It won’t just be current and future college athletes benefitting from the passing of the House v. NCAA settlement.

The House v. NCAA settlement was finalized on Friday, making it legal for universities to start directly paying student-athletes starting on July 1. Also part of the agreement was $2.8 billion in back payments for athletes who competed between 2016 and 2024. That means former athletes can also benefit from theoretical money they missed out on from NIL opportunities, but there is a catch.

How much an athlete gets depends on the value of their lost possible NIL opportunities. Meaning, Baker Mayfield will not get paid the same as a former walk-on teammate who never saw the field. Payments could reportedly be between $1 and $1,859,000.

Most of the money will go to football and basketball players. However, that could be different for a school like Oklahoma, where a small-revenue sport like softball is so high on the food chain.

With this news, I created a list of OU athletes from during that time who certainly earned their pay and missed out on countless dollars during their time as a Sooner.

Former Sooners most deserving of back pay

Baker Mayfield

Baker Mayfield could have been the richest man in Norman if he played during the NIL era. He was a Heisman Trophy winner, so obviously his play was worth a hefty paycheck, but NIL is even more than just what a player does on the field.

Mayfield’s personality stood out even more than what he did on the field as a fan-favorite. He was one of the most famous athletes in the country during his time at OU. Mayfield would had been an easy sell for anyone and would had been on more commercials than Petyon Manning while he was a Sooner.

Yes, Mayfield got a good payday as a No. 1 overall NFL Draft pick, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t deserve all the money that was left on the table during his time at OU.

Trae Young

Hindsight is 20/20, but money spent on Trae Young would had been well-spent and just been funneled back into OU. He was one of the greatest freshmen in college basketball history after his 2017 season. Young and his name can also be thanked for getting the Sooners into the NCAA Tournament that season.

Now that he is getting paid handsomely, Young frequently gives back to the Norman community, has donated $1 million to OU basketball and serves as the Sooners’ assistant general manager while still playing in the NBA.

Jocelyn Alo

Jocelyn Alo certainly got her share of NIL deals, but any legend from OU softball deserves everything possible and then some, especially considering there’s no lucrative pro career for them no matter how good. Alo is worthy of getting a pretty paycheck after her college career.

Paige Parker

Paige Parker is another softball legend deserving of money she was never able to make just because of the sport she played and when she played it. The Sooners won back-to-back national titles in 2016-17 thanks to Parker, and that was the launching pad for OU transforming into a dynasty.

The Sooners have the most notable softball program in the country that’s constantly breaking attendance records, and it’s fair to say that might not have ever happened without Parker, who didn’t make a dime as a Sooner.

Read more about the Oklahoma Sooners

Over the years, the transfer portal and NIL have completely changed the landscape of college sports. The portal has become the professional sports version of free agency, while NIL funds have varied from school to school, something Virginia Tech has found out over time.

When it comes to rules and regulations surrounding NIL, fans have been paying close attention and listening to what has been going on with the house settlement, which brings rules regarding NIL and also supplies revenue sharing. It has been taking some time for a ruling to officially come down, and that decision came down late Friday night.

Judge Claudia Wilken officially signed off on the final approval to the proposed settlement.

The recent announcement on the NCAA settlement paving the way for players to be directly paid by schools has been met with mixed emotions already. Obviously, players who are in line to get a share of the $2.8 billion coffers are quite happy.

Georgia fans, however, are looking at it in a different light and see this as potentially damaging recruiting and roster building, putting unfair shackles on schools who have traditionally led the pack.

Beyond the settlement for former players dating back to 2016, current players can now be paid directly by the school, however there will be a cap on the amount allowed. That could mean that stacking a huge recruiting class of five and four-star players could be a thing of the past.

Some Georgia fans let their feelings be known.

Judge Claudia Wilken announced the approval of the House v. NCAA settlement Friday in the U.S. Northern District of California. It’s a landmark decision that’s likely to usher in a revenue-sharing era among college sports, effectively allowing schools to pay their athletes.

The ruling also created a clearinghouse for third-party NIL deals, which will have a say over NIL arrangements of $600 or more.

“Despite some compromises, the settlement agreement nevertheless will result in extraordinary relief for members of the settlement classes,” Wilken wrote in her 76-page opinion. “If approved, it would permit levels and types of student-athlete compensation that have never been permitted in the history of college sports, while also very generously compensating Division I student-athletes who suffered past harms.”

We still have a long way to go before we fully understand the impact on college sports, especially football. One person who is not optimistic is ESPN and SEC Network host Paul Finebaum.

“I couldn’t help but think back about 10 years ago, when Mark Emmert, then the President of the NCAA, essentially said college athletes will be paid over my dead body. He’s still alive, but the NCAA is dead,” Finebaum said during an appearance on SportsCenter. “It may still be in existence. We’re still having tournaments, such as the Women’s World Series and the Men’s Baseball Tournament, but the NCAA, as we know it, is gone. They literally have no jurisdiction whatsoever other than to be tournament directors.

“This was supposed to level the playing field. Everybody pays the same into the kitty and then divides it up, but it will do anything but. The big will get bigger, and the small schools will simply slip away… Other than maybe in in basketball-only conferences that can use all that money for basketball, as opposed to, like, Alabama and Georgia and Ohio State, where they have to split up $20.5 million.”

Starting July 1, schools will be able to share $20.5 million with its athletes. Football is expected to receive 75%, followed by men’s basketball (15%), women’s basketball (5%) and all remaining sports (5%). Power Four football programs will have between $13 to $16 million to spend on rosters during the 2025 season under the settlement agreement.

Finebaum, known for his devotion to SEC football, views this situation as one that could jeopardize the momentum of women’s sports and non-revenue sports.

“The real casualty of all this, I believe, is going to be the one part of college athletics that has grown so much,” said Finebaum. “We watched the Women’s World Series last night, a million-dollar pitcher, by the way, for Texas Tech. Women’s sports, I think, are going to suffer from this. If you’re one of these Ohio States or Alabamas, and you’re dividing up $20.5 million, you know where most of it’s going, it’s going to football. That’s really a major casualty.

“College athletics did this to themselves. They’re not really suffering for it, because it’s a billion-dollar industry, but it’s going to be very uneven in the future. I think, at some point, fans are going to start tuning out. There’s such an existential threat to what we grew up loving, and we still do. It’s not going to be the same anymore.”

Finebaum is one of several prominent voices who see player compensation as the end of college athletics as we know it. Others might say that’s only fair considering the severe imbalance in profits generated by those institutions on the labors of those players.

College sports are indeed changing and getting more professional. However, they’ve been professional for a long time; the people in charge are only now being forced to acknowledge it.