I’m not exactly sure where to start this post. I’ll start in April of 2025 where Lubbock-Avalanche Journal’s Don Williams asked baseball head coach Tim Tadlock about how the baseball team’s revenue share was cut from the $20.5 million in revenue to be split, the baseball program would receive 1.9%, approximately $390,000. Tadlock was told, that this was “as much as they could possibly do.”
And as you might expect, Tadlock didn’t blame anyone and was thankful for the amount that the baseball program received:
Told that some on the outside see the baseball program as getting shortchanged in the upcoming revenue sharing, Tadlock said, “Set the record straight: We’re not getting shortchanged. We’ve got roughly almost $400,000 more dollars than we had before. … I’m going to go to bat for Kirby and (university chancellor and president) Dr. (Tedd) Mitchell and Dr. (Lawrence) Schovanec and all those people every day of the week. We have never been shortchanged. Anything we’ve ever asked for in this building or this field, pretty much, they’ve tried to provide it for us — and pretty fast.”
Tadlock said that the program would be able to pay for room, board and tuition. The problem of course is that Texas Tech is staying at 11.7 scholarships, while other programs are giving scholarships for the entire roster:
Arizona State has publicly announced plans to offer scholarships to the full 34-player baseball roster next year, up from the NCAA’s longstanding limit of 11.7 equivalency scholarships. Texas athletics has publicly announced plans to add 200 new scholarships department-wide, taking its baseball program from 11.7 to 25.
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The same story can be told of Wes Kittley and the track and field program. Lubbock Avalanche-Journal’s Don Williams wrote a story in January of this year about how Kittley is putting together his track and field roster with 12.6 scholarships for the men and 18 for the women:
The House settlement allows for full scholarships for an entire 45-athlete roster, but Tech has stayed with the previous NCAA limits.
“I’ve been able to put this team together this year with 12.6 scholarships (for the men’s team) and 18 in the women,” Kittley said, “when my competition — even K-State, I think, has got 24 women and 20-something men’s.
“I think that’s going to change for us in the future, but this year I was just able to get those kids to come for less money and we didn’t have NIL. We didn’t do any of that this year. It’s just been remarkable that those kids want to come. I think we’re going to get more scholarships in the future. Hopefully that’ll even out, but if we can pull it off this year, we’ve done it with a lot less pocketbook.”
If you are a person that likes charts, Athletic Director U’s Andy Wittry shows exactly what each program is receiving and you might be shocked to learn that the volleyball program is receiving 4.1% to 5.1%.
- Football: 74% – $15.2m
- Men’s Basketball: 17% to 18% – $3.48m to $3.69m
- Women’s Basketball: 2% – $410,000
- Baseball: 1.9% – $389,500
- Women’s Volleyball: 4.1% to 5.1% – $840,000 to $1,045,500
Last week, Lubbock Avalanche-Journal’s Don Williams reported that things will be different moving forward. Athletic director Kirby Hocutt said in Midland at the Red Raider Club event that this would be changing. Williams’ article has all of the details that you could want and I recommend reading all of it. I can’t say that I understand how it all works, but essentially Texas Tech will be adding about 80 new scholarships worth about $2.5 million to non-revenue sports teams and up to $10 million of athletics department revenue towards NIL deals.
Next year, Hocutt said, Tech plans to reallocate about $1 million in revenue sharing from non-revenue sports to football and add $2.5 million worth of new scholarships to the non-revenue sports. The baseball program, for example, will go from 11.7 scholarships — the previous NCAA limit and the number the Red Raiders are operating with this year — to 34 scholarships (the roster limit specified in the House v. NCAA settlement) next year.
Regarding the 2025-26 strategy, “We took the approach at Texas Tech that cash is king,” Hocutt said. “We’re not going to allow any of our sports to award additional scholarships so that we can give out the maximum $20.5 million in revenue share. They have changed that rule as we go into the second year of the College Sports Commission and the revenue-share era in that additional scholarships no longer negatively affect our revenue-share number of $21.3 million. Any additional scholarship that we provide now is taxed at 20 cents on the dollar.
Again, I would ask that you read the article. It’s insightful, but I don’t think I totally understand the machinations of how this will all work. The bottom line is that the baseball program will go from 11.7 scholarships to 34, which is the limit.
The biggest thing that I think that I didn’t understand was “why” this was happening to the baseball program. I simply didn’t understand why baseball and track and field received the short end of the stick for scholarships:
“So as we went through this current competitive year with our sports, we found with a lot of our Olympic sport programs, they wanted more scholarship. They appreciated the little bit of revenue share that they received, but they wanted more scholarships.”
Hocutt also noted, “The one thing I didn’t realize and plan for as we built our strategy in year one was the majority of the Southeastern Conference athletics departments, they awarded additional scholarships. They deducted from their $20.5 million in revenue share. Our Olympic-sport coaches, our non-revenue coaches have said, ‘We need more scholarships.'”
We’ve given a lot of credit to the Red Raider Club and the athletic department with so much, but I think the simple explanation is that they maybe misread the room? I’m not totally sure, and as I mentioned above, there’s a lot I don’t understand about the mechanics of how this all works, the different buckets (I think maybe I’m just a visual learning in some respect) that revenue and scholarships are coming from doesn’t make a ton of sense to me.
The article also mentions that the basketball team will hold a fantasy camp and that the team will need to generate around $4 to $5 million from the fantasy camp to raise funds for that program.
This is a long way to say that help is on the way for baseball and track and field. I think I feel a bit worse for Tadlock, who I believe can still coach, but in the changing world of college athletics, the baseball program hands have been tied. That’s not to say that he was maybe too loyal to the coaching staff before this year and he hasn’t made mistakes, but I absolutely believe that not having more scholarships and lack of program funds (there’s apparently no huge benefactor like there is for football and basketball) have affected the quality on the diamond and I think it would have made an impact on track and field if their tighter budget was to last longer than a year.