South Carolina, Clemson will pay athletes. But questions remain after NCAA settlement. (2024)

South Carolina and Clemson know they will soon have to pay athletes directly for their name, image and likeness (NIL) as a result of the NCAA's settlement of three antitrust cases.

But exactly how, and how much, hasn't become especially clear.

"It's more kind of, 'Deal with it when it comes,'" South Carolina football coach Shane Beamer said on May 21, two days before the NCAA and the power conferences agreed to pay athletes billions.

"Obviously, things are changing," he continued, "and the thing that I've learned with all this is I feel like it changes every week, month."

College athletics was thrown for a loop in 2021 when the NCAA hastily removed its prohibitions on NIL pay after a Supreme Court opinion on the association's antitrust vulnerabilities. Since then, colleges have grappled with an ecosystem where booster-funded collectives control the flow of NIL dollars to athletes.

Meanwhile, past athletes who missed out on NIL brought the NCAA to court. This week's settlement would have the NCAA pay $2.7 billion in damages over 10 years while also providing a framework for an estimated $20 billion more in revenue sharing with current athletes over that same period.

How much will it cost schools?

The settlement's terms aren't public, and they still have to be approved by the court. But details have leaked over the last couple of weeks.

The NCAA will reportedly pay off about 40 percent of the $2.7 billion in damages, and its member institutions will handle the remaining 60 percent. The power conferences alone will account for 24 percent, or about $660 million.

For schools like Clemson and South Carolina, that works out to between $1-2 million reduction in NCAA distributions each year.

On the other hand, Division I programs without football will reportedly handle a 12-percent share of the damages, which means an institution like College of Charleston will lose about $90,000 per year.

But that's chump change compared to what could be spent in revenue sharing.

Clemson and South Carolina could spend up to about $20 million a year in that category, which is based on 22 percent of an average athletic department's annual revenue. Schools aren't required to share that much, but major-conference programs will want to max out their spending to be competitive.

That money will have to come from somewhere, whether that means cutting sports or coaches' salaries, or perhaps leaning on private equity for loans as institutions and conferences figure out how to increase revenue streams.

What's the $20 million for?

At this point, administrators aren't totally sure.

Not only does the settlement reportedly allow schools to essentially enter into NIL contracts with athletes for their broadcast rights, but the new framework might also eliminate the NCAA's scholarship restrictions and replace those with roster maximums where every athlete is on scholarship.

Walk-ons could become a thing of the past. Equivalency sports like baseball, which handed out partial scholarships, will become head-count sports.

Again, any school that wants to be competitive will allocate for the maximum allowed number of scholarships, whether that's 85 in football or 30 in baseball.

But will new scholarships count toward the new $20 million in spending?

Likewise, schools like Clemson and South Carolina have paid athletes up to $5,980 per year— on top of their scholarships— for academic progress in "Alston" payments, which came as a result of another NCAA court settlement.

Do those payments count toward the $20-million-plus maximum?

There are also a raft of concerns associated with Title IX. Even if football accounts, by far, for the largest share of broadcast revenues, will Title IX dictate that male and female athletes have to receive comparable shares of revenue from athletic departments?

Or will football and men's basketball athletes receive larger NIL deals because of their increased market value and the only issue will be whether female athletes are receiving the appropriate "opportunity"— or number— of deals?

These are all details that have to be clarified.

What comes next?

The good news for administrators is they have time to figure this out.

The NCAA's settlement has to be approved by a judge, and there will be a months-long process where athletes can opt-in or object to its framework. It's expected this paradigm shift won't truly occur until the 2025-26 academic year.

In the meantime, Clemson and South Carolina will continue to ramp up their in-house NIL efforts following the passage of an amended state law that allows universities to "facilitate"deals for athletes by working with third-party collectives and corporate sponsors.

In an environment where all athletes are receiving some kind of "base" pay, the schools that can facilitate additional deals between brands and their most high-profile athletes will have an advantage.

There are also hopes the NCAA's settlement will lead to more enforcement of the association's rules against "pay-for-play" and rein in collectives. But even in the NCAA and power conferences' joint statement about the settlement, there was a mention of working with Congress to ensure the future of college sports.

The outgoing president of Notre Dame, Rev. John Jenkins, also released a statement asking Congress to legislate that student-athletes aren't employees and offer the NCAA an antitrust exemption.

The work to stabilize college sports— at all levels— appears far from over.

"There's going to be an impact that's going to be felt," Beamer said, anticipating in broad terms what the House settlement might mean. "But there's a lot of things still to figure out, how this thing shakes out.

"We're on an SEC head coaches group text, and it's been entertaining the last 24 hours, to say the least, talking about that stuff and what's coming."

David Cloninger and Andrew Miller contributed to this report.