Estimated read time: 5-6 minutes
- Utah's athletic director Mark Harlan outlines strategy for $20.5M athlete revenue share.
- The funds will primarily support football and men's basketball, aligning with revenue generation.
- Harlan emphasizes accountability and aims for financial stability amid transformative collegiate sports changes.
SALT LAKE CITY — As collegiate sports enters "the most transformative change" it has seen in several decades, Utah athletic director Mark Harlan believes his program, and the university in general, has "got a chance to climb" and be successful in the new era.
The begin of the era remains chaotic at the onset, but Harlan believes the changes could provide collegiate sports a more stable landing spot — even if it may still be a few years away.
In a town hall meeting ahead of the university's Fan Fest on Saturday, Harlan and Jason Greco, executive senior associate athletics director for governance and brand strategy, provided context and answers about how the university will handle its share of the House Settlement and its ensuing changes, which went into effect on July 1.
"It's a big change for us, and we have to behave," Harlan said. "We have to hold each other accountable."
At the forefront of the discussion Saturday was that of the House Settlement's $20.5 million figure that Utah and other universities can allocate as payments toward student-athletes from athletic department funds. Like most schools around the country, it's a new expense that exceeds the operating expenses of the athletic department.
For example, Utah reported a $17 million deficit for the 2024 fiscal year — mostly due to an issue while a member of the Pac-12 and then Big 12 transition costs — but had a $1.8 million profit in the 2023 fiscal year and a $3.8 million profit in the 2022 fiscal year.
Even then, that's a significant increase to the athletic department's budget, but Harlan said "break even is the goal" with the change.
"We've been building reserves and we're proud of that," Harlan said. "So we've got some time to work through that. But I would say any athletic director looking at his or her program right now is thinking it's gonna take me a little bit to be back at the profitable side ... but I'm really excited about what we're doing to get there pretty quickly."
Harlan said the university is looking at every means possible to help bring in more money — "money is coming from multiple sources" — and the department has a staff whose whole purpose is to seek out new opportunities, though "rainy day funds" will help. On top of that, university president Taylor Randall "loves this stuff," Harlan said.
"He looks at this as an opportunity, because he's thinking, all right, well, we can package some debt here. We've got debts in another part of the university," Harlan said. "We can figure some of this stuff out. We're also looking at our costs. Any good CEO, if he's worth his or her worth is looking at costs. What's things we can do differently? We've certainly done some measures that break down our costs."
Harlan declined to get into the specifics on how the university plans to divvy up the $20.5 million for each sport, calling the information somewhat "proprietary" for the moment, though he added the distribution will fall in line with the revenue each program brings in to the university.
The money-making sports — or the programs that consistently turn a profit for the university — are football and men's basketball. And as such, the two take the lion's share of the money for its respective athletes.
As part of the House Settlement terms for each school, the court used a model for back payments based on historical revenue that were set at 75% for football, 15% men's basketball, 5% women's basketball and 5% for the remaining sports. As such, Harlan said Utah will be somewhere near that percentage for payments to its athletes.
That would be approximately $15.4 million for football, $3.1 million for men's basketball, and just over $1 million for women's basketball and another $1 million for the remaining sports. Those figures, however, are just an estimation.
"We're still making adjustments to it, slight adjustments to it anyway, so it's somewhat of a moving target," Harlan said. "Everyone's trying to settle in. Everyone's asking what everyone's doing. I'm not trying to hide anything. I just think from a competitive point of view, we're in a very competitive world in recruiting and everything else."
Harlan said the football team last season was operating with about $8 million, but "we have significantly increased that for this year's team."
"There's not a team that doesn't have more this year — receiving. So that goes on line down with basketball, certainly gymnastics and women's basketball and others," Harlan added. "So as we settle into this new model, I think that's where you're going to see a more competitive cap, obviously, because we've got to get through a few of these years to settle in on this, but we've already seen some of that impact."
Athletes will still be able to capitalize on name, image and likeness opportunities outside of what the university can provide in a non-exclusive contract, but those deals will be more regulated by the College Sports Commission.
On top of that, the university has provided some athletes with multi-year contracts in an effort to compete in recruiting and limit movement in the transfer portal. Those deals, however, remain the exception to the standard one-year contracts now.
All of it, though, will be a factor in trying to create a net-positive for the athletes in recruiting.
"It's a really good time to be a student athlete, and that's a good thing; we want to embrace that," Harlan said. "So we're really excited about what they get to experience and how we're surrounding them to make this whole thing work."
