College amateur hour is dead. Long live the revenue-sharing arms race.
Starting this fiscal year, colleges and universities are now able to directly pay their student athletes thanks to the so-called House settlement. The multibillion-dollar settlement ended three antitrust lawsuits against the NCAA that claimed the organization was limiting the earning power of college athletes.
Along with the 2021 name, image and likeness changes that allowed players to be compensated by third parties for their personal brand, the House settlement is helping to address the historic exploitation of the talents of college athletes. CU Boulder made nearly $35 million in football ticket sales during the 2024 season — that’s not possible without these student-athletes.
But for all the positives that NIL and the House settlement are bringing to college athletics, they have also opened a financial can of worms. Running an athletics department was already an expensive endeavor; now, if schools are keen to compete, they must rustle up tens of millions of dollars to pay their players.
In other words, the cost of glory just got a lot more expensive.
So, as we hurtle into this new frontier, CU Boulder must refrain from throwing caution to the wind. There may be money to be made and bowl games to win, but our state’s flagship university must remember that, first and foremost, its mission is one of education.
Schools that opted into the House settlement’s revenue sharing can now spend up to $20.5 million paying athletes this year. That figure will increase annually by 4% until it hits $33 million in 2035.
That $20.5 million cap is designed to prevent wild overspending by the richest schools in order to maintain the semblance of fair play. But there is no obligation for a school to spend that much paying its players. For its part, Colorado State University says it is going to ramp up to the cap. CU, though, is planning on going all in.
For an athletic department that has run a deficit for five of the last seven years, that is a big ask.
It is worth pausing here for a moment to make clear that CU’s revenue sharing will include all of its sports. The school’s revenue-sharing equation will align with how much revenue a given sport generates. As such, football is likely to get 77% of all revenue sharing money, with basketball claiming another 11%.
So, while CU will be paying athletes from all sports, it is worth focusing specifically on the lucrative — but costly — football program.
CU made its ambitions clear when it hired Deion “Prime” Sanders. His name brought record donations ($35 million in FY 2025) and a national spotlight. ESPN came to Boulder and the Buffs started playing in primetime games. That money and attention made it possible to make statement recruitments and bring some of the best players to Colorado, including Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter.
But for a school striving to level up, this is a precarious balancing act.
Right now, CU needs Prime to keep the money flowing and the recruits coming. And it needs star recruits who can help win games to keep Prime and the money. If CU can’t compete financially, the players could stop signing. If the best players stop signing or stop winning, Prime — and the spotlight he brings — could leave. (He will, of course, inevitably leave at some point, no matter how successful CU becomes.)
Keeping all these plates spinning comes at a cost. Despite record donations and ticket sales, the CU athletic department required direct institutional support of $54.9 million over the last two years. Between 2017 and 2022, the department required just $49.3 million. The Prime Effect, for all the good it has done for CU, has been extremely expensive.
The hope, of course, is that CU’s drastic increase in investment in the department will help the school level up so that it can compete with the best schools in the country — and make money.
But for now, the House settlement has only added to the cost of staying competitive.
For its part, the school says it is going to get creative to cover its new $20.5 million expenditure to pay athletes.
“(That $20.5 million) will come from the different things that we do,” CU athletic director Rick George told the Denver Post, “like concert revenue, our multimedia rights partner, our conference distributions, our donors that support our program.”
Astroturf was installed at Folsom Field to make it easier to have concerts and events there. The school’s student athletic fee for undergraduates was tripled to $90. And, of course, there will be a push for more donations.
What CU won’t do, according to George, is cut any sports. Nor will ticket prices see any “big increases.”
Whether or not the department will be able to cover this new expenditure without direct institutional support will likely tell us a lot about how CU’s journey into this new financial frontier will go.
Naturally, we hope to see the school be able to fairly compensate its athletes, compete on the big stage, and become financially self-sustaining. Watching Buffs football compete these past two years has been a welcome reprieve from years spent in the wilderness of mediocrity. A winning team that can keep the limelight on CU and raise the school’s profile is ideal for everyone. Not only can success on the football field provide financial incentives, it can also drive school pride and give prospective students a little extra incentive to enroll.
But the price of winning can be steep. And CU must approach this new frontier with reasonable expectations and responsible decision-making. Direct institutional support of athletics must have a limit — and CU must approach all decisions with its mission as an educational institution at the fore.
We want to see the Buffs succeed as much as any fan. But more important than that, we want to see CU students succeed. That goal must remain top of mind, no matter how fierce the competition gets on the field.
— Gary Garrison for the Editorial Board