The Paris Olympics 2024 left the world with many unforgettable moments! Athletes breaking and making records, heart-racing finishes, and, of course, a lot of heartwarming moments. But as the last Olympics concluded, a new controversy began to simmer in the country that took 126 medals home. The Ohio State University’s Board of Trustees recently dropped a bomb that’s left the sports community in shock.

The board’s latest move? Ohio State is forming a new committee. This committee will focus on what President Ted Carter calls “the front porch of the university,” aka athletics. The committee had its first-ever meeting on August 21 in the hopes of better aligning with Ohio State’s athletic department and the trustees. It was during this 20-minute public session that Athletic Director Ross Bjork outlined the paradigm shift that was to happen. This essentially means that the funding will shift away from Olympic sports. The timing of this decision is an especially significant one!

As the Paris Olympics come to an end, athletic disciplines will soon fade from the spotlight. This also means that they will continue to remain less relevant for four years until the next Olympic games. Bjork went on to attribute seismic changes to the recent House settlement. Yes, you read that right. The House v. NCAA case challenged the NCAA’s name, image, and likeness (NIL). This settlement was truly a game-changer for sports in the US! It allows the schools to directly pay the athletes. A concept that the NCAA and its member schools have been fighting for. With a legal roadmap being laid out, collegiate athletics is likely to see a massive transformation over the next decade.

Wondering what exactly the settlement was? The settlement included a massive $2.8 billion in back pay to former NCAA athletes over the last ten years. Here, schools have the option to share up to 22% of their average athletic revenues. That is potentially more than $25 million annually! That’s a serious bundle of change. The new rules will also scrap scholarship limits per sport and impose roster limits.

A roster limit means Ohio could be looking at losing 150 student-athletes. Additionally, NIL regulations are to shift. Up until the new regulations came along, athletes had the freedom to engage in endorsement deals and other revenue-generating activities on an open-market basis. But with new regulations in place, a free-for-all market will shift to third-party entities, such as collectives or agencies, to manage and facilitate NIL deals.

The goal? To keep all 36 of Ohio State’s Division I teams intact. Carter, however, also emphasized that the university does not want to dip into taxpayer or tuition dollars to support every team. He went on to add, “We’ll still have scholarships, we’ll still have programs. Some of those sports may start to look and act a little bit more like a club sport, but yet compete at the Division I level and still travel and still compete.” As the dust begins to settle, fan reactions are pouring in. And they are anything but subdued.

“Business gonna business,” says a fan amidst OSU backlash after Paris Olympics

Fans are reacting with frustration to Ohio State University’s recent decisions. Reactions range from deep disappointment to a weary acceptance. One X user went on to say, “Really sad to see. For a real long time college athletics was designed to do the opposite of this. Now, with the rise in Women’s Basketball, Volleyball, Softball…and on the heels of an awesome Olympics…it’ll get slashed right before our eyes so football & men’s basketball teams can pay players more.”

Many are viewing this shift as a loss of the core values of collegiate athletics, where amateurism was once fundamental. The emphasis seems to have shifted from sports to financial gain. “People will say it’s fine. Watch. And they’ll be right for now. It’s the next generation this will matter. Just like it matters now what decisions were made a generation ago,” said one user. But this commercial shift has drawn very strong criticism too.

Another user echoing the same wrote, “Largely because these are businesses and not education. This is how the sausage is made.” “Business gonna business,” added another. Expressing disappointment, one of the users went on to say, “Well welcome to the new world. We never said it would be a better world.” One of the eagle-eyed fans went on to say, “Watch the US dominance in the Olympics start to drop off.”

As Ohio State adapts to these changes post-Paris Olympics, the real consequences are starting to emerge. The reduction in scholarship and roster limits could mean big trouble for less high-profile sports. Many fear that Olympic sports may become less prominent. “And make their ~$20 million in salary cap funds go ‘farther’ – paying fewer athletes – but with more money per athlete. Scholarship Olympic sport athletes may go the way of the dinosaur,” added a frustrated fan. With the NCAA dropping sports minimums for D1 programs, this marks a major turning point in college athletics. As one of the fans remarked, “Death of college sports is beginning.”

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