Utah AD Mark Harlan held a town hall event Saturday. Here’s what he had to say about revenue sharing, NIL and more

On July 1, college sports changed forever.

As part of the House v. NCAA settlement, direct payments from schools to student-athletes started going out on that date, with Utah men’s basketball player Keanu Dawes receiving the first-ever revenue sharing payment from the University of Utah.

Utah, and other schools across the country, can now pay players up to a combined $20.5 million per year — and Ute athletic director Mark Harlan says the athletic department is all-in on providing that.

Harlan declined to get into specifics about how the $20.5 million is split up among Utah’s sports during an event Saturday on campus, but said Utah was not too far off of how the backpay in the settlement is split up among sports, with 75% going to football and 15% going to men’s basketball.

“I will just say we have some teams, female teams that are receiving rev share and additional scholarships. We have some men’s teams that are, we have some men’s teams that are not, and we have some women’s teams that are not,” Harlan said.

“The lawsuit does go back to those that were driving revenue in the industry, and quite candidly, there’s only two sports that drive revenue in our industry, and that is men’s basketball and football.”

Harlan said last year’s football team had around an $8 million roster, and with revenue sharing kicking in this year, that figure has “significantly increased.” Additionally, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, gymnastics and more — all the sports that are receiving revenue sharing dollars from the university — will have more money this year.

Harlan said the athletic department has been fortunate to build reserves and have a rainy day fund, but he is currently looking at every way to generate revenue and cut costs.

“We just take all our revenue sources and we just divide it up differently. That’s really what we’re doing. Patrick Nolan, who we brought in to be our new (chief revenue officer), along with our corporate sales group, JMI (Utah’s media rights holder), everybody, has just got to crank it up and that’s what we’re doing,” Harlan said.

“And also looking at where we’re spending. Do we still need to do certain things? We’re looking at everything. To me, it’s a combination of all those things is what we’re trying to accomplish as we move forward.”

When Harlan says he’s looking at everything, he means it. The athletic department currently pays around $20 million to the University of Utah, which includes money for scholarships, housing, renting Rice-Eccles Stadium and more.

Harlan mentioned his good relationship with school president Taylor Randall, who has been a supporter of athletics at the university, as a benefit during the revenue sharing era.

“We’re working with the university to say, ‘What things can we look at?’ We rent the stadium, for example. We had to rent the (press box) room tonight. It’s just the system. I’m not complaining. Is that really the smartest path going forward?” Harlan said.

Part of the increased athletic revenue comes from increasing ticket prices, like Utah did this season with football season tickets, but Harlan said he’s sensitive to raising prices too much.

“There’s a number that we can hit out there in ticket sales … that we will see people stop renewing. We’re very, very well aware of that, so we have to be very cautious as we proceed with that,” Harlan said.

While Utah is prepared for the additional $20.5 million expense, it means that the goal of being profitable every year will have to shift. The athletic department has reserves that it will be able to work through, which will help, but the new goal for the next little bit will be to break even.

“I mentioned my relationship with the president and also the (board of) trustees to not panic when we talk about deficit spending. There’s not a school in America, I don’t care if you’re (in) the Big Ten, that’s not going into some deficit spending or relooking at athletics as just a revenue maker,” Harlan said.

One positive of the settlement for student-athletes at Utah is the addition of 24 new scholarships this year now that scholarship limits have been abolished as part of the settlement and instead replaced with a roster limit.

“Now every one of our teams has a roster limit and they can give a full scholarship or up to whatever amount of scholarships up to those roster limits,” said Jason Greco, Utah’s executive senior associate athletics director for governance and brand strategy and compliance department manager.

For example, the baseball team could previously only award 11.7 scholarships for a team of 40. Now, a scholarship could be given to every player.

“So that at the end of the day has been a huge plus to see a lot of our stars now being able to have, or a lot of those individuals who were taking out loans, now being able to have a full scholarship,” Greco said.

The settlement requires the NCAA to pay out $2.7 billion in back pay to athletes from 2016-24. That money comes from withholding some NCAA tournament distribution from its members and will cost Utah about $850,000 per year over the next 10 years, Harlan said.

Additionally, all name, image and likeness deals now need to be sent through NIL Go, a Deloitte clearinghouse that will approve or deny NIL deals based on true market value.

Some schools frontloaded NIL deals before NIL Go went into effect in July 1, so there will be a power imbalance in the 2025-26 season, but going forward, all of the changes should, in theory, level the playing field.

The College Sports Commission, headed up by former Major League Baseball executive Bryan Seeley, will be monitoring the revenue-sharing cap and making sure schools stay within it. The CSC will have the power to punish schools, separate from the NCAA.

“Because if you go over that cap, which Jason will explain, you’re in trouble. You’re in trouble, not only from the NCAA, you’re in trouble from other entities that have now been created around this, and remember, this is a federal lawsuit, so you don’t want to be the AD or the president if you’re spending $30 million going forward,” Harlan said.

Harlan believes this will result in a more fair system across the Power Four. The hope is, in a year, there won’t be teams with $40 million rosters in college football.

“A year from now, if we are behaving and if have good compliance, we’ll be pretty much, from a monetary standpoint, on the same level,” Harlan said.

Moving forward, this big question is this — will the current system be enough, or will federal legislation need to be enacted?

Time will tell, but on July 1, the college sports world took a big first step to try and get a handle on the unwieldy beast collegiate athletics has turned into.