Missouri Valley Football Conference coaches skeptical NCAA settlement will change retention concerns – Grand Forks Herald

GRAND FORKS — When Southern Illinois head football coach Nick Hill has an alum stop by practice, he hears about the glory years and tales of a time when players stuck out the entirety of a college career in one program.

Hill’s current reality is much different. The current reality is rampant transferring.

“Those days are pretty much over,” the 40-year-old SIU alum Hill said. “Some people are living in the past of even 15 years ago.”

College football is entering a new era in 2025, when universities can share revenue directly to college athletes following the House vs. NCAA legal case.

At this summer’s Missouri Valley Football Conference meeting in Sioux Falls, coaches and the league’s commissioner weren’t so sure the changes will solve the NCAA’s retention problem. Most MVFC leaders said “no,” although some of their answers may be better categorized as “not yet.”

“The best way to retain our guys is to do a great job with relationships,” UND first-year head coach Eric Schmidt said. “Guys have to believe they’re going to get developed here. They have to believe they can make life-changing money in the NFL and that’s the reason to stay. I don’t think before House or after House will change that.”

As reported by Reuters and other national news outlets, House vs. NCAA was started by Arizona State University swimmer Grant House and others, who filed an antitrust suit against the NCAA and its restrictions of athletes to benefit financially from their name, image and likeness.

In June, the NCAA agreed to pay nearly $2.8 billion to former and current Division I athletes who were unable to profit through NIL between 2016 and 2024. Going forward, schools can directly share revenue with their athletes.

As part of the agreement, there will be new oversight added to NIL deals, including a clearinghouse that will vet deals worth more than $600 to ensure they represent fair-market value and are not simply pay-to-play deals.

With House-regulated salary caps, roster caps and tighter NIL regulation, the hope among FCS coaches is that the new system can help stem the annual exodus of players from FCS rosters to FBS schools that can offer bigger and better deals.

In the offseason leading up to the 2025 season, 514 FCS players indicated a transfer to an FBS school, according to data collected by Sam Herder of Hero Sports, an online publication that covers the FCS level.

The Missouri Valley Football Conference, widely considered the top league in the FCS, has been raided in recent years by larger power conferences. Ahead of 2025, North Dakota State’s CharMar Brown left for Miami, South Dakota State quarterback Mark Gronowski left for Iowa and Illinois State’s Hunter Zambrano left for Texas Tech, among many others in this category.

At UND, high-end talent has departed in the last few years in offensive lineman Easton Kilty (Kansas State), quarterback Tommy Schuster (Michigan State), defensive end Ben McNaboe (Ohio) and offensive lineman Cade Borud (Iowa).

With the new revenue sharing model, the governance system will be run by the College Sports Commission, an independent entity separate from the NCAA, charged with enforcing all rules related to the settlement, including revenue sharing caps for schools at the highest level of college football.

Some have hoped this new era could be a turning point in the transfer culture. The CSC is tasked with returning name, imagine and likeness (NIL) athlete deals back to their organic beginnings – before essentially pay-for-play became the norm for NIL contracts.

For example, a third-string tight end who rarely plays but is paid $100,000 in NIL money isn’t necessarily earning it based on his marketability. Instead, he’s likely being paid that sum simply to play football. The NIL deal at that price was therefore a mask of its original business intent but programs, coaches and collectives couldn’t actually call it pay-for-play without breaking the rules.

The CSC and this new era of the House settlement want to rein in that previous unregulated NIL movement, which caused bidding war after bidding war and fueled the massive levels of transferring seen across the entire college athletic world.

MVFC coaches at this summer’s media day in Sioux Falls were skeptical the House settlement era would solve any of their retention woes.

Schmidt, a former UND captain and defensive coordinator who left UND in 2019, returns to Grand Forks after coaching stops at Fresno State, Washington and San Diego State. He believes the 2025 system is a short-term solution.

“What does this look like in the next two to four years?” Schmidt said. “It’ll change again with different lawsuits and situations that’ll take place. It’s to be determined. How many of these contracts that are being signed now hold up at the end of the day? Ultimately, I don’t think (the new House system) will change anything at all right now.”

MVFC Commissioner Jeff Jackson is also looking at what’s next in this fluid new era. Like many in his role across the FCS, Jackson would like to see federal involvement to add clarity and direct the next steps.

“You know, the House settlement is not a perfect document,” he said. “We can all read the settlement and find places that we’re uncomfortable with or that we feel doesn’t best serve our interests. However, it’s a good beginning point and that beginning point does lead us into a world where we can have more regulation.

“We still need legislative relief. We still need the ability for Congress to come in and say we can self-govern because that’s the issue. How long does a student-athlete stay at North Dakota? Or Illinois State? That only gets solved if we get to a place where we can actually put in rules and govern what we’re doing. Right now, we can’t. So the House settlement is a great beginning, but being able to get to safe harbor, we’ve got to have legislative relief. How we’re existing right now is not sustainable. You’ve got to have some (rules) with teeth, and that’s where legislative relief comes in.”

Due to the transfer culture in place, Youngstown State coach Doug Phillips, in his sixth season leading the Penguins, has seen the development process need to greatly accelerate.

“What do you tell a young man that can maybe go make $800,000 (at a Power Four program)?” Phillips said. “What would I tell my son? I don’t make that money, you know? What I’ve got to do for my team is have someone ready to replace him, so that’s what I try to focus on. If this young man decides to move on, that can benefit his family and himself … I just want to make sure I have a guy that’s going to step in and be ready to play. That’s what we can control. That’s where you manage a roster. Back in the day, you had to have a guy ready after four years. Now, we need to have guys ready in Year 2. Year 3, they need to star. I’ve got to have them ready sooner.”

At the highest levels of college football, a salary cap will be monitored. At UND and the MVFC level, schools are opting in to the House settlement but that doesn’t dictate how much revenue – if any – will be shared. This could create disproportionate competitive balance.

For the FCS programs, opting in to the revenue sharing model doesn’t negate the FBS advantages if there isn’t much revenue to share.

“Your administration, your school can obviously step up and try to pay the players more, and that’s going to help with some retention,” Hill said. “But, you know, several of our players went to big time Power Four schools and when you weigh those options with them … kids are going to get paid a lot more and have a chance to run out on those SEC fields. Put yourself back in those shoes. Those kids are going to go every year. It’s how it is. You have to be OK with that. They’ve probably played some good football for you, you know? If it were my son, I’d tell you this is a great opportunity. You did us well here.

“It leads you to really appreciate those guys that do make up the core of your team, and we have a lot of them, who have been here five, some six years. It’s about building a team as quickly as you can now.”

Although some FCS programs may find it difficult to find revenue to share with athletes, others may find new avenues to address retention through fundraising.

“I think North Dakota State is going to be in a really good position,” Bison coach Tim Polasek said. “I’m not really concerned with the rest of the FCS; I’m not sure on that. I can’t answer that for them. I don’t know if (the House settlement) will provide (competitive balance).

“College football has been college football for a long time, and there have been a lot of programs that have certain things others don’t, and those things most certainly are important and can provide an edge. We’ll figure out which guys need a little bit of a reward for retention and keep working toward it. I most certainly don’t have all the answers but will Bison Nation answer the bell and keep us competitive? I believe that will be the case.”