LSU football pays every other sports besides men's basketball and baseball which both profit around $1 mil. Around $55,000,000 leftover after football expenses. Every dime of that is spent on 30 other sports, like women's basketball that operated at a negative $8,600,000 net income last year. LINK

If $20.5 mil is now going to be taken from that $55,000,000, where will more money come from? I don't think these lawmakers or judge at all thought about this. I don't think they thought at all about how women's basketball or other sports in the future will sue because they think it's unfair that football is getting paid, but they aren't despite them bringing in negative profit. We have already seen this with USWNST and Rapinoe. Are they this dense and short sighted to not be able to see this? LSU has prided itself on not using any academic money to fund athletics, with sports even donating at times to academics.

Where will this $20.5 mil come from? I think students/parents would refuse to pay it if they figured out their tuition pays football players, and if the students/parents are successful, it means the cancellation of dozens of other net income losing sports, or at least vast reduction in away games, travel, and expenses for say Tennis or Golf. Because there will only be $33 million leftover. At 25,000 to 30,000 undergrads, that will be ~$1,000 a student that would have to pay athletics if it doesn't come from the state, but tuition. I don't see parents or students who take out loans being okay with a $1,000 bill to athletics, so football players (~100) can split $20.5 mil to come at around $205,000 per player. Don't see parents or kids on student loans being okay paying $1,000 to football player salaries, so they can take home on average $205,000 each player. That wouldn't fly.

Whoever decided this didn't think anything at all through and is likely SJW, but don't realize they hurt their own cause from being so short sighted that it will actually cancel all the Title XI sports if funds source solely from athletics. They didn't think this through, and it needs significant rule changing or straight cancellation.

Will NIL pay for it instead? Who gets paid what since it is coming from a school? Will the 5 star gets 50x the amount as 3 stars like how NIL is now? How many 3 stars are going to sue since they are getting paid from a public institution and think all players deserve the same? If they are employees, can they be fired for poor performance like every single other employee in this employment at will country faces? Just leave it at NIL. They are asking for the beginning of straight chaos in college sports, infinite moreso than NIL.

TLDR: I'm one that doesn't care if players get paid from NIL, however, this opens a lot of future court cases (whether other sports not getting paid, 3 stars not happy getting paid differently than 5 stars from a public institution, reduction in athletic program count due to lack of funds from football roster payment, tuition payers saying they won't pay for football players to bring home $205k each) that I don't think they see now. It's a dumb idea.

When there are hundreds of DI schools, and hundreds of athletes at each school, and this plays out over multiple years. There will be suing by many at some point. I can absolutely guarantee you. Any time anyone is getting a lot less money from a public institution than another, or a sport that loses money gets cancelled, there will be suing.

This post was edited on 6/8/25 at 1:27 am