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UR opts in to House settlement, will only pay hoops players

SFspidur

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Figured this deserves its own thread...only men's and women's hoops players will get paid directly by the school. Everyone is of course eligible for outside NIL. Don't see anything about UR's scholarship plans.

Edit: UR press release is live.


 
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Glad to see women’s basketball is included. Hopefully another of the many reasons, for Roussell to stay as we continue to show our commitment to WBB success. Would love to know how much money is going to both teams.

Also would’ve liked to see UR opt in for several of our other sports, but reasonable to start with MBB and WBB as that is the clear priority.
 
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UR FAQ on the settlement, includes the roster limits. By my count we are currently over the caps in the following sports:

Baseball: 43 (cap of 34)
Men's Hoops: 17 (cap of 15)
Men's Golf: 10 (cap of 9)
Men's Lax: 52 (cap of 48)

Women's Cross Country: 35 (cap of 17)
Women's Soccer: 39 (cap of 28)

I think the women's XC number is just because everyone on the T&F roster is automatically listed on the XC roster as well. It looks like almost all of them participate in the Spider Open, even the jumpers, but they don't participate in the other XC competitions during the season.

But it looks like baseball and soccer will have to make major cuts.

 
UR release:


The University of Richmond is opting in to the terms of the House v. NCAA settlement for the 2025-26 school year, the school announced Friday. As permitted by the terms of the settlement, Spider Athletics will begin providing direct payments to men's and women's basketball student-athletes for the use of their Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL).

"A successful Division I Athletics program has been an important part of the Richmond experience for decades," said University of Richmond President Kevin F. Hallock. "Athletics brings generations of Spiders together, strengthens our ties with the surrounding region, and offers a platform to showcase our remarkable university on a national stage. Our university provides an extraordinary academic experience with deep mentoring relationships in a relentlessly welcoming environment. That, combined with our commitment to Division I athletics at such a high level is extremely rare."

Payments to men's and women's basketball will be sourced from philanthropy and additional Athletics revenues.

"This decision is essential to maintaining Richmond's status as a top-tier men's and women's basketball program in the Atlantic 10 and continuing Spider Athletics' tradition of competitive excellence at the highest possible level," said Vice President and Director of Athletics John Hardt. "Opting in to the terms of the settlement is the best way to preserve Richmond's ability to offer Spiders unparalleled opportunities to grow, learn, lead, and succeed."

Spider student-athletes in programs other than basketball will remain eligible to receive external NIL income subject to NCAA rules, and Spider Athletics will continue to provide resources to assist them in that effort. Richmond's decision to opt in to the terms of the House settlement also requires UR to abide by new roster limits proposed in the settlement.

Whether or not they opt in, all Division I institutions will see a significant reduction in distributions from the NCAA to fund the settlement. The NCAA will also require all institutions to follow enhanced reporting requirements regarding all forms of NIL agreements between student-athletes and external individuals or organizations.

Should the House v. NCAA settlement receive final judicial approval on April 7, implementation could begin as early as July 1.

Additional information on the House v. NCAA settlement and its impact on D-I athletics is available here.

- -

“Payments to men's and women's basketball will be sourced from philanthropy and additional Athletics revenues.” I assume philanthropy means we can donate directly to UR for NIL? If so that would be wonderful and I hope they create a membership level system like the old spider club days.
 
Well done, guys...the short link is currently broken, but I assume it just goes to the press release.

 
"sourced from philanthrophy..."

I assume this means these payments replace the current NIL?
 
"sourced from philanthrophy..."

I assume this means these payments replace the current NIL?
I’m not sure. I too wonder if the Spider Collective is still going to operate separately for MBB or be absorbed into this. The collective was probably raising $500-700K range from what I’ve read. We’re going to have to bump this now to the $2-3 million range between donations and our own direct university revenue.
 
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I assume “additional athletics revenues” means ticket prices are going to go up. What’s the guess on that front and how many season ticket holders are going to pay more to see an inexperienced team lead by Mooney?
 
UR FAQ on the settlement, includes the roster limits. By my count we are currently over the caps in the following sports:

Baseball: 43 (cap of 34)
Men's Hoops: 17 (cap of 15)
Men's Golf: 10 (cap of 9)
Men's Lax: 52 (cap of 48)

Women's Cross Country: 35 (cap of 17)
Women's Soccer: 39 (cap of 28)

I think the women's XC number is just because everyone on the T&F roster is automatically listed on the XC roster as well. It looks like almost all of them participate in the Spider Open, even the jumpers, but they don't participate in the other XC competitions during the season.

