North Carolina to Participate in House Settlement for $20.5 Million

The very fabric of college athletics changed on July 1. That is when the University of North Carolina began paying players, student athletes, for their services.

The University decided it was going to opt in to the ruling from House v. NCAA, which is now more commonly referred to as the House settlement.

The House lawsuit was first filed in 2020 by former swimmer Grant House. It is because of this student athlete that schools will pay up to $20.5 million in revenue sharing for name, image and likeness of the player.

The House case codified two other cases into one. Other student athletes were filing suit for the same reason. They sued the NCAA for collegiate rules which prevented students from making money on their own name, image and likeness.

On June 6, a United States District Judge for the Northern District of California approved the settlement reached between the athletes and the governing body. It set July 1 as the date it would take effect.

As a result of the settlement, student athletes that participated in intercollegiate athletics between 2016-2014 would collect a total of $2.7 billion. The monies are to be paid out over the next 10 years. It also allowed players to be paid directly by the schools.

UNC athletic director Bubba Cunningham released a statement which said the Tar Heels would opt into the settlement and distribute the full sum of $20.5 million to its student athletes. That represents the highest sum an athletic program can spend in a school year.

Needless to say, most of the money will be going to football and men's basketball. Those are the bread winners. The "non-revenue" sports will be given crumbs to fight over.

Another premise of the settlement is that there are no longer any scholarship limits a school can grant to its athletes. However, there are roster limits and the amount of scholarships cannot exceed the roster size.

Cunningham said as a result of the scholarship increase 532 students will be on scholarship this fall, as opposed to 338 last spring, which represents a 57 percent increase.

“The ability to have more Tar Heels on full scholarship will greatly strengthen our athletics program and the student-athlete experience at Carolina,” Cunningham said. “This is a great opportunity to support additional student-athletes financially, outside of revenue share, and we want to keep building our Rams Club Scholarship Endowment in the hope of increasing scholarships even more in the future.”

Cunningham further added the additional expense of revenue sharing and an increased football budget will increase last year's budget of $150 million. It will go up by about $30 million as a result of the changes.

“It remains to be seen how this new economic model will impact the future of intercollegiate athletics,” Cunningham said. “We do know that as we continue to evolve, Carolina remains committed to providing outstanding experiences and broad-based programming as we share revenue with teams and student-athletes who earn it.”

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