The 2021 ruling surrounding NIL changed the landscape of college football, but what happened on June 6 could change the game even more drastically. Judge Claudia Wilken approved a $2.8 billion settlement allowing NCAA athletes to be paid directly from schools, and not only from NIL deals.
Under the new settlement, schools have a spending cap of $20.5 million for the 2025-26 season, but that total is expected to grow. A newly formed College Sports Commission (CSC) will enforce rules related to revenue sharing, transparency and fairness.
Arguably, the most impactful element of the deal is that there will no longer be restrictions on the amount of scholarships a school can provide its athletes. This means schools can give every athlete a full scholarship if desired.
Indeed, major changes are coming, and it’s hard to see how the larger schools with seemingly bottomless wallets won’t leave less-funded programs in the dust even quicker than they have in the past.
So, what does this mean for our hometown mid-majors, such as the University of North Texas, the University of Texas at Arlington, and Dallas Baptist University? How will their teams be able to keep up with TCU and SMU's big-spending ways?
From a financial standpoint, they simply won’t. That’s the reality. But some schools from North Texas have still found ways to field winning teams even though they’ve historically been at a financial disadvantage.
But now, more than ever, it will be a challenge for colleges outside of one of the so-called “power four conferences” to recruit and retain star players and compete at the highest level of college athletics.
UNT Athletic Director Jared Mosley spoke with the Observer about the new settlement and what it means for his school’s athletics. Keep in mind that before this settlement was even reached, the Mean Green lost their starting quarterback, starting tight end, best wide receiver and top pass rusher to the transfer portal, where they went on to sign with schools in larger conferences. So, UNT has already felt the ramifications of this weird new era of college athletics.
“I think certainly all of us have been preparing for what was on the other side of the House settlement and have had ample time to wrap our minds and get our teams thinking about how we can be prepared to move forward in this new era," Mosley said.
He did acknowledge that UNT would be at the lower end of the $20.5 million cap, but they don’t see that as an end-all for their athletic programs.
“I think we're still positioned well to be able to attract quality talent to North Texas,” Mosley said.
He also addressed the transfer portal, in which his school’s team lost some key pieces.
“The portal's an opportunity," he added. "You're going to lose some student athletes in it, but you also have a tremendous opportunity to go backfill."
UNT football brought in 28 players and counting from the transfer portal this offseason, including players from bigger schools like TCU, Texas Tech and Miami.
Mosley feels that the UNT coaching staff did a great job of using the transfer portal as an advantage, and the number of players relocating will likely calm down because of this new settlement. UNT may not spend as much as larger schools on acquiring talent, but the athletic director says he thinks his school will be able to retain more players than in the past.
“There’s a good number of student athletes, certainly in football and men's basketball, and I would say we've had a number of student athletes in our Olympic sports who have been able to, with true NIL, [earn money] through activity on social media and things that they're doing with local and area businesses and companies,” Moseley added.
UNT isn’t the only North Texas mid-major school preparing to navigate this new settlement, though. UT Arlington athletic director Jon Fagg told the Observer in a statement, “We are excited about the future of UTA athletics in this new college sports landscape, and we have opted in to the revenue sharing model.”
Like UNT, UTA has experienced star players leaving for bigger schools with more money, like standout baseball player and Grand Prairie native Ryan Black, who spent two seasons with the Mavericks before transferring to Georgia.
Dallas Baptist University, historically a baseball powerhouse, took a different approach to addressing the future of Patriots sports, specifically baseball. In a social media post, they called for community help in funding the program. They said they were rising to the challenge and planned to remain competitive, but they alluded to the fact that they’re going to need some help financially to recruit and keep star players.
Challenges associated with competing with larger schools isn't anything new to schools like Dallas Baptist or UTA.New era. Same purpose.
— DBU Baseball (@DBU_Baseball) June 7, 2025
Click the link to contribute to the next chapter of DBU Baseball.
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Western Athletic Conference Commissioner Rebekah Ray told the Observer, “I think you have to look at things differently, but our WAC institutions, we've prided ourselves on doing things a little creatively and thinking outside of the box in order to find ways that we can see this as an opportunity instead of just a challenge in that sense.”
Ray also said that mid-majors aren’t the only ones feeling the pinch. She suggested some power-four schools with big sports programs are going to struggle.
“Don't get me wrong, it's going to look different at every institution,” she said. “I think that it's going to look different at Michigan State than it is at Michigan.”
The idea that some power four schools will have to fight even harder against the larger schools in their own state certainly applies to some colleges around here. TCU and SMU are nowhere near as big, nor generate as much revenue as the University of Texas or Texas A&M University, for example.
In this new era of turning college amateurs into professionals, administrators and coaches still have many questions.
“I do think there's a lot of dialogue going around that there's going to need to be some type of probably nationwide congressional action that kind of helps stabilize [college athletics],” Mosely said. “Because the biggest thing out there is, what do you do with the concept of student athletes as employees?”
While clarifying that athletes are not employees, he did say that a collective bargaining agreement may be needed. After all, there are over 30 sports and 500,000 athletes in the NCAA to manage. Also, figuring this out would be even more difficult if each state decided whether to abide by the rules or not, so help and protection from Congress could easily be needed.
Needless to say, it’s a wild new day on campuses across the country.
“I'm extremely excited about it,” Mosley said. “I mean, I feel we're in a great conference with a high level of competition and access to the postseason and championship-level opportunities we want for our student athletes.”
