The University of Georgia Athletic Association's board of directors held one of its three annual meetings on Tuesday, the final meeting before the House v. NCAA settlement is expected to be approved. With approval date set for April 7 to go into effect on July 1, the board set Georgia's marching orders for the new world the Bulldogs will step into this summer, assuming the settlement is approved as expected.
As detailed by the Athens Banner-Herald, Georgia will pay the full allotment of $20.5 million, with football players getting $13.5 million of that. Men's basketball will take around $2.7 million, women's basketball $900,000, and other sports will get the remainder. Georgia will spend $2.5 million on new scholarships.
At roughly 66 percent, Georgia will be below where most expect major football schools to be in its so-called salary cap. Most around college football expect schools to allot 75 percent of their $20.5 million toward football.
To comply with the new roster caps as part of the House settlement, Georgia expects to go from 550 to 475 total athletes, but the number of scholarships will rise substantially, from 270 to 370.
Football will be part of that, dropping from 130 athletes to 105. It remains to be seen if the SEC will increase its scholarship limit from 85 to 105. At 105 players, each Bulldog football player would have a salary of nearly $129,000 before "traditional" NIL steps in.
"Not every school, not every conference will have those opportunities across the board like we are," AD Josh Brooks told the paper. "We think we’re going to be able to grow competitively in a lot of sports because of this opportunity.”
As always, stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.