‘We are all in’: NC State AD Boo Corrigan opens up on revenue sharing and more

NC State Athletic Director Boo Corrigan confirmed the Wolfpack is fully funding its revenue sharing budget to the maximum $20.5 million for the upcoming 2025-26 school year during his annual press conference Friday afternoon at Carter-Finley Stadium.

Corrigan, who enters his seventh football season in charge of the athletic department, touted that NC State leads the ACC in conference championships won over the last five years across all sports. He was clear that the Wolfpack competed with the top of the league up to this point, and will continue to moving forward in the ever-changing college athletics sphere.

“In the new landscape of everything that’s going on, what are we going to do to be competitive? We’re going to go all in,” Corrigan said. “We are all in.”

While there was social media speculation that NC State wouldn’t elect to fund the maximum under the House settlement’s new rules, in terms of revenue sharing with athletes, Corrigan noted this was always the plan. He told the Wolfpack’s 17 head coaches just that in October, and continued to remain forced on it ever since. 

In order to raise the funds, which the Pack had time to plan for ahead of the July 1 effective date, NC State got creative. It decided to explore hosting concerts at Carter-Finley Stadium — Chris Brown will be the first on Oct. 14 — while it continues to have discussions with naming rights sponsors for the venue. It changed some of its parking and annual donation structure under its Pack Forward initiative to remain the most flexible under the new circumstances.

And in doing so, Corrigan hoped that it wouldn’t put as much strain on the everyday fan that attends a football or basketball game by raising ticket prices exponentially.

“The one thing we didn’t really want to do is look at this whole thing and say, ‘You know what, we’re going to raise our tickets 30 percent. We’re going to put all this on the backs of our fans,’” Corrigan said. “We owe, as an administration, everything we can think of with the ability to raise as much money as we can to try to spread this out as far as we can.”

So what does NC State’s revenue sharing plan look like? Corrigan didn’t have specific numbers to share during his 25-minute question-and-answer session, but he stressed that every program on campus would benefit from added scholarships. NC State can deduct up to $2.5 million in new scholarships under the House Settlement, and the Wolfpack has added nearly $2 million worth across every sport.

Instead of telling each coach how many new scholarships they were going to receive, Corrigan gave each program a figure that they could use to the best of their ability. Whether that was adding more scholarships or a combination of those and Alston Awards, education-based stipends, Corrigan left it up to each program to make their own decisions.

“We trust our coaches. We wanted our coaches to have skin in the game of what we were doing,” Corrigan said. “We provided maximum flexibility for our coaches by giving them a number and then allowing them to plug the numbers they wanted to.”

Although each program will benefit from the new landscape, it is expected that football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball will receive the biggest pieces of the revenue sharing pie at NC State. 

Corrigan, a champion for Olympic sports in Raleigh, stressed the importance of helping every program to the best of his ability.

“We care about everyone’s experience as they come through,” Corrigan said. “Whether you’re a women’s tennis player, volleyball, cross country, wrestling, we want you to have the best experience you can have as you’re here.”

Here are three other topics that Corrigan touched on during his press conference:

What’s the future of NC State’s NIL collective?

CORRIGAN: “They’ve been great, they really have been. OnePack has really stepped up. Not only from the more-significant donors, but as well from the subscription model that they’ve laid out. I think it’s a good example of being patient. 

“There was a time six to eight months ago that everyone was going to shutter their collectives. That was the general thought that people where going to have. We didn’t. We talked to them to figure out where it is. Is there a place for OnePack moving forward? Absolutely there is. What does that look like? I think that’s part of the great unknown with NIL Go and trying to figure out what deals will go through. 

“There’s been a new opinion as it comes to collectives. It still needs to be vetted out and what do those deals look like? What is fair market value and how does that work? But OnePack certainly has a place in NC State Athletics moving forward.”

The ACC settlement with Clemson and Florida State has stabilized for now. But with possible realignment coming in 2030, has NC State explored moving to the Big Ten or SEC?

CORRIGAN: “The best thing we can do is be the best NC State we can be. Selling 30,000-plus season tickets for 25-30 years in a row. Going to Reynolds Coliseum and women’s basketball is sold out. Going to the Lenovo Center moving forward and seeing fans. We’re competing at a really high level. Showing the support we have, does that lead to better TV windows? Yes, it does.

“I think the best thing we can do is focus on who we are. We are a proud member of the ACC, we love being in the ACC. I believe it’s a highly-competitive conference on a national level with great teams. [If] we win football games, we go to the CFP. You win basketball games, you go to the NCAA Tournament and see how it works out from there. Are we surveying the landscape? Of course we are. But it all comes back to being the best NC State we can be.”

What’s it like having TV viewership, something out of your control, play a role in conference financial distribution?

CORRIGAN: “It goes back to being as good as you can be. The better you are, the better the slot, the better the ratings. I think it’s a creative answer to where we are. If you look at a lot of conferences around the country, you do have three, four or five schools that are driving a majority of the ratings. I think Commissioner [Jim] Phillips took a big step forward by trying to create a creative answer to something. 

“It’s in our wheelhouse. We have the opportunity to get better slots, right? The beauty of football, I don’t know that we all love this, but the 10-day window, the six-day window is better than if we could say right now what time every game is. There is that opportunity to get to the big show, to get to the ABC, ESPN, the primetime game and those opportunities. A lot of it is in front of us with what opportunities we have. We’ve got a Thursday night game, a Friday night game. There are some windows there for us to really take advantage of it.”