While waiting for the House v. NCAA settlement to conclude, I, like many other college football fans, had to finally accept that the amateurism model, in place for over a century, has come to an end.

The settlement ruling, which has been five years in the making, results from the 2020 class-action antitrust lawsuit filed by Arizona State swimmer Grant House and Texas Christian University women’s basketball player Sedona Prince, along with other student-athletes.

I found it particularly interesting that the lawsuit was led by House and Prince, who do not participate in the top revenue-producing sports.As a swimmer, House participates in an Olympic sport, and swimming, along with sports like tennis and golf, will not benefit as much from the $20.5 million that schools will be allowed to share with athletes.

Women’s Division I basketball does generate a respectable profit, with NCAA figures for the 2019 season calculated at $600 million, and the NCAA will begin paying women’s teams “performance units” for their participation in the tourney for the upcoming season, with $15 million being awarded. The units will increase to $20 million for the 2026-27 season, then jump to $25 million the following year. Schools will receive payments on a continuous three-year basis in 2026. Men’s basketball teams have profited from performance units since 1991, and the men’s tournament brought in over $900 million for the 2024-25 season. Schools will continue to rake in millions of dollars from March Madness and the expanded College Football Playoff, but with the $20.5 million cap that will be split among student-athletes, the lion’s share of these profits will go to the major money-making sports of football and men’s basketball in the Power Four conferences, although female basketball stars like the University of Southern California’s JuJu Watkins and Louisiana State University’s Flau’jae Johnson should also see their earnings rise. Stars in these sports will continue to prosper financially from lucrative name, image and likeness deals made possible by the 2021 NCAA v. Alston ruling.

Athletes who played before the Alston decision will be compensated back to 2016, as U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken approved a whopping $2.8 billion — which will be disbursed within 10 years — to reimburse those who competed before the current NIL era. As a Buckeye fan and alumna, I was very sorry that the stars of Ohio State’s 2014 national championship football team will not be able to cash in on their past laurels. I can only imagine the millions Cardale Jones, our third-string quarterback who led us to the title, would have made from his storybook run. Wideout Braxton Miller would have sold thousands of T-shirts with his signature spin move from his breathtaking performance against Virginia Tech that season. I’m sure many college athletes who won championships before 2016 are pondering what could have been if they had been allowed to accept endorsements. The House ruling will permit colleges and universities to pay student-athletes starting July 1, and as this next phase begins, the newly formed College Sports Commission will oversee NIL transactions and enforce new rules for the Power Four conferences. One significant benefit of the commission’s oversight is that it will be able to determine if athletes are seeking much more from university collectives than what their market value says they are worth, and many football coaches are hoping for a change to the transfer portal, which is currently open twice a year.

Knowing that the House settlement was inevitable, I have mixed feelings about this new era of college sports that continues to evolve. While I believe athletes should be paid fairly, direct payments from schools and NIL will take some focus away from academics and personal development. I continue to assert that the culture in athletic programs will now be more important than ever, and smaller schools probably have an advantage here in that NIL deals and revenue sharing will not be massive for their student-athletes.