Revenue Sharing Sends 70%+ to Football, Leaving Olympic Sports Starved

Under the House v. NCAA settlement taking effect in 2025-26, each Division I school can distribute approximately $20.5 million per year in direct athlete compensation. But this money is not distributed equally. At Power Conference schools, more than 70% of the revenue-sharing pool — roughly $15 million — is expected to go to football. Men's basketball takes much of the remainder. Athletes in so-called 'Olympic sports' like swimming, track, wrestling, tennis, and gymnastics receive minimal to modest shares despite training the same hours and making the same academic sacrifices. This creates a two-tier system within the same university athletic department. A starting offensive lineman might receive $150,000+ in revenue sharing plus a six-figure NIL deal, while a national-qualifying swimmer at the same school receives a partial scholarship and virtually no revenue-sharing money. Both athletes spend 30-40 hours per week on their sport. Both risk injury. Both sacrifice academic flexibility. But one is compensated like a professional and the other like a volunteer. This disparity drives talent away from non-revenue sports and pressures universities to cut programs entirely to fund football and basketball payrolls. The root cause is that college sports revenue is generated almost entirely by football and men's basketball — these two sports produce close to 95% of athletic department revenue at Power Conference schools. The argument is that athletes should be paid in proportion to the revenue they generate. But this logic ignores that non-revenue sports exist because universities made an institutional commitment to broad-based athletics, and that many of these programs serve as the only pathway to Olympic competition for American athletes. The system also faces unresolved Title IX questions: eight female student-athletes have challenged the House settlement's allocation, which directs roughly 90% of back-pay to football and men's basketball.