What does the NCAA’s settlement agreement mean for Division-I college golf?
In short: More potential scholarships but fewer available roster spots.
The NCAA along with the power conferences and lawyers representing former and current D-I athletes from three different lawsuits filed a 100-page settlement agreement on Friday that will bring monumental changes to college athletics – and not just football and basketball. The agreement, which still needs to be finalized by judicial approval in the U.S. District Court of Northern California, would allow schools to directly compensate their athletes (up to 22% of average revenue from media rights, ticket sales and sponsorships; or between $20-22 million initially) but also force schools to pay former athletes from all sports (dating to 2016) a collective $2.78 billion for past damages over a 10-year period.
The new payments would coexist with NIL, which would continue via third-party deals, but in this new era of an effective salary cap, booster-funded collectives would only be able to pay players if a neutral arbiter deems the deal if for a “valid business purpose.”
The settlement isn’t clear on how this agreement will satisfy Title IX requirements.
Scholarship limitations also would go away in all sports, though each sport would now be subject to roster caps. For men’s and women’s golf, that roster cap will be nine players (to compare, football gets 105, up from 85), which means schools can fund up to nine full scholarships but cannot have more than nine athletes in any given season. Previously, teams had no roster limit and scholarship maximums of four and a half for men and six for women.
A final approval of this agreement isn’t expected until next year with changes being implemented for the 2025-26 season, at the earliest.
Speaking to a few golf coaches at power-conference programs, it’s believed that not every school would utilize that scholarship allotment. Also, with many D-I programs rostering more than nine players, the amount of total D-I playing opportunities will likely decrease. Oregon State men’s golf coach Jon Reehorn, who is on the NCAA D-I Golf Committee, did some rough math on X and came up with 65 spots on current ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC men’s golf rosters that would go away under the new parameters.
And then there’s the big elephant in the room: With this new revenue-sharing agreement, will there be cuts? It’s very possible – probably even a certainty – though with golf carrying relatively small rosters, especially now, it likely wouldn’t be first on many chopping blocks.