Rick George says CU Buffs are prepared for revenue sharing after House v. NCAA settlement opens door

BOULDER — All Rick George could do was chuckle at the question.

“How much more complicated is your job today than when you started?” the Colorado athletic director, now over 10 years into his tenure, was asked Tuesday.

Well, the reason George was sitting in front of a few dozen media members was to discuss the preliminary approval of the settlement in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in the House v. NCAA antitrust case that has been dominating behind-the-scenes conversations across college athletics for months.

Among many things, Monday’s ruling opens the door for revenue sharing between universities and their student athletes starting as early as next summer.

“It’s a significant change in college athletics,” George said.

There are plenty of questions that don’t have answers, but there is finally a resolution as to what this new era will look like.

“Even though we don’t have all the answers to our questions, it does give us some guidance as to where this is going. In the meantime, it’s really important for us to focus (on) our NIL collective with the 5430 (Alliance) and the support they’re giving our student athletes.”

While George is certainly pleased with how much the Buffaloes have caught up in recent years in terms of name, image and likeness (NIL) with the work done by the 5430 Alliance, the university’s official NIL collective, that’s all going to change soon.

“We will bring everything in-house at some point,” George said. “The student athletes that can earn NIL will still have that ability to go above the cap, based on the settlement, to create business partnerships like Travis Hunter has with NerdWallet and Shedeur Sanders with Nike. I feel like we’re in a good spot today. We probably weren’t a couple years ago.”

Among the major concerns from the fallout of the settlement is, of course, money and how it affects the non-football sports across the country — although no one school is required to opt into revenue sharing and there will likely be plenty of schools outside the power conferences that will likely not engage in direct paying of players.

There will likely be some high-major programs that don’t go to the new scholarship limit simply because they can’t afford to pay for 20 additional scholarship football players and two more each in men’s and women’s basketball.

“We may not go to the limit in some sports, we may in other sports,” George said. “That’s something that we’re working through, but when the dust settles, it’ll be in compliance with Title IX.”

Even while the approval of the settlement has felt inevitable for months and universities across the country have had plenty of time to plan, there are going to be ripple effects. Facilities upgrades will be scrapped, people will be laid off, and maybe most dramatically, sports programs will be cut.

With historically great Olympic sports programs at CU like cross country and skiing, George is confident that won’t happen in Boulder.

“We wanted to provide the similar opportunities today that we have for all of our student athletes,” George said. “We also want to be as competitive as we are today. We don’t want to cut any sports and we want to provide similar benefits for our student athletes and what that will look like in a revenue share, those are some of the questions we don’t know yet. We’ll be ready to go based on the information we get.”

But all of that requires a successful football team, something George acknowledged as well. Whether college football eventually breaks off into one big “super league” will be determined closer to the end of this decade when the media rights deal with the Power 4 conferences come up for renewal.

“This is the next step in being ready for that next thing and whatever that next thing is,” George said. “College athletics is changing and we’re on top of it.”

Right now, the Buffs are in a good spot as Deion Sanders’ team is off to a 4-1 start and are one of the most-viewed teams in the country. If a potential “super league” were to begin tomorrow, CU would almost certainly be a part of it. But five years from now, who knows? George knows the biggest key to staying relevant.

“We hope that Coach Prime finishes his career here,” George said. “I think he can do significant things for us long-term with longevity. He and I are on the same page about where we want this program to go. It’s not a short-term fix. We want to set it up to be sustainable for the future.

“We’ve always said that we need football to elevate our (overall) program and we all know the importance of football in the Power 5. We need football to be successful.”