Staff Editorial

In the spring of 2024, the NCAA and hundreds of schools came to a settlement regarding revenue sharing with their student-athletes. The agreement allows schools to pay their players directly, rather than the third-party circumventions seen in the current name, image and likeness scheme.

The pool of this revenue is said to be capped at around $20 million for larger schools, but schools like Duquesne got their first frame of reference last week, when Virginia Commonwealth University joined the schools in the settlement, confirming they would be allocating $4 to $5 million annually to its athletes. Schools must now figure out where that money is going to come from, and strongly consider their priorities.

VCU’s approach to paying players is a pacesetter for other basketball-centric schools like Duquesne, whose size limits them from distributing all the $20 million they are allowed to.

Instead, VCU’s method shows a couple of warning signs that may be in Duquesne’s future. All students who attend the university are required to pay an annual “athletics fee,” which currently sits at nearly $1,400, an almost $500 increase over just five years. The rapid increase in those fees should serve as a warning for future college students who don’t want to pay more money to athletes, many of whom already receive full scholarships.

It’s only fair that college athletes be compensated. Duquesne and VCU make money every time a basketball fan parks on campus, buys a ticket and merchandise and concessions, and views the sponsorships plastered around the arena. All that revenue would not be possible without the athletes themselves, who put so much of their time into their sport. However, it’s ridiculous for administrations to tack additional fees that add to the revenue an athletics team already brings. The money that athletic departments have always made is exactly what is fair to give the players. Their talents earned that money, nothing more, nothing less.

These fees will allow schools to buy the services of better players who will win more games. However, these fees cost four-year students over five grand throughout college. They don’t have skin in the game, and they do not reap the rewards of a few extra wins over Fordham and La Salle.

Duquesne is not on the verge of some financial windfall from nationally recognized success. Those sorts of fees are just the difference between mediocre and slightly above the mid-major average. Duquesne is not the kind of school that can redirect funds from academics or its students to athletic programs that are not going to return the investment. Fans, alumni and students who are invested in the programs are free to go ahead and donate to their school’s NIL funds, but that should be at their own discretion. Don’t make 90% of students foot the bill for a single department’s success. Hopefully, Duquesne finds a better financial model than the one being implemented at VCU.