Wren Baker discusses revenue sharing
The House Settlement brought about changes to the college game, including the introduction of revenue sharing to the players.
West Virginia has already cut a substantial number of checks to student athletes and real name-image-likeness opportunities, which they plan to continue to grow.
“We’re at the rev share number but we’ve got to add scholarships,” Athletics Director Wren Baker said.
The Mountaineers are looking at where those scholarships will go but they will be Title IX gender based and will likely be dedicated toward helping Olympic sports. West Virginia made the decision to fully invest in the revenue sharing in order to help the revenue sports.
“You can’t have a successful athletic program if you don’t have football and men’s basketball performing at a level where they’re bringing in the kind of resources that feed the rest of the programs.” Baker said.
But those Olympic sports are critical to the athletic program and the fan base as well as people have rallied around the rifle program, soccer teams and baseball.
“We will want to be excellent there. And we also know that we have to be excellent and competitive in those two revenue sports so it’s a challenge,” Baker said.
Getting to that $20.5 million was a massive hurdle that Baker said was aided by growing revenues in the athletic department by a substantial amount with new streams and additional investments on campus such as a student fee.
“And then we were really fortunate that the WVU Foundation stepped up and helped us too. And so, it really was a lot of people and some donors as well that stepped forward. They know how important it is that we were at that full amount,” Baker said.
Baker isn’t going to reveal the percentage breakdown of where the revenue sharing totals are at but it is based on what those programs are contributing to the revenues that are identified in the settlement.
“Whatever percentage of that you contributed, so you get a corresponding percentage out,” he said.
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