But it looks like baseball and soccer will have to make major cuts.

XC & TF numbers have been shown this way to boost Title IX numbers.
 
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How much do you all think we’re going to give to MBB and WBB each year?
Given how tight-lipped we've been about NIL, I'd be relatively surprised if the school puts out how much we're going to give. Based on other A10 programs, it needs to be around $3 million for us to stay competitive. VCU mentioned that number weeks ago and it look like Mason is also planning for that figure.

 
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I assume “additional athletics revenues” means ticket prices are going to go up. What’s the guess on that front and how many season ticket holders are going to pay more to see an inexperienced team lead by Mooney?

yeah I would love to know how they think they'll get it. if there were easy revenue sources why woudln't we have done it sooner. I agree men's season tix increase likely & fair esp since those are pretty cheap. But tough to do that coming off our season as you mention.

More likely they'll just have $ from cutting expenses - employees, maybe a sport, maybe actually less scholarships (football top target) - so I wouldn't call it new revenues but savings. Mooney's salary would be a great cut tho not viable.

Of course they are not going to put that in a press release. The "philanthropy" will only go so far and I'm skeptical of how much will be consistently raised there. But again we can manuever $ around from UR operations and endowment. need to imo if want to be real players in this. that wouldn't make press release either.

making the NCAA tourney and going further in NCAA would be best revenue generator but we know how we value that...very little.
 
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One area that's potentially exciting about this - since we and other A10 schools don't have major football programs, we can seemingly stay competitive with some power conference programs. Schools in major football conferences are going to give a TON of money to the football programs, meaning they'll only have a few million left over for basketball. Here's an example from UGA, who is using 75% ($13.5M) of their budget on football, leaving only $2.7M left for basketball.

If we fund this seriously like VCU and other A10 schools are going to, there's a window of opportunity for us here.

 
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I really should know more about this than I do.

"The House v. NCAA settlement requires all Division I schools — even those that choose not to opt into the student-athlete compensation portion of the agreement — to pay into the $2.8 billion settlement over the next 10 years to compensate current and former college athletes for the NCAA's use of their name, image and likeness (NIL)."

former athletes? everyone? going back how far?
 
I really should know more about this than I do.

"The House v. NCAA settlement requires all Division I schools — even those that choose not to opt into the student-athlete compensation portion of the agreement — to pay into the $2.8 billion settlement over the next 10 years to compensate current and former college athletes for the NCAA's use of their name, image and likeness (NIL)."

former athletes? everyone? going back how far?
As I understand the former only goes back 6 years, likely a statute of limitations issue, The revenue sharing is different matter, schools paying current athletes and still different from collectives,
 
Yes, it goes back to 2016, and almost all of the money will be going to P5 football and basketball. Other athletes might be able to get a few bucks for a Big Mac and some fries.

And the smaller conferences are on the hook for a huge chunk of the settlement cost even though their former athletes will see almost none of the payments. The NCAA will withhold several million dollars a year from the A-10 alone in order to pay toward the settlement.
 
This settlement is total BS. I have read that the P4 teams - who spend almost all the money on NIL - will only be responsible for 40% of the settlement costs. The A-10 and other mid- and low-major schools will be paying for the other 60% even though their NIL spending pales in comparison to the Big 18, SEC, etc.

I will never willingly donate a dime to any NIL fund. OSU is slapping a $3 NIL surcharge on all tickets so I will be forced to spend some that way if I plan to continue attending FB, BB and baseball games.
 
Indeed, the NCAA is paying ~$1.1 billion out of its own coffers, and the remaining ~$1.6 billion is coming 40% from the big guys who were the actual defendants in the lawsuits and 60% from the little guys like who us who weren't even part of it.
 
Indeed, the NCAA is paying ~$1.1 billion out of its own coffers, and the remaining ~$1.6 billion is coming 40% from the big guys who were the actual defendants in the lawsuits and 60% from the little guys like who us who weren't even part of it.
I read an article about this and IIRC, it estimated each FCS school would have to pay about $240,000 per year of the settlement (10 yrs?) to their former athletes. Concept was the money would come from such schools share of NCAA tournament payout. I don't think the numbers work.

Have been told it only applied to former athletes that opted into settlement of class action suit. Assume all others would still be able to sue their respective school.
 
