Rick George steered Colorado athletics through the advent of the NIL and transfer portal era, hired Deion Sanders, and oversaw another monumental round of conference realignment.
And all that was just within the past few years. Before his time at Colorado comes to an end, George will have plenty additional changes to implement with CU athletics.
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On Tuesday, Colorado’s athletic director met with the media one day after a preliminary approval was issued for the settlement of a trio of lawsuits that will further alter a collegiate athletics landscape still adjusting to a new era of name, image and likeness (NIL) benefits.
What essentially is pay-for-pay is coming to college sports, as is a shift in how rosters will be constructed across all athletic departments.
“I’m excited about the preliminary approval, because it allows us some kind of guidance, even though we don’t have all the answers to our questions,” George said. “It does give us some guidance as to where this is going. In the meantime, it’s really important for us that we continue to focus on our NIL collective with the 5430 Foundation and the support they’re giving our student athletes.
“We know the challenges of the House settlement are big and broad. We’re prepared for them. We’ve been focused on the House settlement for the last four to five months that we’ve been working on. But it’s a significant change in college athletics.”
The House settlement ties together what had been three separate pending antitrust lawsuits — Carter vs. NCAA, House vs. NCAA and Hubbard vs. NCAA — that will provide back pay totaling about $2.8 billion to past and current NCAA athletes.
More pertinent to the future of college sports, the settlement also eliminates the restrictions that prevented schools from directly paying student athletes due to the NCAA’s antiquated amateurism rules. The opportunity for big-time stars like CU football standouts Shedeur Sanders and Travis Hunter to land outside endorsement deals will remain. But beginning in 2025-26, schools will now be able to compensate athletes directly in a form of revenue sharing.
“Our first focus is on what we’re going to do at Colorado,” George said. “What we’re preparing for now based on the preliminary approval (Monday), we’ve had four goals in all this as we’ve looked at what we’re going to do at CU. The first is we wanted to provide similar opportunities that we have today for all of our student athletes. We also wanted to be as competitive as we are today. We don’t want to cut any sports. And we want to provide similar benefits to our student athletes. What that will look like in a revenue share, those are some of the questions that we don’t know yet.”
George repeated the assertion he has no intention of cutting athletic programs at CU. But the upcoming months will find George and CU’s athletic administration outlining how the new world of revenue sharing will be met with the expanded roster limits also included in the House settlement.
Athletic programs across the board will see an increase in scholarship limits, with correlative roster limits also getting reset. In men’s basketball, as an example, the current scholarship limit is 13, but CU coach Tad Boyle typically carries a roster of 17 or 18 expanded by walk-ons. There now will be a 15 scholarship/roster limit in men’s basketball, but it will be up to each program to decide if all those spots will be utilized. Other sports, like track, are seeing a much more dramatic expansion, with scholarship roster limits expanding from 12.6 to 45 in men’s track and 18 to 45 in women’s track.
“We’ve always been in Title IX, and when you look at roster limits … that applies to Title IX,” George said. “I would tell you that those are the roster limits at the moment. We might not go to the limit in some sports. We may in other sports. That’s something that we’re working through. But when the dust settles, it’ll be in compliance with Title IX.”
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