How will Penn State football be impacted by revenue sharing?
Penn State and every major football program have some big changes on the horizon beginning next year. Last month, the NCAA and the five most powerful conferences – ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC – agreed to settlement terms in the House vs. NCAA case that’ll not only pay out 2.8 billion in damages but also open the door for revenue sharing in college athletics.
That’s expected to begin at the start of the 2025-26 academic year, giving schools about a year to work out how they’re going to embrace these changes and ultimately make them work to their benefit on the recruiting trail. For college football specifically, schools are expected to have a salary cap around $22 million each year.
That came as welcomed news to many Penn State fans who have been donating to the school’s ‘Happy Valley United’ collective in recent years to help the program succeed. However, in the weeks that have followed that announcement, it’s also become clear that collectives aren’t going away any time soon.
“Collectives are here to stay. I don’t think we’re moving on from collectives by any stretch of the imagination,” said Penn State General Manager of Personnel and Recruitment Andy Frank in a recent interview with Blue White Illustrated.
“Obviously, revenue sharing is going to come in-house, and I think there will be other aspects of compensation that’ll be somewhat in-house. But a differentiator for a lot of programs is going to be how much money can their collective generate. The programs that can generate more money with their collective, after the baseline that they’re going to have with revenue sharing, they’re going to be better positioned to attract higher level talent.”
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For a program like Penn State, which annually ranks among the top schools nationally in athletic revenue, they shouldn’t have any issues maximizing that salary cap. It’s unclear if every school will be able to do that, but in Frank’s eyes, he expects college football to look somewhat similar to what we see in Major League Baseball.
“When you look at professional sports, in a lot of sports, you have a true salary cap. In football, every team is spending essentially the same amount of money,” Frank said. “I think Major League Baseball is probably where you look at and see some teams spending a lot more than other teams. What you find in Major League Baseball is that just spending the most money doesn’t mean you’re gonna win a championship. But also, if you don’t spend in an area near the top of the tier of teams that are spending in that place, you’re pretty much excluding yourself from winning a championship.”
And that reason is why most schools, especially those in the Big Ten and SEC, are expected to maximize the salary cap. That could potentially bring its own set of challenges for a program like Penn State.
“I think the challenge will be, just because revenue sharing allows us to spend more money on our roster, it’s going to allow everybody else in the country to do the same. And so if you look at where we’re currently at in the NIL landscape of things, there are a lot of other programs that are below us and they’re gonna get in an increase as well.
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“So, what’s going to end up happening is you’re going to have scenarios where there are programs that you would think, ‘Hey, we should beat them on the recruiting trail,’ but now they have more money, just like we may have more money. Depending on how they allocate it, the player that we want may be the number one player on their board. So, they’ll have the option now to potentially spend accordingly.”
With that said, it’s no secret that Penn State can also still improve financially in the current collective model. While the playing field will never truly be equal, many coaches, including those at Penn State, are hopeful that the new model will give players and their families a reason to start choosing schools based on which one is truly the best fit for them.
If that ends up being the case more often than it is now, it should work to this staff’s advantage.
“I think we’ve always been a program that stressed that we want kids who are making decisions based on a wide spectrum of things,” Frank said. “Whether it’s a football decision, an academic decision or the family-like atmosphere. Now, obviously, finances are a big part of that as well.”
“I think in some cases, where a kid is really truly deciding on all those different things, as long as you’re kind of in that grouping of ‘Hey, this is roughly what I’m expected to make compensation-wise,’ as long as you can be in that ballpark, hopefully, it’ll allow these guys to decide on other factors. That’s ultimately what we all want. We want them to decide on the other things, but we want our guys to also be compensated as best as possible.”
The post How will Penn State football be impacted by revenue sharing? appeared first on On3.
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