The money we pay (or is withheld from our conference distributions by the NCAA) goes into the general settlement funds. It’s not specifically for our own former athletes. And almost all of it will go to former P4 athletes.
 
If other P5 schools are following Georgia’s model of allocating the funds, then UR has an especially golden opportunity with women’s basketball. I hope women’s basketball gets at the very least $500K and ideally $750K+. This really is a huge pivot point about the direction the WBB can take and for $500K - 1 mill isn’t that much in the grand scheme of things for a wealthy school like UR to give, and it’ll put us on par with P5 teams. We already have an elite coach. If we can now give Roussell the same resources P5’s are going to give to their WBB, then the ceiling for this program can be very high in my opinion.
 
This settlement is total BS. I have read that the P4 teams - who spend almost all the money on NIL - will only be responsible for 40% of the settlement costs. The A-10 and other mid- and low-major schools will be paying for the other 60% even though their NIL spending pales in comparison to the Big 18, SEC, etc.

I will never willingly donate a dime to any NIL fund. OSU is slapping a $3 NIL surcharge on all tickets so I will be forced to spend some that way if I plan to continue attending FB, BB and baseball games.
Yep the rich getting richer.

Non-P4 get to pay more of the settlement money, watch many of their best players leave for more NIL available at P4 schools, and get slowly squeezed out of the NCAA tournament. What a deal!
 
But then they need to be coached. Hmmm…is that a problem?
Yes that is the issue. We can get all excited about our portal pickups and HS recruiting classes, but we have a stale coach with stale ideas and not much ability to adapt or change. I'll admit, based on how we did previous season (conference regular season), thought we may be ok and Moon had reinvented a little bit with more focus on defense, toughness, rebounding. But his messaging and lack of defense from day one in preseason and scrimmage had me very very worried. And that played out. So as much as last season gave me some hope moon was adjusting, this season brought out all the worst. Lack of evaluation, poor roster management, terrible end game strategy, no adaptation to players actual skills, etc. And next year while every other team strives to be as experienced as possible, we will seemingly be as young as possible.
 
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Yes that is the issue. We can get all excited about our portal pickups and HS recruiting classes, but we have a stale coach with stale ideas and not much ability to adapt or change. I'll admit, based on how we did previous season (conference regular season), thought we may be ok and Moon had reinvented a little bit with more focus on defense, toughness, rebounding. But his messaging and lack of defense from day one in preseason and scrimmage had me very very worried. And that played out. So as much as last season gave me some hope moon was adjusting, this season brought out all the worst. Lack of evaluation, poor roster management, terrible end game strategy, no adaptation to players actual skills, etc. And next year while every other team strives to be as experienced as possible, we will seemingly be as young as possible.
Spend a bunch to keep Walz.
 
Anyone know now that schools can directly pay players, can donations that go to the school for this specific purpose be tax deductible? If so, that is probably going to help with getting more donations more than if it went to the NIL collective.
 
I was under the assumption that we were currently in the $1M range of NIL. Tripling it sounds great. But will it change our level of recruiting? We're still going to be way short of the power conferences. And it sounds like the rest of the A10 is moving right with us.

So I'm thinking while we'll spend a ton more, we'll still be fishing in the same pond.
 
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Now that we can pay players and have money....can we just find some of the smartest 4* players out there on the market and pay them more money than other schools? Or are we going to make more excuses as to why we cant get quality players into the program, when literally the main recruiting tool these days is something we have plenty of? ($$$)

Imagine had we ponied up the money to pay Tyler Burton last year to keep him on campus...that 500K woulda been a drop in the bucket had the Spiders made the tourney last year and we probably would of made it if we had him.
 
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I was under the assumption that we were currently in the $1M range of NIL. Tripling it sounds great. But will it change our level of recruiting? We're still going to be way short of the power conferences. And it sounds like the rest of the A10 is moving right with us.

So I'm thinking while we'll spend a ton more, we'll still be fishing in the same pond.

we still have 4 mil extra to spend from Trap's Richmond Spiders FCS football budget that we're not using!
 
I was under the assumption that we were currently in the $1M range of NIL. Tripling it sounds great. But will it change our level of recruiting? We're still going to be way short of the power conferences. And it sounds like the rest of the A10 is moving right with us.

