The first order of business in the ӣƵ University athletics department on Monday, the first business day of the new world of college sports, was a meeting of the senior staff. On Friday evening, the final settlement in the House vs. NCAA case, which will redefine how college athletics work, was announced.
The outlines of the decisions had been known and anticipated for some time, but at last, it was a done deal.
“Everybody was like, ‘Finally,’” SLU athletics director Chris May said shortly after leaving the meeting. “OK, this thing’s done. Time to move forward.”
The future is now for college sports, or at least it will be on July 1, when the new rules go into effect and schools can pay players out of the department’s revenue. And while everyone is still figuring out how it will all play out, May looks at the situation with optimism for his department.
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“I think it’s an opportunity,” May said. “I think it’s because of how we’re positioned, how the university is positioned. We’ve been planning, we’ve been operating for the last six to nine months in the basketball space to be prepared. The teams we have here, we recruited them in this space. I think in the next two to three years, it’ll be really interesting to see how the rest of it evolves.
“It allows us to compete at the highest levels, especially when you add on the layers of recruiting and now revenue sharing. Support of student-athletes is a critical part of it, and we’re in that space in an aggressive way. We have great coaches. We’ve got off-the-charts facilities. We’ve got all these other pieces in place, and with that, we can present a comprehensive space for a student-athlete to come have an unbelievable experience, compete for championships, make runs in NCAA tournaments and prepare themselves for the next step in their basketball careers and in life.”
And in July, SLU will begin paying those players. For the past two years, players have been paid through the Billiken Victory Fund, which was a clearinghouse for name, image and likeness money. Now, the Victory Fund will be phased out in 2025 and the checks to athletes — for now, the men’s basketball team and most of the women’s team — will come from the university.
“We signed license agreements with student-athletes for us to use their name, image and likeness, and then they’re compensated for it,” May said. “Now it’s a much cleaner process. But there’s significant focus and attention on the revenue side. We’ve got to grow revenues to make it all work. So revenues, through season tickets, through donations, through sponsorships, through special events we’re doing, all focus on: How do you drive revenue?”
That’s the biggest challenge. A bad basketball season would put a dent in the pot of revenue to be shared. It puts pressure on everything: putting together a good team, putting together a good schedule, convincing boosters to donate.
“Long term, we’ll see,” May said. “I feel great about where we are with the men’s basketball team right now. It’s going to evolve into other sports, and today in the basketball space, I feel really good about where we are, especially compared to our peers. The proof’s in the pudding. Sit down after the season, and then I’ll be able to answer that better. But today, I feel really good about where we are.
“It gives us a really exciting opportunity to go for it in a space that we weren’t before, that we couldn’t get to before. It’s an exciting moment, and we’re all rolling our sleeves up, or we have for quite a while here now, and I think Josh Schertz did a really fantastic job in the portal and pulling the team together, a lot of great pieces to the puzzle. And so now we’re helping him roll sleeves up on how we execute on it.”
The hope for the program is that it can be one that consistently goes to the NCAA Tournament — and advances, something that SLU has done only in brief spurts while Charlie Spoonhour and Rick Majerus were coaches. In the NCAA Tournament’s current format, the Billikens have never gotten past the first weekend. That’s something they want to see change.
The House settlement may be a boon for programs like SLU’s that don’t have Division I football. While the revenue that comes in from football is huge, football teams will also get the large percentage of that number. At SLU, the biggest percentage by far of revenue will go to basketball.
Next in line for paying players would be the men’s and women’s soccer teams.
“It’ll grow into other sports,” May said. “We have community interested in supporting the soccer teams. So there’s a little bit in the soccer space, but it’s really today in the basketball space for us and for many programs like ours, basketball-centric programs.”
From good luck charm to becoming the mascot for ӣƵ University, this is the history of the Billiken.
