The University of Maine has opted in to the historic NCAA settlement that allows schools to pay student athletes directly for the first time. But UMaine is not providing those direct payments to players — at least not yet.
The settlement requires the NCAA, member conferences and schools to pay back damages to past and current athletes, while also allowing schools to start paying players directly via name, image and likeness deals.
While schools can start using their own funds to pay athletes directly in those NIL deals, they don’t have to do so. And as this new system gets underway for Division I athletics, UMaine is holding off on paying players directly for now while assessing the potential for those payments moving forward.
“At this point in time, we are not providing direct NIL pay,” the UMaine athletic department said Tuesday in response to questions from the Bangor Daily News. “This is something we will assess — with our colleagues within the university and University of Maine System — to see what that might look like in the future.”
The landmark settlement resolves several antitrust lawsuits brought by current and former college athletes against the NCAA. Until late June, UMaine wasn’t even planning to opt in to the settlement, instead intending to opt out for the coming year. But new guidance and additional flexibility around incoming roster limits ultimately helped shift the calculus for UMaine and many other Division I schools around the country that reversed course and ultimately decided to opt in to the agreement.
Schools had a choice whether to join or forgo the settlement, which provides roughly $2.8 billion in damages to past and current college athletes and allows the institutions that opt in to pay players directly in addition to the longstanding use of scholarships and financial aid. Individual schools are capped at providing $20.5 million in direct payments in the coming year.
While college athletes had already been able to profit off their name, image and likeness with endorsements and other commercial deals, that had been limited to third parties. The NCAA settlement opens the door to schools providing NIL money directly to players.
That and other changes ushered in as part of the settlement will make for a new landscape across Division I athletics, even for schools like UMaine that don’t plan to pay players NIL money right away.
“By and large, for any additional expenses — and certainly any in the immediate future — we will be reshaping our current budget and/or relying on private funding to help supplement our public university’s efforts,” the UMaine athletic department said when asked about the potential budgetary impacts in this new era of athlete compensation.
If UMaine were to start providing NIL pay directly to student athletes, it remains unclear how that compensation might be distributed across different sports and programs at the university.
“UMaine is committed to nondiscrimination and will comply with all state and federal laws, including those that pertain to equity in collegiate sports,” the athletic department said when asked about that potential distribution.
The athletic department plans “to explore both public and private sources to support UMaine and our student-athletes” moving forward in this new landscape.
The NCAA settlement applies to schools with a Division I athletic program. UMaine is the state’s only Division I institution.
