Department of Education drops a grenade in laps of ADs: How could it affect Clemson?

Clemson Athletic Director Graham Neff will be watching to see what happens.

David Hood - Senior Writer - Jan 17, 2025, 11:51 AM

A big old grenade just landed in the laps of college athletic directors. Will it be a dud, or will it go off? That remains to be seen.

As the NCAA Board of Governors meets in Nashville this week, the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights released that potential problem. At stake? The way many schools plan to pay their athletes in the future revenue-sharing world of college sports.

Clemson and other schools are waiting for the NCAA and power conferences’ landmark House settlement agreement. Starting July 1 after a coming April final ruling, schools are set to be permitted to distribute at least $20.5 million to athletes annually in an escalating, capped pay system. Most schools are determining their distribution method based on a sport’s revenue generation and/or the back-damage distribution method announced by the House plaintiff lawyers.

The House vs. NCAA proposed settlement opens the door for change by:

(1) Abolishing scholarship limits in favor of roster limits.

(2) Allowing institutions to provide a national standard share of revenue to student-athletes.

(3) Providing needed and necessary third-party enforcement and accountability for NIL transactions.

If you’re a football school – like Clemson – most of that revenue will be geared towards the football and men’s basketball programs, the two money-makers in an athletic department. Some schools could elect to extend as much as 95 percent or more of those funds to those two programs.

Some schools have said that they will not share the maximum allowable revenue with their student-athletes, which is up to approximately $20.5 million in 2025-26 and a cap that is the same for all schools nationally. However, we’ve been told that Clemson plans to fully embrace that number. During a conversation late last year with someone who has been in conversations with other schools, we learned that those schools plan to distribute that wealth via a 75/15/5/5 model (75 percent to football, 15 to men’s basketball, five to women’s basketball and five to other sports). A school like South Carolina might choose to invest more than five percent in women’s basketball, but the numbers will remain close to that model.

I’ve been told that Clemson plans to invest significantly more in football and establish a centralized "front office" to oversee contract details, compliance, and allocation strategy. In other words, out of the people I’ve contacted, no one will allocate more to football than Clemson.

However, the Department of Education released its long-awaited guidance related to Title IX: Revenue-sharing payments from schools to athletes must be “proportionately” distributed to men and women athletes, or institutions risk violating Title IX, the 53-year-old federal law requiring universities receiving federal funding to provide equal benefits to women and men athletes.

The DOE’s guidance – released during the final days of President Joe Biden’s administration – could therefore put a damper on all of those House settlement plans. Those schools planning to deliver the majority of those funds to men’s sports would clearly entail a violation of the federal Title IX guidance issued Thursday.

However – and this is important to note - the document is not a regulation but only a guidance. Also, the nation swears in a new President Monday, and he has the authority to replace leaders at the Department of Education and rescind or change orders and guidance issued by the entity.

For now, I’ve been told that there have been no emergency meetings at Clemson and everyone is in “wait-and-see” mode. As I was told, a lot of things have to happen, both in the near and long term, before there is any clarity to this.

But it’s worth watching to see if someone pulls the pin on that grenade.

Sen. Ted Cruz releases a statement to @YahooSports on the Department of Ed’s Title IX guidance, criticizing the decision as a death blow to many college athletic programs and suggesting it will be rescinded when Donald Trump takes over. pic.twitter.com/Pkh3zpWQCS
— Ross Dellenger (@RossDellenger) January 17, 2025