6C ❚ FRIDAY, MARCH 27, 2020 ❚ USA TODAY SPORTS
The NCAA will reduce its direct dis-
tribution to Division I conferences and
schools for 2020 by about $375 million
to $225 million, the association an-
nounced Thursday.
The move, voted on by the NCAA’s
top governing board of college presi-
dents, resulted from cancellation of the
Division I men’s basketball tournament
due to the coronavirus epidemic. That
event generates nearly all of the associ-
ation’s roughly $1.1 billion in normal an-
nual revenue.
According to its 2020 Division I Rev-
enue Distribution Plan document, the
NCAA had been scheduled to distribute
just under $600 million directly to con-
ferences and schools from April 15
through June 10.
NCAA chief financial officer Kathleen
McNeely said in an interview with USA
TODAY that all of this year’s distribution
will be made in June, probably early in
the month.
The reduction’s impact on schools
might vary by conference. Some of the
NCAA money goes directly to schools.
But most goes to conferences, which, in
turn, have revenue-sharing arrange-
ments.
Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby
said during a conference call after the
NCAA’s announcement that the confer-
ence maintains an operating reserve
“and we have some money beyond that
that was a result of money that we with-
held last year for another purpose.” So
its schools might feel no impact unless
the football season is affected by the
pandemic.
“It’s a whole new ballgame if we find
ourselves not playing football,” Bowlsby
said.
Division I public school athletic de-
partments generally received 2% to 5%
of their total operating revenue in fiscal
2019 from the NCAA, including reim-
bursements and payments for hosting
championships, schools’ annual finan-
cial reports to the association showed.
USA TODAY compiled the schools’ fi-
nancial reports in partnership with
Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse
School of Public Communications.
The NCAA makes its annual revenue
payouts from nine separated pools.
Each is allotted a different amount and
each has a different methodology for de-
termining how much goes to each con-
ference or school. The best known of
these pools is based on how well teams
do in the men’s basketball tournament.
That pool, like others, favors the
wealthiest conferences. The NCAA is at-
tempting to mitigate the impact of this
year’s reduced distribution on lower-
revenue conferences by leaving un-
changed the amount of money in a pool
divided equally among the 32 basket-
ball-playing conferences, then reducing
the amount in each of the other pools by
a little more than 70%.
The association said that of the
$225 million total distribution, $50 mil-
lion will come from NCAA reserves. The
association also has a $270 million
event cancellation insurance policy
connected to the tournament, and the
proceeds, when received, will be used to
pay off a line of credit that the associa-
tion will tap as needed.
NCAA chief executive officer Donald
Remy said the association also is “triag-
ing an examination of all of our (associ-
ation-wide) programs to see where wecan cut costs,” and McNeely said efforts
are being made to cut the national office
budget.
Although event cancellation insur-
ance claims can bog down in a variety of
disputes, McNeely said the association
has been in touch with its primary un-
derwriter “and we feel pretty good about
where the claim is at this point. We be-
lieve our fact pattern for a claim is very
strong.”
How the NCAA plans to work out
matters with its primary multimedia
and marketing rights partners, CBS and
Turner, remains to be seen. Moody’s In-
vestors Service issued a report on the
NCAA’s credit rating on Tuesday that
was based in part of the association re-
ceiving 30% of the $827 million it was
scheduled to get in 2019-20 from CBS/
Turner, Moody’s vice president and
senior credit officer Dennis Gephardt
told USA TODAY.
Remy said he could not comment on
the terms of the CBS/Turner agreement
because they are confidential but “we
are continuing to have conversations
with all of our media partners about the
circumstances and what the future is
going to look like.”The NCAA’s contract with CBS/Tur-
ner currently is scheduled to run
through 2032 and has more than $12 bil-
lion remaining on it.
In 2004, the association began set-
ting aside money as hedge against a
possible catastrophic event that would
affect the end-of-season basketball
tournament, and by 2014 that fund grew
to nearly $400 million. However, at the
direction of its governing board of col-
lege presidents, the NCAA distributed
$200 million of that money to schools to
help them with increasing costs and
spent it on their behalf in other ways, in-
cluding a $208.7 million legal settle-
ment.
Remy said the current remediation
plan – insurance, plus a willingness to
use reserves and reduce revenue distri-
bution – was put in place in concert with
the board’s decision to spend the origi-
nal emergency fund.
As for that spending, he said, “We’ve
seen a lot of good done on campuses as
result of the” $200 million distribution
to schools.Contributing: Paul Myerberg, Dan
WolkenNCAA makes big cut in school payouts
The NCAA is working on ways to handle the loss of revenue from having the men's basketball tournament canceled.
KIRBY LEE/USA TODAY SPORTSSteve Berkowitz
USA TODAY
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