After getting the admittedly bad pun about his surname out of the way, WTVF-5 sportscaster Steve Layman turns serious and explains how his excellent, seven-part “Paid to Play” series came about. That report, which aired in early August, examines all aspects of name, image and likeness and its unprecedented growth over the past three years.
The combination of NIL, which allows athletes to monetize their fame with sometimes huge endorsement deals, and athletes’ mushrooming use of the transfer portal have produced “sweeping transformational changes” in college athletics” that Layman says fans don’t fully understand.
“Most fans who absolutely adore these schools and adore these teams barely know what’s going on in the whole picture,” Layman says. “They know something’s happening, but what it is, they can’t really put their finger on it.
“What is NIL exactly? Like, who is getting it and what is the impact on the teams that I care about? They know that the transfer portal has drastically changed rosters but I don’t think they’ve quite realized the whole nature of the issue.
“So that was part of the goal of the series … let’s try to put it – for lack of a better pun – let’s try to put it in Layman’s terms to the average person and sort of let them come along for the ride and understand some of these things a little bit more in-depth than they did before.”
And those changes are far from over, say both Layman and retired college football coach Doug Mathews, now a Nashville radio sports talk host.
The Supreme Court’s 2021 landmark decision in the House vs. NCAA class-action lawsuit found that the NCAA had violated antitrust laws by prohibiting student-athletes from receiving compensation.
Flash-forward to his past May, when it was announced that both the NCAA Board of Governors and all Power Four conferences reached a $2.8 billion revenue-sharing agreement to settle the lawsuit, costing each of those schools about $30 million over the next decade.
If approved by a U.S. District Court judge in Northern California, the revenue-sharing agreement states that up to 22% of generated revenue would be used by athletic departments to pay student-athletes. That’s estimated at roughly $23 million for the 2025-26 school year.
“That’s the next big deal that’s going to happen,” Mathews says. “But that has not been approved by the judge who is overseeing this lawsuit. Most people think it will, because it settles a lot of the issues that have been out there that have been for the last three or four years. But that’s certainly the next big thing, without question.
“There’s two things that are out there after this season. One is – not if, but when – we’re going to have that superconference (of between 40 and 60 teams) that pulls away, that top echelon. And then secondly, it’s going to be the revenue-sharing that the universities are going to legally be allowed to do right now. And that’s in addition to NIL.”
Superconference side effects
The idea of a superconference concerns Layman. He wonders if athletics departments will cease offering nonrevenue (think Olympic) sports opportunities and if those major conferences like the SEC will cut off ties to small conferences like the Ohio Valley Conference, Atlantic Sun, Conference USA and Missouri Valley Conference, which have member schools in the Nashville area.
“I think that’s when you really start to see the rubber meets the road because there’s a lot of schools that have to make difficult decisions,” Layman says.
“Do they stop funding the full allotment of scholarships that they could for those lower sports and just sort of treat them as glorified club sports? Or do, potentially, they cut some sports altogether to absolve themselves of that headache?
“That’s when you’re going to start to see, I think, some pushback from other athletes who aren’t getting the revenue sharing, who aren’t getting the NIL, who now also are going to be losing out on the opportunities to get scholarships or perhaps even play the sport of their choosing in major college athletics,” Layman continues.
“I just think there’s so many questions that are out there. They’re working through it the best they can. But I think we’re still going to see several more days in court that help define what all this is. And we’ll see.”
Regarding the superconference question, Layman wonders if major schools will work with their smaller counterparts to keep the system intact or shut them out completely.
“There’s 1,100 NCAA schools out there, and most of them don’t make any money in athletics,” Layman says. “And so the question is … are they willing to – maybe it’s not necessarily giving back anything – but are they just willing to work with everybody else to ensure the framework that allows it to still be a student athlete experience that allows the NCAA Tournament to exist with full access for all the other conferences?
“I think that’s maybe the one question that’s not within the framework or whatever that’s trying to do is, can they convince the big guys that the whole world and the entire enterprise is better if everyone sticks together and keeps it as a Division I that we know today? Or are they going to chase the almighty dollar and go off and do their own thing?”
As the two sports commentators might say, “Stay tuned, fans.”