One Power Five athletic director recently winced after taking a glimpse at his balance sheet. His financial outlook is not much different than his peers’ with multiple high-speed bullet trains all coming into the station at the same time. The most unpredictable of all being expected revenue sharing with athletes through collective bargaining.
“It feels like my budget is about to look like a murder scene,” that AD said.
Those projections — typically called pro forma budgets — are based on “what if?” hypotheticals. Like any good business person, an AD attempts to determine what expenditures are ahead and how much revenue will be coming in. Right now, they are struggling to project either.
Put up the yellow crime scene tape and pull up a chair because “what if?” is getting complicated. The NCAA and the Power Five conferences find themselves as defendants in four high-profile antitrust lawsuits. Settlements in those cases have become the next hurdle toward whatever college sports will look like in the future.
NCAA president Charlie Baker is being urged by a sizable portion of the membership to settle the cases because the alternative is too chilling to consider.
“You may bankrupt some universities,” another Power Five AD said.
The biggest, most concerning obstacle is the House v. NCAA suit that goes to trial in 10 months. Given that timetable, this may be the last March Madness played under the old rules, if not the current membership.
The hope? Somehow, all the four cases are bundled and settled at once. For the moment, they pose the biggest immediate financial threat to the existing system. In antitrust cases, damages are trebled. That suggests the NCAA and Power Five probably cannot risk jury trials in any of the cases. In House alone, trebled damages would be a reported $4.2 billion, which could conceivably bankrupt the NCAA as well.
Even if settled, the cases may cost eight figures per…
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