Brown: Paying athletes is good for college sports. But questions remain amid litigation

The settlement spurred from the House v. NCAA lawsuit will make it sooner than later that colleges can pay athletes who compete for them directly — and college sports will be better for it in a lot of ways.

But this is far from being settled.

Louisville and Kentucky can only guess right now what the budgets for their athletics departments will be in the coming years because there is still major litigation to wade through. 

A judge in Colorado ruled in May that Fontenot v. NCAA could proceed outside of the House settlement. 

Former Colorado football player Alex Fontenot filed the lawsuit last November, accusing the NCAA of illegally preventing athletes from earning a slice of the billions in revenue schools make.

The NCAA and the Atlantic Coast Conference, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and Southeastern Conference, which were all named in the House lawsuit, petitioned U.S. District Judge Charlotte Sweeney in Colorado to combine Fontenot with a fourth case, Carter v. NCAA, so all of these similar antitrust cases could be handled together.

Hubbard v. NCAA is included in the House settlement and that’s what paved the way for back pay for missed name, image and likeness (NIL) opportunities and allows for schools to pay athletes a share of up to $21 million in revenue annually. 

The reason why the Fontenot case could be so volatile for the NCAA is because it would likely obliterate any limit on how much revenue could be shared with athletes. And $21 million is still too favorable an amount for the NCAA.

The players should get more than that. 

The only way revenue sharing should have a cap is if it’s part of a collective bargaining agreement. That’s probably a ways off, but these young adults are smart. 

They know their value. 

They can do the math when they see all the money being tossed around for a product they provide:

The Big Ten signed a seven-year, $8 billion broadcast deal last July. The SEC’s deal is worth $7.1 billion over the next 10 years, according to the Sports Business Journal.

The College Football Playoff, which includes all 10 Football Bowl Subdivision conferences, agreed to a new six-year extension with ESPN for $7.8 billion in March.

The NCAA men’s basketball tournament is swimming in those same billion-dollar waters, signing an eight-year, $8 billion extension with CBS and Turner Sports in 2018.

The NCAA also signed an eight-year deal with ESPN/Disney for $920 million in January to broadcast 40 championships, including women’s basketball on ABC. 

That’s a dizzying number of zeros on those paychecks.

There’s no reason to believe college athletes would all be in agreement on what is a fair share — the NCAA schools aren’t even aligned.

Another reason the House settlement could implode came from Houston Christian, a Football Championship Subdivision school, in June. It filed a motion to intervene because the settlement was negotiated by the NCAA and Power Five conferences without input from smaller schools. 

And plenty of schools, like Murray State and Eastern Kentucky, in the 22 Division I conferences that don’t play in the FBS benefit from lucrative deals for broadcast rights. But they’re being asked to pay a disproportionate amount of the settlement. 

(The NCAA would cover about 41% of the $2.75 billion over 10 years. The Power Five schools 25%. The Group of Five conferences 9%. FCS and non-football playing schools would be responsible for 12%.)  

For so long, major colleges lamented paying its athletes — asking where they would get the money to do it. The money has always been there in the modern era, it's just spent on frivolous items.

Power Five conferences raked in so much football revenue without having to share a penny with the labor that an arms race broke out over facilities.

That time is coming to an end.

Those barbershops and recording studios built inside football facilities to lure recruits are likely to be first to go. Coaches and players are now going to have to — gasp — take the stairs instead of sliding down to another floor.

There will probably be a reset on exorbitant coaching salaries too, especially head coaches who haven’t won national titles and million-dollar coordinators in football.  

The NCAA is a house unsettled, but litigation will ultimately make it get things in order. And that starts by finally abandoning the facade of amateurism and paying these athletes what they're worth.

Reach sports columnist C.L. Brown at clbrown1@gannett.com, follow him on X at @CLBrownHoops and subscribe to his newsletter atprofile.courier-journal.com/newsletters/cl-browns-latest to make sure you never miss one of his columns.