Boston College AD Blake James Provides Key Insight on Revenue Share and NIL

In a podcast last week, Blake James dove into the specifics of how the BC athletics department distributes its revenue-share dollars.

Eddie Shabomardenly / Boston College athletics (bceagles.com)

During the sixth episode of “From the Desk of Blake James,” a sit-down talk show hosted by Jon Meterparel, the voice of Boston College athletics, with the Eagles’ William V. Campbell Director of Athletics, James released key details regarding BC’s revenue-share commitment and how the program is still falling behind other schools in the Power-4 landscape.

According to James, the template which BC is currently using to distribute its revenue-share total — which is $21.32 million for the 2026-27 calendar year, up from $20.5 million in 2025-26 — closely parallels an evaluation that stemmed from the House vs. NCAA settlement.

“As the courts went through it and they evaluated everything, they came down with 75 percent to football, 15 percent to men’s basketball, five percent to women’s basketball, [and] five percent to everything else,” James said. “So we’re following right along those lines. Our teams are lined up similarly.”

It is not a requirement for schools that participate in revenue sharing to follow this model, but it apparently is what James thinks is best for BC.

This means that men’s hockey and women's lacrosse, for instance, which are arguably the most successful teams within the BC athletics department, both fall in that category of the other five percent. 

Women’s basketball, meanwhile, which is 0-9 in conference play and 4-18 overall, is receiving close to five percent of the $21.32 million all to itself.

Above everything else is football, however, because that is BC’s major revenue-generating sport — as is the case for most athletic programs around the country. The number of football roster spots is also much higher than any other sport by a substantial margin.

“We need football to be successful, we need them at the top,” James said. “We need them competing against other schools, not only in the ACC but across the country, and so our numbers need to reflect that.”

Even though BC fully participates in revenue share, just like virtually every other Power-4 school in the nation — meaning schools that either belong to the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, or ACC — the setback for the athletics department, according to James, has to do with third-party NIL deals.

“I think the thing everyone has to understand now is we have two buckets now,” James said. “If you turn the clock back before last July 1, it was just [Name, Image, and Likeness]. We had Friends of the Heights, which was great and helped us with third-party NIL.”

Where BC is lacking, according to James, is in third-party NIL deals, which was the only way for student-athletes to be compensated before the rev. share era.

"When you look at what’s different between BC and Indiana, it’s not in the [revenue] share that the institution can do.” https://t.co/MpwmUZvXw7

— Graham Dietz (@graham_dietz) January 24, 2026

Compared to a school like Indiana, the 2026 National Champions in football, this is where resources for potential student-athletes are somewhat lacking.

“We want to have legitimate third-party NIL and we have the NIL goal system that our student-athletes are expected to put those deals in,” James said. “So that’s an area that we’ll look to continue to grow. And obviously we’ll grow the [revenue] share as is allowed at the four percent rate per year.”

James continued: “And obviously anyone out there that has a business that wants one of our young people to be a part of their marketing efforts, I’d encourage them to reach out to us and incorporate that into their business plan, because those are things that will help us continue to grow and be successful as a program.”