EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) — The revenue-sharing era, created by the approval of the House v. NCAA settlement, officially kicked off on Tuesday.
UTEP has opted into the settlement for the 2025-26 academic year.
“The UTEP Miners have opted in. We will participate in all things related to the house settlement,” UTEP Vice President & Director of Athletics Jim Senter said Tuesday. “It’s really, really unique. It’s very different and we’re all going to have to learn the new rules in which we operate.”
UTEP is one of 319 NCAA DI schools that opted into the House v. NCAA settlement for the 2025-26 academic year.
Here’s a look at how UTEP will be approaching some of the notable terms in the settlement for the 2025-26 campaign.
ROSTER LIMITS
All schools that opted into the settlement are allowed to award scholarships to as many players as they want as long as their teams follow the roster size caps. For example, football will have a roster cap of 105 players. In years past, schools have carried more 120 to 125 players. UTEP says the football roster cap will allow them to put more resources into its women’s sports.
“We typically carried about 120 to 125 football players. That number will now go down to 105. So, we will be able to add a few more scholarships for women that we weren’t able to do before. And, that’s going to help us in a significant way, get closer toward timeline and gender equity proportionality.” Senter said Tuesday.
$2.8 BILLION IN DAMAGES TO FORMER NCAA STUDENT ATHLETES
Another massive term in the settlement is that the NCAA and its members will pay $2.8 billion over the next decade to thousands of former players who were barred from that revenue from 2016-2021.
“The NCAA basically looked at all 32 DI conferences, looked at the last ten years and what they paid out to us, and they took a portion of that saying, for the next ten years, moving forward, we’re going to withhold that because it’s going backwards to pay for the damages in that class action lawsuit. That cost to us, for UTEP in particular, is about $330,000 a year.” Senter said on Tuesday.
REVENUE SHARING
The most transformative term in the settlement in revenue sharing.
For the first time ever, schools can share up to $20.5 million of its revenue to student athletes. Plenty of opt-ins, like UTEP, won’t reach the $20.5 million cap that will rise over the next decade.
“Ticket sales, fundraising dollars that come in for all the different things that we raise money for, concessions, licensing and trademark, sponsorships, those are the things that we use to fund our department. And then the institution helps fund us with institutional support. that’s that’s what makes up the approximately $27, $28 million of our budget,” Senter said. “When you go, gosh, how are you going to do revenue share here? That money that I just talked about is already spoken for. It’s not like we’re going to take that money and quit doing X, Y and Z and start putting it over here and giving and giving it to student athletes. We need every bit of those resources to keep the doors open and continue to pay for scholarships and salaries and support and travel and operating budgets and recruiting.”
This year, UTEP will rely on its Talent Acquisition Fund (TAF) to pay its student athletes for the 2025-26 campaign. At UTEP, each program has the chance to raise money to give to its student athletes.
“We’re calling it our talent acquisition fund, TAF. And the purpose of the TAF is to give donors a place where they can give money. So, we can turn around and share it with our student athletes. but it’ll be based on donor intent,” Senter said. “Each sport will be able to raise money to be able to give to their student athletes through the rev share process, following the rules that are outlined by sport.”
“When I look around America and I think of schools that are in the Big 12 and some of their communities, there’s no reason why UTEP couldn’t be a bigger player in intercollegiate athletics,” Senter said. “But it’s going to take more of our community get involved and when I say get involved means becoming a donor, buying tickets regardless of whether we won or we lose, becoming sponsors. With all that, there’s more expectations and we’ve got to become more competitive than we have been.”
The 2025-26 year will be UTEP’s last in Conference USA. In 2026-27, UTEP will join the Mountain West Conference.
Read: Read More