JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT) - 2025 will see a new era of college athletics.

Colleges and universities can now pay its student athletes directly. A judge made the decision Friday night.

This is slightly different from the name, image, and likeness (NIL) deals athletes have been getting over the past few years.

When it comes to NIL deals, they deal with third parties paying athletes.

This ruling allows athletic departments to pay athletes.

Lieutenant Governor Delbert Hosemann said this is a move he saw coming.

“Most people are concerned that this is the next step in a pay for play relationship,” said Hosemann. “The thing that they’re creating is called a college sports commission and it’s going to be run by the Big 4, the ACCC, Big 10, SEC, Big 12, they’ll all run a commission.”

With this new ruling, here’s how things will work:

Schools can share up to 22% of their athletic department revenue with student-athletes.

For the upcoming school year, each college or university will have $20.5 million it can use to pay its athletes.

The $20.5 million can be distributed across all sports.

Hosemann believes deciding how much money each sport gets is where things will get interesting, especially when it comes to the sports that don’t bring in a lot of revenue.

“I don’t know that they’ll get any funding under this formula,” the lieutenant governor said. “There will be difficult decision to be made by athletic directors how much are we going to do for women’s basketball, or track, or tennis.”

Hosemann said he’s also concerned with local athletes leaving Mississippi to go play college ball at bigger schools out of state.

“I worry that we won’t have as much money as a Texas or a Michigan or some from these others may have with their NIL or whatnot. That would be difficult for us to compete here because we have a smaller base. Certainly, on the basketball side where you’ve got a Georgetown or a Villanova paying $2 million for their starting basketball guard, we’re not going to be able to do that, we’ll have a much lesser budget.”

Paying student athletes has been a hot topic for years.

Although many have advocated for athletes on the collegiate level to get paid, Hosemann believes this new ruling will put schools in the Magnolia State at a disadvantage.

“Certainly, someone like Southern Mississippi may not have the economics that some of the other teams do for their TV revenues, so that will be a challenge for them,” Hosemann explained. “Mississippi State and Ole Miss will have to decode how they’re going to spend the $20.5 million. Our smaller universities, Jackson State University, has got a rich tradition from way back when. They’ll be at a disadvantage from the standpoint of being able to pay people like the SEC people can pay. There are some advantages and disadvantages. Times are changing and the young men and women deserve to be compensated.”

As a part of the new ruling, the NCAA will pay roughly $2.8 billion in back damages over the next ten years.

That money will be paid to athletes who competed from 2016 to now.

This new ruling that now allows colleges and universities to pay its athletes will be in place for the upcoming school year.

Want more WLBT news in your inbox? Click here to subscribe to our newsletter.

See a spelling or grammar error in our story? Please click here to report it and include the headline of the story in your email.

Copyright 2025 WLBT. All rights reserved.