Foster: Financial Literacy Now Part of UCLA Football Culture

The college football landscape is enduring massive financial changes, making it important for every program to adapt and be proactive at every level.

UCLA head coach DeShaun Foster wants to make sure his players are aware of everything they're stepping into in this new revenue-sharing era, where universities are allowed to distribute money to their student athletes. And so, the second-year head coach instituted a new course over the offseason on financial literacy.

"We had to have courses all winter," Foster said at Big Ten Media Days on how he's preparing his players to manage this money coming in. "On financial literacy, help them with LLCs, taxes, just everything. Now that they're really making money, these guys got to make sure that they're taking care of evreything off the field with that money. And we wanted to make sure that we could help them."

An idea like this would've been considered a foreign concept in not-so-distant history, having to teach college players how to legally manage money. But it's a new era, and Foster and UCLA athletics director Martin Jarmond are all-in amid a new financial era.

Feb 13, 2024; Los Angeles, CA, USA; UCLA Bruins athletic director Martin Jarmond, right, with new head football coach DeShaun Foster during a press conference at Pauley Pavilion. Mandatory Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images | Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images

How Will UCLA Handle Revenue-Sharing?

Foster made it clear his intentions on distributing the share of money the university is granting the program with each of his players.

"We went completely off your ability," Foster said. "[We're] going to evaluate the talent and then place into where we think we need to pay them. Everything went good. The players understood that. They fired up about the situation and they loved that we had people explain to them, 'how you're getting this money,' or, 'why you're not getting this money,' and I think that resonated with our players."

Foster and the Bruins haven't publicly revealed how much each player is making, but, as he explained, starters and people higher on the depth chart will be receiving a bigger sum of the revenue than younger, more raw players who won't be playing as much as their counterparts.

Under the monumental House v. NCAA settlement, UCLA will be allowed to distribute a max amount of $20.5 million among its student-athletes. Jarmond and the university have agreed to share all of it, citing that the athletes are an integral part of helping athletics compete at the highest level.

Jarmond revealed that a bigger portion of the share will be distributed to football and men's basketball because they are the biggest drivers in revenue among all sports programs, which is natural. He did not share specifics, but he ensured that he will do everything possible to move Westwood's programs toward success.

UCLA being able to compensate it's athletes to their full potentials is appealing enough, never mind the seemingly infinite amount of opportunities around the Los Angeles area for those athletes to further monetize their names, images and likenesses.

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