ATHENS, Ga. — Georgia’s athletic department is planning to pay football players at least $13.5 million in revenue sharing this upcoming year, as part of the expected settlement in the House settlement case.
But while football and men’s basketball will be getting the vast majority of the revenue sharing, Georgia said it is now able to add more than 100 scholarships to other sports, thanks to the settlement terms.
Georgia athletic director Josh Brooks made the revelations during a Tuesday meeting of the school’s athletic board. Brooks said he expected other SEC schools to make similar decisions.
“I think we’re going to be in line with our conference peers,” Brooks said.
It has been known for a while that the House settlement, expected to be finalized in April, would result in schools directly paying athletes a total of around $20.5 million during the next school year. But it hasn’t been known what the percentages would be. Brooks said Tuesday that Georgia was planning to pay its players in similar proportion to how the House settlement would disperse back pay for name, image and likeness: 75 percent to football players, 15 percent for men’s basketball, 5 percent for women’s basketball and 5 percent for others. That money is from the direct revenue sharing and doesn’t count money collectives pay out to football players and other athletes.
But those percentages don’t come out of the total $20.5 million revenue sharing. Brooks said that up to $2.5 million in new athletic scholarships can be counted toward the total, and Georgia plans to do that, doing that for other sports.
“This is going to allow us to build programs and build up rosters across the board,” Brooks said.
Scholarship limits are set to go away as part of the settlement. They will be replaced by roster limits, which are usually lower than previous roster limits, but schools are now free to give out as many scholarships as they want within those limits.
Brooks didn’t say which sports would see increases at Georgia. Each school is essentially on its own now to prioritize certain sports, both in roster sizes and scholarships.
“It’s going to be interesting to see, and you won’t really know until you see the fall semester kind of play out in the year, when you can see how rosters stack up, but to see what commitments schools have made to which sports,” Brooks said. “But the impact will be known in a year or two as some programs grow and some do not.”
As for a few other ongoing stories:
• While Texas and Nebraska, among others, are getting rid of their spring football games, Georgia is proceeding with its game. Brooks said the school would “take it year by year,” but coach Kirby Smart is behind keeping the game.
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• “It is an opportunity for some of our fans to come see Georgia play that may, may not be able to have season tickets,” Brooks said. “So it’s always been a special day, and I think it’s in the plans for this year. But you know, as everything goes, you take it day by day, month by month, year by year, for future.”
• As the SEC considers proposals to change the conference championship into a set of play-in games, Georgia president Jere Morehead said he was waiting to hear the specific proposals.
“I’m a big fan of the SEC championship weekend because it brings a lot of fans to Atlanta, so I’d hate to see that go away,” Morehead said. “But I haven’t heard what the other proposals are in enough detail to really comment.”
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• Brooks told the board that schools are continuing to look for ways to get more revenue and specifically mentioned television deals. Brooks was then asked afterward if that meant more optimism about getting more from ESPN. He said he would leave it up to commissioner Greg Sankey to comment but agreed it would be a source of revenue.
“Yeah I would think that if that was the pathway, there would be, that would be more revenue there if you went that pathway,” Brooks said. “So we’ve got a great brand, and the conference is strong. And if you look at the viewership report, cost of all this year, we were the SEC was all over it, and Georgia was heavy part as well. So we know there’s a lot of value there.”
(Top photo of Josh Brooks: Joshua L. Jones / USA Today Network via Imagn Images)
