Michael Kelly calls it a “transformative time in the college sports industry.”
He’s referring to the landmark antitrust settlement that now allows schools to pay their athletes directly. It’s the latest shift in how colleges can pay athletes for their name, image and likeness.
And at the University of South Florida, Kelly, the outgoing athletic director, said this means more scholarships for student-athletes.
Between 2021 and the June 6 approval of the settlement, schools paid athletes through a collective or indirectly for their name, image and likeness, or NIL.
Now, funding for any deal an athlete has with the university can come straight from USF, Kelly said.
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The settlement , in a case known as House vs. NCAA, was reached between the NCAA, the so-called "power conferences" and student-athletes.
It includes $2.75 billion for former athletes who played prior to 2021, an era when major college sports operated under a guise of "amateurism" and before NIL deals were allowed. But Kelly said that part of the settlement is not finalized due to some appeals.
The settlement also made changes to what scholarship programs can give athletes.
Instead of having a certain number of scholarships each sport can give players, teams will have roster limits. This means every athlete could get a scholarship.
Each university will begin with an annual salary cap of $20.5 million to give to athletes through either scholarships or NIL deals.
USF is a member of the American Athletic Conference, which is not among the power conferences in the settlement. However, most of the AAC schools have agreed to provide athletes a minimum of $10 million across the next three academic years.
Kelly said USF’s pot will be funded through donations and program revenue, including money generated by its new on-campus stadium.
“It comes from raising money,” Kelly said. “It comes from finding deals from sponsors and it comes from new revenue generation aspects, which are all things we're working really hard on, particularly as we gear toward the stadium. As you might imagine, that's a big, big thing."
The stadium is scheduled to open in time for the 2027 football season.
USF will add 100 more athletic scholarships that would tap into that $20.5 million cap.
“We took our approach more so on the scholarship side since we get so much good support from our donations,” he said.
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More scholarships should also help recruiting and retaining athletes at USF, Kelly said.
“We’ve seen some evidence in recent years of great Bull student athletes that get tempting offers to go somewhere else,” he said.
Kelly, who will become athletic director at the U.S. Naval Academy, which also competes in the AAC, added that USF should be able to keep up with those offers.
“I think it’s a huge opportunity for USF because we’re being very bold,” he said.
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Kelly said USF already functions like a power conference school, even without that label.
“The only way we can get that is by continuing to succeed and pour more into it,” he said.
The power conferences are the Big Ten, Big 12, Atlantic Coast and Southeastern. The Pacific-12, which was a defendant in the lawsuit, lost that status after recently losing most of its members to other conferences but is rebuilding with other schools.
Kelly said that which athletes get additional checks will be a “strategic decision.”
“I feel USF is amongst the most balanced athletic departments in the country,” he said.
