NCAA settlement could mean a yearly $300K hit to NDSU athletics (2024)

FARGO — Years of litigation and millions of words later, the NCAA settlement that was announced on Friday will mean approximately a $200,000 to $300,000 yearly hit for North Dakota State athletics. In the world of mid-major Division I athletics, it will certainly be noticeable in the administrative offices.

Not a deal-breaker hit, but a cut nonetheless.

It’s the result of negotiations between the NCAA and the Power Five conferences that resolved three antitrust lawsuits with a value of more than $2.65 billion to be paid over the course of the next 10 years. Included in the litigation is schools will be able to pay players directly instead of solely from off-campus collectives.

NDSU athletic director Matt Larsen said the $2.65 billion will be paid in two ways: NCAA reserves and insurance of around $1.15 billion, and the rest from reduced distributions to NCAA schools based on the percentage of distribution they receive.

Boiled down, there are 32 Division I conferences essentially divided into the Power Five and the other 27. Broken down further, the top five will be responsible for $660 million while the other 27 are on the hook for $990 million.

The issue for the NDSUs of the world is that about 94% of the athletes who will benefit from the settlement are from Power Five schools.

“I think the part that is hard to swallow for I would say the majority of Division I defendants in the lawsuit are the (Power) five conferences in the NCAA and the bulk of the certified class are football and men’s and women’s basketball players,” Larsen said. “So you’re essentially asking the majority of Division I to pay back damages to Power Five football and men’s and women’s basketball players. Our student-athletes at NDSU are going to have to do with less so we can pay back FBS football and men’s and women’s basketball players.”

It’s not fair, Larsen said. In response, a group of 22 conference commissioners sent alternate proposals to at least try and cut the payout gap, but they were rejected. Moreover, Larsen said the fact the settlement was negotiated between the NCAA and the Power Five schools with no representation from the other 27 conferences was not right, either.

NDSU’s budget for this fiscal year is around $29 million, so the reduced revenue from the settlement will probably impact the Bison less than other FCS schools. Larsen, who will be the chair of the Division I FCS playoff committee this year, said most FCS conferences will be impacted in some way.

“To what level it impacts the sport of football or impacts the championship, I don’t know yet,” Larsen said.

The hope is it won’t affect recent approved legislation like seeding the top 16 teams in the 24-team FCS playoffs.

It’s not the first time the NDSU athletic department has had to deal with a cut in revenue. In 2017, it lost $800,000 in state funding over a two-year period as a result of a directive from the North Dakota Legislature.

“Anytime we’ve had a cut, we’ve always charged our staff that we don’t want it to impact our student-athlete experience,” Larsen said, “and we don’t want it to impact our opportunity to compete for championships. So a lot of that sometimes becomes administrative.”

The settlement most likely will shelve the idea, for now anyway, that the Power Five schools will break away from the rest of Division I.

“Why would you?” Larsen said. “I have people paying a billion dollars of my settlement for me that we don’t have to pay.”

Larsen said he remains hopeful that talk of a new Division I subdivision consisting of the highest resourced schools comes to fruition. The model is those schools would share around $22 to $25 million yearly to student-athletes based on amenities like TV contracts.

“Again, you look at these 27 institutions who are paying the bulk of the settlement, we don’t have excessive or lucrative TV contracts,” Larsen said. “There’s going to be little or any for us to revenue share. I’ve been saying for years that in all of Division I you go from a $10 million budget to a $200 million-plus budget and all operating under the same rules is past due for some changes.”

Jeff would like to dispel the notion he was around when Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, but he is on his third decade of reporting with Forum Communications. The son of a reporter and an English teacher, and the brother of a reporter, Jeff has worked at the Jamestown Sun, Bismarck Tribune and since 1990 The Forum, where he's covered North Dakota State athletics since 1995.
Jeff has covered all nine of NDSU's Division I FCS national football titles and has written three books: "Horns Up," "North Dakota Tough" and "Covid Kids." He is the radio host of "The Golf Show with Jeff Kolpack" April through August.