A new era of Division I college athletics is upon us as the House settlement has been finalized.
For schools that opt-in to the settlement, they can now directly revenue-share with players, no longer face scholarship limits but must adhere to new roster limits (with the ability to grandfather in roster spots this year and slowly move down to those roster limits), can move NIL deals in-house, and more.
In the FCS, 92 schools opted in for 2025-26 and 36 schools opted out. All 11 Missouri Valley Football Conference schools have opted in.
At MVFC Media Day last month in Sioux Falls, SD, HERO Sports was on site and talked to head coaches about the settlement, revenue-sharing, and parity in the FCS.
Will The House Settlement Create More Parity In The FCS?
The FCS national championship picture is top-heavy.
Dating back to the 2021 fall season, every title matchup has featured a combination of NDSU, SDSU, Montana State, or Montana, while teams from Montana and the Dakotas have taken up 75% to 100% of the semifinals. Even before the likes of James Madison, Jacksonville State, Sam Houston, Delaware, and more departed for the FBS, the FCS has had a small number of teams good enough to win a title, often being able to count them with a few fingers since the 2014 season.
Will the House settlement close the gap or widen the gap?
Some MVFC coaches think it could even the field. Some deflected. And some didn’t say yes or no, but their body language suggested they wanted to say it’ll widen the gap.
“I think it does level the playing field a little bit, depending on who you are,” South Dakota head coach Travis Johansen said. “I think for years, to generate revenue within programs, and maybe not affecting us as much, you have to be able to sell out your stadiums, have bigger venues, your brand had to push that quite a bit. Third-party NIL wasn’t going to be a part of moving programs necessarily. But at this point, there’s a way to generate revenue that can come from a lot of different ways, and I think if you have access to people and revenue like that, it’s going to inevitably help programs if you decide to go that route with it. So I think there are a lot of benefits. A1 for the student-athlete in a way that makes sense and doesn’t deter from the fabric of what we’re trying to accomplish. I think we’ve lost that to a certain extent. But now that those rules are kind of settling down and in place, and we all know there will be continued litigation with this thing. But ultimately, I think the spirit of what we tried to accomplish five years ago with name, image, and likeness is getting closer back to that, which will benefit student-athletes, not only monetarily, but give them a place where they can stay at home for four or five years.”
Youngstown State head coach Doug Phillips agreed when asked if more parity could be coming to the subdivision.
“I do,” Phillips said. “We all are going to have certain challenges. I always felt like there was a bubble over some of the states, and it really didn’t penetrate that bubble compared to what we had to face. If you put a circle around Youngstown State, about a 250-mile radius, there are a lot of FBS schools, there’s a lot of competition knocking at your door. So I do feel like the scales could be balanced a little bit. … We’ve been knocked down. Hopefully, we made the answers. Hopefully, we made the changes that we need to do to put us in a position to be able to compete, to be able to win the Missouri Valley Football Conference. That’s what we strive for every day, and that’s what we work for every day.”
There are two ways to think about the parity question.
One is that the FCS “rich” will just get richer.
In an era where schools can now directly pay players and move NIL fundraising in-house, the FCS programs with the most internal and external support are going to thrive. And with there no longer being scholarship limits, the FCS powers could be playing with 70, 75, 85, or more scholarships if they can/want to fund it, while others are still at 63, creating a big advantage. Conferences like the SWAC, Southland, CAA, OVC-Big South, and MVFC did not set league-wide scholarship caps. The Big Sky, SoCon, and Patriot League maintained their football equivalency scholarship cap at 63 for this year.
NDSU head coach Tim Polasek treaded lightly when asked about parity in the FCS post-House settlement. The Bison have certainly set a standard in funding, facilities, cost of attendance, and other areas, raising the FCS championship bar to new heights that some would argue is an unattainable bar for most of the FCS.
“My thoughts are, with the revenue-share and us fundraising or raising money for some things to keep our football team intact, I think North Dakota State’s going to be in a really good position. I’m not really that concerned with the rest of the FCS. I’m not sure on that. I can’t answer that for them. I don’t know if that’ll provide more…” Polasek said before pausing. “College football’s been college football for a long time, and there have been a lot of programs that have certain things that others don’t, and those things most certainly are important and can provide an edge. The one thing for us that I want to stay focused on, and [NDSU AD] Matt Larsen is focused on, is our kids’ experiences still has got to be at the forefront. Do we have enough in the refueling station? Do we have enough facility-wise? Do we have enough from a personnel standpoint that we can support these guys in their endeavor to be the best they can be? That’s still got to be at the forefront. And then we’ll figure out, OK, which guys need a little bit of reward, retention, and we’ll keep working towards it. I most certainly don’t have all the answers. But I like NDSU’s chances when it comes to, will our support, will BisoNation answer the bell and keep us competitive? I most certainly believe that will be the case.”
Another school of thought is that the House settlement will allow more FCS schools to catch that top tier — an exclusive group that arguably only contains NDSU, South Dakota State, and Montana State, with other schools rising up occasionally to challenge them.
For example, if a school had trouble getting support and donations into its third-party NIL collective, they were falling behind in trying to retain players. Now, by opting in, donors may feel more encouraged to provide money for revenue-sharing or in-house NIL for two reasons: 1) They are more comfortable giving to the school than a third-party collective. And 2) They get tax breaks for donating to schools, whereas donations to collectives do not get tax breaks.
And while mid-major schools aren’t operating on much extra cash, schools can get more creative by moving money around in their budgets to directly revenue-share with players.
