutting a program is not a consideration. Tech sponsors 17 varsity sports teams, one more than the minimum for NCAA Division I membership.
