University of Texas student-athletes will begin receiving financial support from the school’s athletic department after a Supreme Court ruling in the Alston v. NCAA case, the school reported November 24.
Beginning with the 2022 spring semester, which starts in January, all student-athletes will receive the legally established maximum of $5,980 per year.
In the Alston v. NCAA legal case, the Supreme Court granted universities the opportunity to provide student-athletes with additional education-related benefits and direct financial support in the form of academic achievement awards.
“We’re excited to be able to provide our student-athletes with additional support, but as importantly, to continue to initiate programs that focus on their academic commitment and success,” said University of Texas Vice President and Athletics Director Chris Del Conte.
“Our student‐athletes have a wonderful opportunity to engage in a world‐class academic experience while pursuing athletic excellence at the highest level.”
All eligible Texas Longhorn athletes will receive $2,990 in the upcoming spring semester, with the second payment to be made in the 2022 fall semester. This money is payable on top of the assistance student-athletes already receive from athletic scholarships.
“This additional academic benefit will be another way to bring out the very best in our student-athletes,” Del Conte added. “I can’t thank President Jay Hartzell and our campus leadership enough for helping us make this happen.”
What determines whether an athlete is eligible to receive the payment depends on the criteria put in place by the school. In Texas’ case, the UT Athletics release indicates that it will only be for those that are already on scholarship: “Texas Athletics has worked with campus leaders to develop a plan and establish criteria to provide education-related benefits and academic achievement awards to scholarship student-athletes through the Academic Enhancement Benefits program.”
However, Sports Illustrated reports that Ole Miss athletes—who were the first to receive this payment—simply needed to meet academic requirements in the previous semester in order to be eligible, specifically noting that walk-ons were included.
This announcement has big-time implications in the grand scheme of collegiate athletics.
On the plus side, it’s a huge positive for the athletes, who now have some additional income to go along with scholarships.
From a school’s perspective, it’s great if you’re a major institution like Texas, which can afford to offer student-athletes this payment.
For other schools, they may try and keep up by offering the same, which could dig them into a financial hole. Over the last year we’ve seen how fragile athletics departments are after numerous program cuts due to financial issues caused by the pandemic.
This will also serve as a major recruiting tactic. Any school in the Power Five conferences that doesn’t offer this added incentive will likely fall behind in that respect.
The Big 12, SEC, ACC and Pac-12 have all announced that they will allow their schools to determine how much of this new benefit they would pay, so others could offer athletes a payment that’s not necessarily the $5,980 maximum.
Ole Miss was the first school to issue the $2,990 payments for the spring semester, SI reported on Nov. 20.
“Everybody is going to do this, for sure everybody in the SEC,” Ole Miss athletic director Keith Carter told SI. “We thought, ‘Let’s get ahead of this.'”
The Rebels will spend a reported $2.48 million each year on roughly 415 athletes, Carter said. Texas, which generated a reported $22.1 million in profit during the 2019-20 fiscal year, has just over 500 athletes, according to Hookem.com.
$6,000 in alcohol for the weekends for everyone
Per USA Today, in 2020 the SEC gave $45.3million to each school. In 2019 the B1G gave $55.7 million. I was hearing in the conference alignment talk over the summer that the SEC was anticipating higher athlete payments and that’s why they wanted to consolidate. $3 million more help for student athletes. That would buy an assistant for men’s basketball and football and maybe 4-5 non revenue sport assistant coaches. Toss the kids a bone.
I’m curious, what about non Power-5 D1? What about athletes at schools in the Ivy League and Patriot League? Do they get any compensation?
Yes what the AAC also?
They should make their football players pay the fans.
this what happens when you know the free ride going to end but close your eyes, non-profit sports has had years to think things thru but have done nothing, USOC reaping the benefits
Fantastic change for the better. NON-REVENUE sports need to get real 1.) Reduce squad sizes DRASTICALLY to no more than 16 women and 12 men SOME TEAMS HAVE OVER 40 WOMEN!!! 2.) Reduce travel 3.) No off campus recruiting 4.) Smaller coaching staffs. 5.) All camp revenues become the property the Athletic Department 6.) Eliminate diving – FOR STARTERS!. Also collegiate supported swimming should only be for women if needed to meet TITLE IX thresholds. Protect at all costs FOOTBALL, BASKETBALL, HOCKEY, BASEBALL, SOFTBALL and WOMENS SOCCER.
Depending on how you look at the expenses and revenues, teams with large rosters could almost be self-sustaining if Academic scholarships are ignored.
It all depends on which expenses are included, ex. the cost of the pool exists regardless of a team existing or not, so is this cost included or not?
There’s a whole lot of funny math that can be used to make swimming programs seem profitable, and yet, colleges continue to cut them.
If the “pool exists anyway,” then the student-body at large is still subsidizing that cost, because their fees probably paid to build and/or maintain it. There’s also the opportunity cost of not being able to rent that time out to outside groups, or that restricts its usage from the student body that paid for it. This is why many pools are owned by the ‘rec sports’ department, not the athletics department, and athletics has to pay a rental fee.
The calculations are also different for small NAIA schools that are trying to grow their student bodies… Read more »
Cant wait for more men’s teams to be cut! And for roster size to shrink drastically! This is going to have horrible implications on swimming in coming years
Swimming will leave power 5 D1 and will become a small school sport with this change. It’ll happen slowly but it’ll happen.