Brian Kelly reacts to House settlement decision, impact on college football

The House settlement’s approval will change how NIL is distributed at LSU and around the country moving forward. In particular, it impacts how Tigers football coach Brian Kelly and his staff conduct business within his program.

Joining Rece Davis and Pete Thamel on the College GameDay Podcast, Kelly revealed that he was in the middle of a recruiting dinner at the time the news broke. He offered his initial reaction to the settlement with the two ESPN analysts.

“Progress over perfection,” Kelly said. “There’s going to be a lot of things that are going to have to be tweaked along the way, but this is progress for college athletics, and in particular, the sports like football and basketball. We needed some some guardrails. We needed clear communication as to, you know, what the expectation is. I think we got a little bit of that.”

Kelly’s comments echo those from SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey. Last week, Sankey cited the settlement as a “significant milestone” in an attempt to provide “long-term sustainability” for NIL in college sports.

The decision from judge Claudia Wilken came on Friday, June 6, but was 59 months in the making. The near five-year class-action suit approves institutes to pay their players directly. In total, each university will share $20.5 million with athletes beginning July 1, with each major conference football program receiving between $13 and $16 million.

“We felt like we had a pretty comprehensive plan already laid out as to what it would look like,” Kelly explained. “Now, we took some assumptions that we would have a settlement in place, and so accordingly, we talked about Deloitte and looking at the NFL and having a clearing house, if you will. We talked about what real revenue sharing is. College is different. Like the NFL salary cap this year is 270 million. You know, we’re looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of $13.5 (million).”

The NIL clearing houses will be implemented to facilitate the third-party deals with student athletes. This allows athletes playing less profitable sports (not football or basketball) to continue to earn additional compensation outside of their allotted share. The settlement also touched on roster limits, and a massive $2.8 billion repayment in back damages to athletes who’ve played since 2016.

How LSU’s football program will adapt to these changes is yet to be seen. There are high expectations for Kelly in Baton Rouge and now that NIL directly tied to success, LSU is expected to be at the forefront of the ever-changing landscape of college athletics.