Newly minted BYU athletic director Brian Santiago believes that the House v. NCAA settlement will be a strategic advantage for his school.
That was one of several viewpoints that Santiago shared about the watershed moment during a nearly 20-minute interview on Tuesday’s episode of BYUtv’s “BYU Sports Nation” daily show.
Last Friday, Senior District Judge Claudia Wilken approved the House v. NCAA settlement, paving the way for a new era of college sports that includes schools being able to make direct payments to student-athletes.
The settlement goes into effect July 1. During the financial year 2025 — which runs July 2025 through June 2026 — schools that opt in will be able to pay up to an estimated $20.5 million dollars to student-athletes.
“This actually shifts the power of college athletics back to the universities, which for us at BYU, we think it’s a strategic advantage where it kind of evens the playing field back,” he told Sports Nation hosts Spencer Linton and Jarom Jordan in his first public statements since the settlement.
“It gives the universities the opportunity to invest in their student-athletes. And for us, it really feels like we can rise to the top doing it the right way, because we’re going to invest in the right student-athletes, we’re going to invest in the right things, and we’re going to tie all these remarkable kids to the mission of this university.”
Part of the settlement includes having Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) third-party deals that involve college athletes vetted through a clearinghouse, NIL Go. The clearinghouse will determine if they meet “fair market value,” with the ability to approve or reject each deal.
“The previous model of third parties — and as people have said, the wild, wild west — (was) unsustainable. The challenges of college athletics, I think it was sending the wrong message and creating a lot of very difficult situations for student-athletes across the country, for universities. People were operating in a space that was not governed," Santiago said.
“And this actually brings it back to where there are rules, there are regulations, the universities can focus in on really creating an even playing field so that all the universities are operating in a space where the universities now have the opportunity to control what’s happening.”
Even though money plays a major narrative in the settlement, Santiago, who took over for longtime BYU AD Tom Holmoe last month, shared why he believes it helps take the focus off the money and back on to the student-athlete and preparing them for life after college athletics.
“The thing that I love about this settlement is I really believe that this revenue share takes the focus away from money. I know people are like, ‘wait, explain that.’ It allows us to focus. It kind of brings a cap into play where ... we have to be competitive, but what we can really do is just start focusing on preparing these young men and women to go change the world,” Santiago said.
“That’s what gets me super excited about it is that it’s a revenue share model that we actually think works. We’re going to embrace it.”
Because it took some time for the settlement to be reached, Santiago said BYU is “ahead of the game” in preparing for a moment set to change the college athletic landscape.
School personnel have had numerous discussions on how to handle the new responsibility — paying Cougar athletes — and its challenges — like how to fit those payments into the athletic budget.
How will BYU go about finding $20.5 million in its current budget to pay towards revenue sharing? That isn’t immediately clear, and Santiago didn’t go into any specific numbers.
He did discuss, though, in general how this money will be divvied out to the Cougars’ 19 different athletic programs.
“It’s actually a super important conversation, and it’s one thing that we hope the world will understand. It’s called revenue share for a reason, and football is the leader in the house. It’s the ship,” Santiago said. “It’s what we all link into, because the success of our football program leads everything. And so, the larger portion of revenue share is going to go to support our football program and support the student-athletes in football.”
There are estimates that 90% of that $20.5 million — if schools choose to pay out full amount — will go toward football and men’s basketball players.
“The next part of revenue share, as everybody knows, is men’s basketball. That’s super important. We’re going to invest resources and stay consistent in those areas with revenue share,” Santiago said. “What’s more meaningful to us, and we talked about it yesterday as we sat in a room together with our coaches, is that we are all invested in all of our sports.”
He emphasized, too, that BYU is focused on making sure revenue sharing benefits every program in the Cougar athletics sphere.
“We’re going to invest in all of our sports. We’re going to spread it out because we want all of our student-athletes to feel the impact of this and give them an opportunity to chase their dreams and do it at a place that they love, that aligns with where they want to be,” Santiago said.
One other aspect of the settlement that will impact BYU, albeit in a lesser way, is that the NCAA will pay out $2.7 billion in back pay to student-athletes from 2016-24. To account for back pay, the NCAA will withhold a portion of NCAA financial distribution to schools via conferences (from payments such as March Madness revenue).
“We’re part of it, but only to a point, because we were not a Power Five team going back. We joined later in the Big 12,” Santiago said. “So there’s a calculation for some of those student-athletes that fit into that category. There’s a calculation for those student-athletes that’s all handled through the NCAA. That’s the beauty of this of this settlement is the back pay is all done through the NCAA.”
Moving forward, Santiago is embracing those opportunities to work with student-athletes, his coaching staffs and other BYU athletic personnel in traversing the opportunities that revenue sharing allows.
“I’m really excited about it because I think it’s a strategic advantage for BYU. I think it’s going to allow us to to be in a space where doing things the BYU way, focusing on the mission, investing in these world-class student athletes that are coming to BYU for all the right reasons (is beneficial),” Santiago said. “It takes a shift away from the money back to where it should be, and I think it’s going to be a strategic advantage for BYU.”