Texas Tech athletic director Kirby Hocutt and associate athletic director Jonathan Botros announced this summer that the Texas Tech athletic department will fully participate in revenue sharing with athletes, part of a landmark change in college sports come fall 2025.
Hocutt isn’t sure how much Tech will increase its scholarship numbers, one of the key elements of the House v. NCAA settlement. Football may also be able to increase its scholarship numbers from 85 to 105, but it’s not certain it will increase them at least to the new limit.
“The answer is still unclear,” Hocutt told the Avalanche Journal in mid-August when asked specifically about football. “We’re talking about it, but (funding the 105th) is definitely a possible scenario.”
But he said it wasn’t an easy decision, especially considering Tech plans to take every step to ensure athletes receive the maximum revenue sharing allowed. The revenue sharing cap is expected to be just over $21 million per year starting next year. To put that into context, Tech’s athletics operating budget for the academic year that began last week is between $128 million and $129 million.
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Tech Athletics budgets for expenses equal to its projected revenue each year, so raising the $21 million will require developing new revenue streams and cutting expenses.
“There are other outcomes and things that need to be considered before we give the go-ahead for coaching staffs to add players or increase scholarship budgets,” Hocutt said. “There needs to be a comprehensive plan in place, from revenue sharing to scholarship increases to continued compliance with certain rules.”
New spending on scholarships will be capped at $2.5 million and must be deducted from revenue sharing, as will spending on the Alston Award, an education-related benefit for which Tech budgets about $1.7 million a year.
The proposed settlement is facing legal challenges from multiple parties and still must be approved by U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken.
The proposed settlement was presented to Wilken in late July, after Yahoo Sports reported that, based on discussions with administrators from the powerhouse conferences, many programs planned to add between $3 million and $7 million to their annual scholarship spending.
Kirby Hocutt is hesitant to make scholarship decisions any time soon, given Title IX.
Hocutt is taking a more cautious approach.
“As I sit here today, I have more questions than answers,” he told AJ. “The coaching staff wants answers, but we have to be very careful moving forward and very disciplined in our thought process because we have to keep Title IX regulations in mind at all times. We can’t automatically increase scholarship support for men’s sports and think we can’t do the same for women’s sports. We also have to be careful with the total investment.”
Title IX is a federal law that requires schools to provide opportunities for women and men based on each school’s enrollment.
The NCAA and major conferences voted in late May to settle three antitrust lawsuits that include about $2.8 billion in damages from the back injury and future revenue sharing with players. Hocutt said Tech’s losses from the back injury portion will reduce the Big 12’s annual revenue sharing by nearly $1 million per year.
If approved, the settlement would eliminate the NCAA’s longstanding scholarship limits for all sports and would cap rosters. Schools would be allowed but not required to offer scholarships to all rosters.
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Under the proposal, all scholarships would be equal, meaning schools could offer full or lesser amounts.
Many low-revenue sports have long operated on equal scholarship systems: Baseball, for example, distributes the equivalent of 11.7 scholarships in financial aid to more than twice that number of players.
Under the settlement, the number of scholarships would increase in football from 85 to the new roster limit of 105, in baseball from 11.7 to the new roster limit of 34, and in men’s basketball from 13 to 15.
Other sports sponsored by Tech have seen dramatic increases in scholarship slots, including women’s soccer (expanding from 14 to 28 scholarship slots, allowing everyone to be on scholarship), softball (12 to 25), women’s volleyball (12 to 18), men’s and women’s track and field (from 12.6 and 18, respectively, to 45 each) and men’s and women’s cross country (from five and six, respectively, to 17 each).
In other Tech-sponsored sports, men’s golf and women’s golf will increase from 4.5 and six scholarship spots, respectively, to nine roster spots each, while men’s and women’s tennis will increase from 4.5 and eight scholarship spots, respectively, to 10 roster spots each.
Walk-on acceptance and minimum athletic requirements have yet to be determined.
Hocutt noted there are too many decisions to be made before committing to increasing specific sports.
“No one knows yet how Title IX will be interpreted with respect to revenue sharing,” Hocutt said. “Does revenue sharing fall within the scope of financial aid that Title IX specifically mentions? My personal opinion is no, but at some point that will have to be resolved.”
“Unfortunately, I think some clarification will have to come from litigation, or Congress will have to make a decision, or Judge Wilken will have to opine on how Title IX impacts the revenue-sharing framework.”
“So it’s very complicated and it’s not as simple as just saying, ‘Yes, we’re going to increase scholarships for this sport from X to Y.’ Unfortunately, for us, it’s not that simple.”
Major college football teams have operated with 85 scholarship players since the early 1990s, with rosters that included non-scholarship players numbering more than 100. When it became clear that the 85-man scholarship limit would be lifted and replaced with rosters of 105 players, potentially all on scholarship, at programs in powerhouse conferences, many coaches raised the unwelcome fear that walk-on programs would be eliminated.
In the scenario Hocutt outlined, that may be true in some places but not others.
“We could give him a full scholarship and then add some revenue sharing on top of that,” Hocutt said, “or we could give the 86th football player no scholarship and instead give him $30,000 in revenue sharing to cover his tuition, fees, books and room and board at Texas Tech, but he would have to pay for his own scholarship.”
“That’s why we have to be careful, because there are limitations on scholarships and awards from a Title IX standpoint. That’s why revenue sharing can be more advantageous than academic scholarships in some cases.”
Tech currently sponsors 17 sports teams, one more than the minimum to be in Division I. This is another looming issue.
“The 16-sport requirement is still an NCAA rule,” Hocutt said, “but in the House settlement, there’s no minimum athletic sponsorship requirement. So while the House settlement is driving a lot of the current planning and discussions on campuses here, there are some things here that conflict with NCAA rules. At some point, those two worlds have to intersect.”
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