From navigating the NIL and transfer portal era, to hiring Deion Sanders and maneuvering through substantial conference realignment, athletic director Rick George had to adapt quickly in the last few years to support Colorado’s athletic programs, and he’s not done yet.

Monday, a preliminary approval was issued for the NCAA’s $2.78 billion dollar settlement that would further transform the name, image and likeness benefits across college athletics by allowing programs to pay players directly through a revenue-sharing model. In addition to the revenue sharing program, the settlement establishes a structure to regulate NIL deals and assembling rosters.

With the various changes coming to college athletics, George addressed the media on Tuesday to lay out how the approval is going to affect operations at Colorado.

“I’m excited about the preliminary approval, because it allows us some kind of guidance, even though we don’t have all the answers to our questions,” George said. “It does give us some guidance as to where this is going. In the meantime, it’s really important for us that we continue to focus on our NIL collective with the 5430 Foundation and the support they’re giving our student athletes.

“We know the challenges of the House settlement are big and broad. We’re prepared for them. We’ve been focused on the House settlement for the last four to five months that we’ve been working on. But it’s a significant change in college athletics.”

There are three individual pending antitrust lawsuits involved in this settlement: Carter vs. NCAA, House vs. NCAA and Hubbard vs. NCAA. The House settlement will issue back pay of approximately $2.78 billion, which will be paid over 10 years ($280 million annually), to previous and current NCAA athletes.

The settlement removes previous restrictions that prohibited schools from paying student athletes directly. Under the new revenue-sharing model, beginning in 2025-26, programs can pay their student-athletes for their NIL endeavors.

“The support that we can provide all of our programs is going to be incumbent on the revenue that we can generate,” George said. “We know there are certain streams that we can do that you may see more concerts that we do, because that's another revenue stream for us that we need. But we're going to be very creative in how we look at the whole landscape of college athletics.

“We want all of our student athletes to have a world class experience when they're here. We're going to provide more benefits in this new settlement agreement that we think is going to be beneficial to our student athletes. So we're going to continue to invest in success, and the success lies in our student athletes.”

In addition to the in-house revenue generation and allocation, rosters will be impacted by this settlement as scholarship limits will be eliminated in all sports while roster limits will be established. Programs now possess the ability to offer partial or full scholarships given that they do not surpass the roster limits. The roster limits vary between sports.

“We've always been in compliance with Title IX, and as we look at roster limits, when you look at opportunities, that applies to Title IX. … We'll have those opportunities that will fit in there. And that all comes under the roster limits. I would tell you that those are the roster limits at this point. We may not go to the limit in some sports. We may in other sports. That's something that we're working through, but when, when the dust settles, it'll be in compliance with Title IX.”

This settlement will open a new door for how institutions compensate student-athletes and George and his staff are looking into ways to utilize these new financial tools while prioritizing every student-athlete.