College football revenue sharing could arrive as part of $2.7 billion NCAA settlement

It seems as though the NCAA could be agreeing to a settlement in the landmark case House vs. NCAA lawsuit in the near future. ESPN's Pete Thamel and Dan Murphy reported late last week that the settlement number could be around $2.7 billion. This would be going to damages from student-athletes dating back some 10 years who could not capitalize on their names, images and likenesses.

The reason why the NCAA may be so open to settling right now is multi-pronged, as it is with everything these days. The first is to avoid having to pay even more damages, which could be upwards of $4 billion if they decided to fight it in court. The second would be to implement some level of a revenue-sharing model, which would help prevent the NCAA from having to pay even more later.

Thamel and Murphy's ESPN sources suggest "that schools are anticipating a ceiling of nearly $20 million per year for athlete revenue share moving forward." This arbitrary number of nearly $20 million roughly equates to 22 percent of the revenue generated by some contrived formula. The point is student-athletes will be paid, but the NCAA will be getting more than three quarters of the revenue.

This is progress in the right direction, but we are still so far away from the athletes getting their due.

Revenue sharing should be coming college football in the coming years

Since college football is the biggest revenue driver in the business, I would expect the power brokers in that sport to get the lion's share of that cut, so to speak. Obviously, all student-athletes will benefit from revenue sharing, but I don't think this amount of allocated money will be enough to cover everything. To me, I feel this is baseline coverage, but will allow those with big brands to make more.

Overall, this feels like the second, or maybe the third time, the NCAA is bobbing its head up for air before it meets is unfortunate watery demise. The institution threw itself overboard in the hopes that Congress would come to save them. Well, the United States government appears to have bigger fish to fry than figuring out how college sports become more and more like the professional ones today.

Ultimately, I see what the NCAA is trying to do here. The institution is trying to pull a fast one on the student-athletes once again, but it may be to no available. You sneak 75 MPH heat past us, unless you're Jamie Moyer or something. To be frank, the NCAA has been about as out of touch with its constituency for even longer than Moyer's one-of-a-kind MLB career even lasted: Four decades.

While revenue sharing is a step in the right direction, I still feel like somebody is getting hosed in this.