Click here to view Trev Alberts’ Monday press conference.
Trev Alberts’ job title is Texas A&M’s Director of Athletics. In some ways, tailor maybe should be added.
That’s a reaction to how Alberts described the task he and A&M face in navigating the changing future of college athletics.
“(It’s) how to thread the needle between tradition and modernization,” Alberts said in a Monday meeting with local reporters inside a third-floor conference room at Kyle Field.
Maintaining traditions at A&M won’t be a problem. Successfully modernizing A&M’s athletic department to excel in the new era of Name, Imagine & Likeness (NIL) and revenue sharing projects to be much more challenging.
Reacting to the recent House v. NCAA settlement, which allows NCAA member schools to directly pay student-athletes, Alberts announced that A&M will distribute $18 million to football, men’s and women’s basketball, baseball, softball and volleyball.
A popular national template suggests directing 75 percent of funds to football, 15 percent to basketball, five percent to baseball and five percent to women’s sports.
“Some institutions have chosen to use that (75-15-5-5 model) as a template for their institution,” Alberts said. “Our percentages don’t reflect that. We’ve chosen to make market-based decisions based on revenue.”
The distribution could cause derision within athletic programs. Coaches in different programs could be competing against each other to get more funding.
Alberts said that hasn’t been a problem at A&M, but he has heard that has been an issue for other colleagues.
Alberts declined to reveal the percentages to be shared with A&M’s athletes for competitive reasons. But football is the only revenue-producing sport at Texas A&M, so it stands to reason that the majority of A&M’s shared revenue will go to football players.
“I’m not going to run out and tell you exactly what the numbers are and what the percentages are because there's a competitive piece to that, right?” he said. “But I think you’re going to start to figure out where the numbers lie.”
He said in a year there may be more data available that provides at least guidelines how players perhaps should be compensated not only by sport, but by position.
Alberts acknowledged that some programs could be at a disadvantage to conference opponents.
“You’re not going to knowingly put any of your programs at a competitive disadvantage. But I think it’s absolutely true you could find yourselves in a situation — based on the priorities of the investments — that some of your programs will have less rev share than some of their competitors.”
- Director of Athletics Trev Alberts
For example, Kentucky, which puts great emphasis on basketball, figures to share a greater percentage of revenue with its basketball players than many other SEC programs.
“You’re not going to knowingly put any of your programs at a competitive disadvantage,” Alberts said. “But I think it’s absolutely true you could find yourselves in a situation — based on the priorities of the investments — that some of your programs will have less rev share than some of their competitors.”
Some of the differences, at least, could potentially be offset by greater NIL opportunities.
Alberts said if a program, like football, has players earning substantial money though fair-market NIL deals then some funds could be redirected to other sports.
To enhance those NIL possibilities, Alberts said a new position is being created to help locate NIL opportunities and ensure they meet the standard “fair market value” as determined by Deloitte, which will act as a third-party clearinghouse for NIL deals.
“We’re not ready to announce a name, but we are hiring a new position that will be an associate AD reporting directly to me that is an attorney,” Alberts said. “It’s basically, what is our strategy and how do we leverage every one of our assets?
“If we’re able to get fair market value NIL deals at a certain level, we may not need as much rev share there. We can put the rev share over at this sport because they’re not as successful. So, that’s why I think that fair market value NIL strategy is going to be really important to our future.”
Alberts later added: “We have to be better than our peers. To me, that’s the differentiator in the game. That’s why we’re going to throw a lot of energy and effort in making sure we have a good strategy there (NIL).”
Alberts is hopeful that a sound, effective strategy could launch A&M to great competitive success.
“This is our time,” he said. “If we have the courage to make tough decisions and act and modernize in some areas, I think Texas A&M can separate and do things we’ve never done here before.
“That’s why we’re all here. The opportunities are here at Texas A&M to do things that most people can’t do because of scale, because of resources and other things.”
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