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Updated: June 28, 2025 @ 1:51 am

West Virginia’s athletic department will not increase its scholarship numbers in the 2025-26 school year, but will ramp up other payments and support to its athletes in its efforts to remain competitive in the new era of college sports.
Part of the additional compensation WVU will provide will come from the $20.5 million revenue share stemming from the House v. NCAA case, which the athletic department will split among those sports that generate revenue. NIL proceeds and a previous compensation method, resulting from the Alston decision, will also provide payment to athletes.
WVU also expects to add scholarships to several sports in future years, perhaps as early as next year.
“We left our Alston allocations in place, which very few institutions did. That is an academic incentive award, that most Power 5 institutions have been doing for a few years,” Baker said. “Previously, those allocations were limited to scholarship athletes only, but now it can go to anybody.”
Alston payments can total up to $5,980 per year per athlete per a court decision, and can be used for education-related expenses such as tuition, fees, books and supplies, among others. 
“I actually increased that allocation for what were previously our equivalency sports (think mostly Olympic sports),” Baker explained. “We weren’t prepared to go all in on scholarships yet (from a financial standpoint).”
There are several different methodologies which schools are using to fund their athletes in this, the first fiscal year of the rev share era. Some have already dropped Alston payments. Some have bumped up scholarship totals, but are holding rev share payouts or Alston payments short of the maximum. WVU has chosen a path that Baker and his team believe offers its coaches the most flexibility in compensating its athletes.
Wrestling provides a good example. Previously limited to 9.9 scholarships, the sport now has a roster cap of 30, with every participant eligible to receive a scholarship. However, WVU, like many schools, does not have the money to fund 20 more scholarships in that sport alone, so instead it will support athletes with its current scholarships this year (which can be split and allocated per the coach’s decision), but also supplement that with increased Alston payments, rev share and potentially NIL.
“I felt like that model would give each sport the most flexibility. At some point, maybe even next year, we will probably go all in on scholarships and perhaps do away with Alston payments,” said Baker, while noting that a firm decision on that has not yet been made. The upshot, though, is that total compensation to the athletes would not decrease, especially since rev share allocations are expected to increase some 4.5% for 2026-27, with NIL poised to help in some cases.
This year, WVU will allocate its revenue share money to athletes in the sports which are ticketed, and thus create some incoming revenue which helps contribute to the department’s bottom line. Those include eight sports: football, men’s and women’s basketball, baseball, volleyball, wrestling and men’s and women’s soccer. Baker, like many ADs, is not going to publicize the percentage of the $20.5 million rev share allocation that each of those sports will receive, but did agree that WVU’s distribution amounts are in line with many of its peer institutions in the percentages.
Across the NCAA’s highest levels, those amounts appear to be running at 70-75% for football, a combined 15-20% for the two basketballs, and the rest for the remainder of the sports.
Coming to a decision on which sports to include in the revenue distribution involved a number of different factors, including Title IX considerations. Thus, programs weren’t rewarded for performance on the field, court or range.
“We felt it was very defensible to say that everyone who is contributing to these revenues will get a corresponding percentage of that back via rev share,” said Baker, listing an exhaustive group of group of legal contributors, both in and outside the University, who helped craft a policy that is expected to stand up to legal challenges.
Athletes in the other programs, though, won’t be shut out. They will still be eligible for Alston payments, providing they meet the academic requirements of the awards, and some figure to harvest NIL deals.
“I do envision that under Gold & Blue Enterprises, we will have an agency that will do some matchmaking to where some NIL deals will be available,” Baker confirmed. 

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