In short, FCS football teams struggling to get cash to pay players in the NIL collective world now may have a smoother path to pay players for better retention.
Revenue-Sharing, Guardrails, & Resources
Mid-major athletic departments are operating on tight budgets. Every dollar they take in is spent on operations, scholarships, staffing, coach salaries, travel, nutrition, facilities, equipment, etc. There isn’t extra money lying around.
But schools can get creative.
And the strategies will vary.
Maybe some facility upgrades get halted, or ticket prices increase, or fans can tip extra at concessions, and that money goes into the revenue-sharing pot. Maybe some schools don’t add scholarships, but use that money to put into the pockets of their current scholarship players. Increasing student fees or university allocations is another way to find wiggle room in the budget to move money around. Increased fundraising efforts can help create more flexibility in the budget to increase the revenue-sharing pot. As mentioned above, donors may be more inclined to help pay players directly through school donations than third-party NIL collective donations.
“I think it’s a cool opportunity for us to be able to create revenue and generate revenue and be able to formulate a plan with some rules that we can control, that are things in-house that our university can have our hands in a little bit,” SDSU head coach Dan Jackson said. “… And as Kobe [Clayborne] mentioned, it’s kind of an exciting time. I think this is the best time in college football to be a first-year head coach, because it’s a level playing field for everybody. And you’re going to be able to formulate new ideas and new solutions and be able to tackle it with positive energy, which is really our stance on college football and the parameters set forth by the House settlement.”
The maximum revenue amount a school can share across all of its athletes is $20.5 million a year, a figure that will go up annually. Only some Power 4 conference schools will be able to share that amount of cash.
In the FCS, where most athletic budgets are between $15M to $30M, some schools will be happy to find $500,000 to revenue-share with players. Some schools may have opted in, but simply don’t have any budget leeway to share any money.
“I think that’s a question for the administrators,” Southern Illinois head coach Nick Hill said. “Last night, it was nice to go to dinner with all the coaches and just hang out. All of them are good guys. A lot of respect for everybody in the league. And it’s cool to be able to just talk about their season, about life, and family. And so I think we would probably have a different mindset if we could choose. I also understand, too, there’s a responsibility for your school. So if you’re a chancellor, or if you’re an athletic director, it’s a tough time right now to figure all this out. And there’s not a lot of revenue at mid-major sports to go around. You’re not in a big surplus. So how much do you want to go in debt and all those things? And so, I’ve always been like that. I’m not going to complain about any of that. We’ve always had lower budgets. We’re just going to put our head down with what we have, we’re going to go to work, and we’re going to try to create a place that guys in that year can become the best players that they can. I think that schools individually have to look at how are we going to keep up. There’s always all these things changing pretty quick, and so you have to be proactive. You have to be thinking in the future, two, three years from now, so you don’t get left behind, per se. But yeah, I think that the administrators have more of a say than we do as coaches.”
Another benefit of the House settlement for FCS teams is a new NIL clearinghouse that will prevent P4 schools from offering massive NIL contracts to entice FCS or Group of Five standouts to transfer up. The amount of money being thrown around during this last spring portal window was eye-watering as NIL collectives raced to beat the clearinghouse start date.
Now, there needs to be a legitimate business reason and reasonable market value for NIL deals.
P4 collectives can no longer pay an FCS All-Conference offensive lineman $250,000 to be a depth player and do a couple of community engagement events per semester.
“It’s kind of been the wild, wild West,” Murray State head coach Jody Wright said. “We really had a system where some billionaire could just give a kid a billion dollars, literally if they wanted to, to play college football. And I’m all for players getting compensated. I think that. I also think the spirit of football, what’s made it such a great game, is guys that really value being a good teammate wanting to come in and do some special things with other special young men and getting an education that’s going to pay off down the road. I hope young men aren’t making a decision off of what school can give me a little bit more money, $10 or $15,000, where you’re actually going somewhere where you can see yourself getting a degree and having those great experiences. At our level, talking to some other head coaches here, we’re probably not running into that quite as much. And I think there’s still a great spirit of football and all the good life lessons football teaches you. … So I think it goes back to just making sure you got guys that really love football, and hopefully everybody comes away as a better person. But it will make it a little bit equal. It will be nice that everybody’s kind of at least in the same neighborhood with everything.”
At the end of the day, as veteran Illinois State head coach Brock Spack put it, it’s all going to come back to resources.
“I wish I had the crystal ball, but all I know is once you open Pandora’s box and you start paying players, you’re not going back,” Spack said. “We all have to get with the program or get out of the profession. But I think if we can get some parameters around it a little bit. If you can find, I won’t say rules, but just some guardrails, would be helpful. I think we’re a little better towards that now than we were a year ago. But the hard part for us as players and coaches is when the rules change so much. And particularly, we have roster limitations now. I think the way they set it up with designated student-athletes made it easier for us to move into the next phase of 105 [football roster spots]. I guess we’ll see. Resources are tough out there right now. But if you’re going to be a really good football program, you’ve got to have resources. I don’t care what level you’re in, that’s never not going to be the case.”
And in the FCS, a few teams have FBS-level resources. Most have FCS-level resources. And some have sub-D1-level resources.
Will the gap close or will it widen between the FCS haves and have-nots in a new era where resources and revenue will be as important as ever?
There are arguments on both sides. Maybe the answer is obvious. Maybe it’s unknown. We’ll see if this new era off the field results in changes on the field in the FCS national picture.