Kirby Hocutt on Patrick Mahomes’ $5 million donation and the Texas Tech NIL program
Three-time Super Bowl MVP Patrick Mahomes has pledged $5 million to Texas Tech football projects and plans to sponsor six Tech athletes in NIL deals
Texas Tech athletic director Kirby Hocutt and his deputy Jonathan Botros announced this summer that Texas Tech’s athletic department would fully participate in revenue sharing for its athletes, part of the groundbreaking change on the horizon for college sports for fall 2025.
Hocutt is less sure about the extent to which Tech will increase its scholarship count, one of the key components allowed in the proposed settlement in House v. NCAA. Even in football, where programs could soon increase scholarships from 85 to 105, it’s not certain Tech will go there, at least not to the new limit.
“The answer is, I don’t know yet,” Hocutt told the Avalanche-Journal in mid-August when asked specifically about football. “We’re talking about it and (funding 105) could definitely be a scenario.”
But he said it’s not an easy decision, especially since Tech will do whatever it takes to allocate the maximum revenue share allowed to its athletes. Revenue sharing at the top end is set to be just over $21 million per year starting next year. To put that in context, Tech athletics’ operating budget for the school year that began last week is between $128 million and $129 million.
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The annual expenditure budgets of the technical athletics associations are in line with projected revenues, so $21 million will be required from new revenue sources and/or savings.
“There are other consequences and things we need to think through,” Hocutt said, “before we give our coaches the green light to expand their roster and their scholarship budgets. It has to be a comprehensive plan, from revenue sharing to increasing scholarships to continuing to comply with certain regulations.”
Any new scholarship spending up to $2.5 million must be deducted from the revenue-sharing amount. The same goes for spending on Alston scholarships, the education-related benefits for which Tech budgets about $1.7 million annually.
Several parties have filed legal objections to the settlement proposal, which still needs to be approved by U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken.
The settlement proposal was presented to Wilken in late July, and Yahoo Sports subsequently reported that, based on discussions with the heads of major conferences, many programs planned to increase their annual scholarship spending by $3 million to $7 million.
Due to Title IX considerations, Kirby Hocutt is hesitant to make scholarship decisions immediately
Hocutt takes a more cautious approach.
“We’re sitting here with a lot more questions than answers today,” he told the AJ. “Our coaches want answers, but we have to be very careful and very disciplined in our thinking because there are Title IX regulations that we have to continue to keep an eye on. We can’t just automatically expand our scholarships for men’s sports and think we can’t do the same for women’s sports. We also have to be conscious of the overall investment.”
Title IX is a federal law that requires schools to provide opportunities for women and men in proportion to the number of enrollments in each school.
The NCAA and the power conferences agreed in late May to settle three antitrust lawsuits involving nearly $2.8 billion in damages and future revenue sharing with athletes. Hocutt said Tech’s loss on the damages portion of the Big 12’s annual revenue sharing will be nearly $1 million less per year.
If the settlement proposal is approved, the NCAA’s longstanding scholarship restrictions in all sports would be eliminated and replaced with caps on roster sizes. Schools will be allowed, but not required, to offer a scholarship to every athlete on a roster.
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According to the proposal, all scholarships will be of equal value, meaning that universities can offer either a full scholarship or a lower amount.
Many low-revenue sports have long operated with equivalent scholarships. Baseball, for example, distributes financial aid worth 11.7 scholarships to a roster of more than twice that number.
Under the proposed agreement, the number of scholarships in football would increase from 85 to a new roster limit of 105, in baseball from 11.7 to a new roster limit of 34 and in men’s basketball from 13 to 15.
In some other Tech-sponsored sports, the numbers are increasing dramatically, such as women’s soccer (from 14 scholarships to a roster limit of 28, all of whom can receive a scholarship), softball (from 12 to 25), women’s volleyball (from 12 to 18), men’s and women’s track and field (from 12.6 and 18, respectively, to 45 each) and men’s and women’s cross country (from five and six, respectively, to 17 each).
In other Tech-sponsored sports, men’s and women’s golf would see scholarships reduced from 4.5 and 6, respectively, to a roster cap of nine each, and men’s and women’s tennis would see scholarships reduced from 4.5 and 8, respectively, to a roster cap of ten each.
Accommodation of walk-ons, minimum sports requirements still to be determined
Hocutt pointed out that too much still needs to be decided before one can commit to an improvement in a particular sport.
“Nobody knows yet how Title IX will be interpreted in terms of revenue sharing,” Hocutt said. “Does revenue sharing fit into the financial aid pot that Title IX specifically talks about? My personal opinion is that it does not, but at some point that will have to be clarified.”
“Unfortunately, I believe it will take litigation to provide clarity, or Congress will have to make a decision, or Judge Wilken will have to issue an opinion on how Title IX affects the revenue sharing pot, if that is the case.
“So the whole thing becomes very complex. It’s not enough to just say, ‘Yes, we’re going to increase scholarships for this sport from X to Y.’ Unfortunately, for us it’s not that simple.”
Since the early 1990s, major college football teams have had 85 scholarships but more than 100 players on their rosters, including non-scholarship players. When it became clear that the 85-scholarship limit would be eliminated and replaced by a roster of 105 players, potentially all scholarship players in power conference programs, many coaches raised the unwelcome fear that walk-on programs might be eliminated.
According to a scenario described by Hocutt, this might be the case in some places but not in others.
“You could give a full scholarship, plus any revenue share if we get to it,” Hocutt said. “Or you could give your 86th There will be no scholarships for any football players on your roster, but we will give you a revenue share of $30,000, which should cover your tuition, fees, books and board at Texas Tech. However, you will be responsible for covering the cost of your scholarship yourself.
“That’s why we have to be careful, right? Because there are parameters to scholarships and awards that you give from a Title IX perspective. That’s why it may be more beneficial to give a revenue share than an academic scholarship.”
Tech currently sponsors 17 sports teams, one more than the minimum required to be in Division I. That’s another looming issue.
“The 16-sport requirement is still an NCAA bylaw,” Hocutt said. “But there is no requirement in the House agreement regarding the minimum number of sports sponsors. So there is this House agreement that is driving a lot of the current planning and conversations on our campuses, and there are some things here that conflict with the NCAA bylaw. At some point, those two worlds are going to have to intersect.”
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