The June 30 deadline for schools to opt in to the terms of the House v. NCAA settlement came and went with hardly a peep from many of the reported 18% of Division I schools that are opting out of revenue-sharing for the 2025-26 academic year.
To some, opting out might be interpreted as a white flag of surrender entering a new era of Division 1 athletics. Why advertise it in a line-by-line press release?
At Nebraska-Omaha, athletic director Adrian Dowell took a different approach, standing tall in opting out — for now — as part of a long-term plan that began over a year ago for a mid-major department on the rise.
“UNO, we’ve always taken pride in being independent,” Dowell told CBS Sports. “We’re not going to copy and paste and just do things because other schools are doing it. We’re not in this for PR wins. And, to be honest, if we weren’t all in on the future of this settlement and eventually opting in, we probably wouldn’t have taken the steps we’ve taken.”
The Mavericks are coming off their first-ever NCAA Tournament appearance in men’s basketball and have a strong nucleus of players returning. They also boast a nationally competitive men’s hockey program. But even with most of its Summit League peers opting in, Omaha is taking a meticulously planned, contrarian stance for year one of the House era.
“We weren’t going to win one more game by opting in for this upcoming year,” Dowell said.
As the Mavericks eye an eventual opt-in, they are moving forward with 2025-26 rosters built under the old structure that permitted players to sign third-party NIL agreements unscrutinized by the new College Sports Commission until July 1.
“There were no issues with NIL that limited us in what we wanted to do and what we needed to go get,” Omaha basketball coach Chris Crutchfield told CBS Sports. “Everything stayed status quo for us.”
Next year could look significantly different as the settlement’s…
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