(The Center Square) – Transparency via public records for athletes’ revenue-sharing contracts at public North Carolina colleges and universities would be taken away under a proposal for exemption to the state public records laws.
College Sports Updates, as Senate Bill 229 is known, got Senate approval 44-0 on Wednesday and moved to the Rules Committee of the House of Representatives.
The substitute amendment from the House Committee on the Judiciary shields from public record law a UNC System institution’s overall revenue sharing budget, allocations by team or program, and allocations to players.
Taxpayer money can be used to pay players. A $2.8 billion antitrust settlement authorized last June by a federal judge for NCAA athletes known as the House settlement (for former Arizona State swimmer Grant House) allows each NCAA school – there are 350 in Division I, and 1,100 in all three divisions – to pay athletes for use of their name, image and likeness.
The settlement allows institutions, even taxpayer-supported universities, to each pay $20.5 million annually to the athletes. In North Carolina, the General Assembly moved right behind the settlement to exempt name, image and likeness contracts from public records laws.
This means, for example, the $10 million contract of football coach Bill Belichick at Carolina is public record; how much NIL money he and the staff decide to use on the quarterback or any other player is not.
Rep. Wyatt Gable, the 23-year-old Republican from Onslow County, framed adding more cloak of darkness to college athletics as necessary because of the dollar.
“Our schools have a lot of money when it comes to college sports, but whenever a Big Ten or SEC school comes in, there’s no way we can compete with them in terms of finances,” he told the Committee on Higher Education in the House of Representatives.
Published reports say the average payout per school in fiscal year 2025 in the Power 4 leagues was $76.1 million for the Big Ten, $72.4 million for the Southeastern Conference, between $45 million and $47 million in the ACC, and between $38 million and $42 million in the Big 12.
Of the state’s seven Football Bowl Subdivision teams, Duke and Wake Forest of the ACC are private and thus the legislation would not be applicable to each. N.C. State and Carolina are also in the ACC, East Carolina and UNC Charlotte in the American Athletic, and Appalachian State in the Sun Belt – all part of the UNC System, and all would be governed by the proposed law.
ECU and Charlotte were each $10 million or less in fiscal year 2025. Appalachian was about $5 million – or for context, about $1 million more than was provided in a two-year contract held by Carolina quarterback Gio Lopez.
According to UNC System public records requests, Carolina has $13 million alone for football athletes’ revenue sharing and another $7 million for men’s basketball. N.C. State is similar – $13.5 million for football and about $4 million for men’s basketball.