So I'm thinking while we'll spend a ton more, we'll still be fishing in the same pond.
Based on Georgia’s breakdown of how they will allocate the money, A10 will be spending roughly the same for MBB (and maybe WBB too which I hope UR does). So we could potentially offer just as an attractive offer as some P5s. The other thing to consider is how we allocate the money within the team. Are we going to give most of it to players on the roster? Will it be equal across the board or based on performance? Whatever is left over too, we also have to see how to spend it on recruits. Do we spend less overall per recruit but bring in 4-5 players or do we spend a lot more on 2-3 players who we know will be very good. Then of course is other factors in recruiting like admissions, pedigree, etc. but purely from a financial perspective, this could put us closer to a level playing field with P5 for recruits than ever before.
 
Mooney is on record saying he wants to pay more to the players who stay longer. So basically we're screwed. Some other school will be offering a lot on the front end, and our offer will be "Come to UR now and we'll pay you a good amount in 2-3 years."

Brilliant.
 
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I have little confidence that UR will pay enough to keep up with the top of our league. We will pay, but will be somewhere in the middle when it comes to amount. We will be the small market MLB team, like the Minnesota Twins, - will be around .500 most seasons, then have a year or two where we break through, and then fall back to earth.

Not sure how everyone else feels, but I don't love that we are not paying the other sports right away. Maybe there is room to pay them in future years, but again - that itself sends a message of UR's overall committment to athletics. I don't believe VCU and Mason - both who have made public statements about paying athletes said they would only pay hoops. They may have said more money will be directed to the hoops teams, but I don't believe they said other sports will not get paid right away. On some level - that is a red flag.
 
Not sure how everyone else feels, but I don't love that we are not paying the other sports right away. Maybe there is room to pay them in future years, but again - that itself sends a message of UR's overall committment to athletics. I don't believe VCU and Mason - both who have made public statements about paying athletes said they would only pay hoops. They may have said more money will be directed to the hoops teams, but I don't believe they said other sports will not get paid right away. On some level - that is a red flag.
In an ideal world I wish we spent more on all sports too, but don’t think us not doing it this year or subsequent years is a red flag. Everyone knows the hierarchy of what people care about and thus where the investments will be in college athletics. FBS football > basketball >>> everything else. Every school is doing this across the board. Not just UR.
 
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Mooney is on record saying he wants to pay more to the players who stay longer. So basically we're screwed. Some other school will be offering a lot on the front end, and our offer will be "Come to UR now and we'll pay you a good amount in 2-3 years."

Brilliant.
I hope he changes his mind or at least acts differently behind the scenes. This isn’t youth league sports where everyone should get paid more just because they’re here longer. Might as well give them capri suns and orange slices after the games too. Some guy riding the bench all 4 years should absolutely not be getting more than a high impact recruit or even player on the team already who has more impact. If players have a problem with it, they can work harder and get better to play more minutes, and have more of an impact. This would increase their NIL value. That’s how the real world works.

Us having the NIL money is only half the battle. The other half is not being dumb in how we spend it.
 
Mooney is on record saying he wants to pay more to the players who stay longer. So basically we're screwed. Some other school will be offering a lot on the front end, and our offer will be "Come to UR now and we'll pay you a good amount in 2-3 years."

Brilliant.

Not to mention if we are "spending roughly the same amount as P5 team X" if the bottom line on both offers are similar most would just choose the bigger name school anyway right 🤷‍♂️
 
Not to mention if we are "spending roughly the same amount as P5 team X" if the bottom line on both offers are similar most would just choose the bigger name school anyway right 🤷‍♂️
yes, if the offer's the same, then we're back to pre-NIL when all the offers were the same(just a scholarship). you typically chose the highest level, and within that the highest program. and I doubt we'll be outspending a P5.
 
Not sure how everyone else feels, but I don't love that we are not paying the other sports right away. Maybe there is room to pay them in future years, but again - that itself sends a message of UR's overall committment to athletics. I don't believe VCU and Mason - both who have made public statements about paying athletes said they would only pay hoops. They may have said more money will be directed to the hoops teams, but I don't believe they said other sports will not get paid right away. On some level - that is a red flag.
Which non-rev sport do you think deserves more than a scholarship? lol
 
We should do whatever is necessary to prioritize basketball and men's lacrosse with this. I doubt many A10 schools are going to break the bank to pay baseball, field hockey and track athletes, etc. We'll be fine there not paying.

The other three teams offer us our best chance to gain big time exposure for the school (basketball) and win a national championship (men's lacrosse). Use this to our advantage in both goals.
 
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