University of Tennessee at Chattanooga athletic director Mark Wharton announced Thursday that the school will be opting in when it comes to the settlement for the House v. NCAA antitrust lawsuit, allowing UTC to distribute funds to directly compensate its student-athletes for use of their name, image and likeness, starting July 1.
Schools that opt in can have a budget of $20.5 million to dispense to all of their student-athletes for the 2025-26 sports calendar, which doesn’t include additional money created from program collectives.
As of now, UTC is like most athletic programs in that its leaders aren’t sure just how much money they will have to work with or how much will be allocated to each of the teams.
UTC said its biggest revenue generator will be ticket sales and game-day revenue, such as concessions and parking, with season-ticket purchases and attendance at events important to funding the budget. The school also outlined Mocs Club donations, advertising and sponsorships from Moc Sports Properties, media rights deals with the Southern Conference and buying officially licensed UTC Mocs gear as ways the school can benefit, which can in turn help UTC have the revenue necessary to compete.
The benefit will be the ability to retain players. Since the most recent seasons, UTC has lost 15 part-time or full-time football starters, its top returning men’s basketball player (Honor Huff), two of its top wrestlers (Blake Boarman and Sergio Desiante) and the top softball pitcher in the SoCon (Peja Goold) to the NCAA transfer portal, with most of them choosing programs likely to provide more compensation, whether directly, through collectives or because of increased opportunities for individual NIL compensation from third parties.