Just a few years after the legalization of collegiate athletes using their name, image, and likeness (NIL) to profit, yet another “new era of college athletics” is upon us.

On Friday, June 6, Judge Claudia Wilken approved the agreement between the NCAA, the Power Five conferences, and attorneys representing all Division I athletes. While the Pac-12 has been reduced to just two schools since the initial lawsuit, the conference has continued to be part of the resulting rule changes, with anticipation for the arrival of six new schools in 2026, including Boise State, Gonzaga, and Colorado State.

The agreement is the result of three separate federal antitrust lawsuits that claimed the NCAA was illegally limiting the power of college athletes to earn money, specifically the lack of revenue sharing from media rights revenues.

Now, Power Five schools that opt into the settlement, including Penn State, can pay their athletes approximately $20.5 million in the 2025-2026 season directly for name, image, and likeness. This cap will increase by at least 4% every year for the 10-year agreement.

For Penn State, it is most likely that they will follow the back-payment formula outlined in the settlement to allocate its $20.5 million. This means 75% or $15.375 million will go to the football team, 15% or 3.075 million to the men’s basketball team, 5% or 1.025 million to the women’s basketball team, and 5% to the remaining sports.

Now, this is just an expectation, and the actual split of the money by Penn State has not been released. Since Penn State takes pride in its wrestling and ice hockey teams, more than other Power Five schools, there is a chance that these numbers are changed slightly to allocate more funds to those teams.

“We will share revenue with our student-athletes to the maximum allowable levels; through the new Legacy Fund and the existing Nittany Lion Club Excellence Funds, we will increase the number of scholarships we offer to our 800+ student-athletes, as the settlement removes NCAA scholarship limits,” Vice President for Intercollegiate Athletics Pat Kraft said in an open letter.

The scholarship limits that Kraft refers to are the second part of the settlement. In the past, the 43 sponsored NCAA sports did not rely on a roster limit to keep teams in check, but rather a scholarship limit. For football, this meant teams could have as many players on their roster as possible, but were limited to 85 scholarships. Now, teams will be able to give out scholarships to their entire roster, but will not be able to have more than 105 players on the team come the season.

For Penn State, this meant they were able to hold walk-on tryouts each season, looking for a diamond in the rough, such as Dominic Deluca, who slipped through the recruiting ranks. After beating SMU in the first round of the College Football Playoffs, James Franklin expressed his feelings about the loss of walk-ons.

“There are a ton of changes in college football, but this one that I’m struggling with because there have been so many special stories over the years of walk-ons, whether they’ve earned a scholarship or not, they’ve been such a significant part of the game and our history.”

While these new limits will take place on July 1, the Nittany Lions will not have to worry about cutting their 126-man roster this season. Wilkens made sure that the already rostered players are grandfathered in. Schools have the option to keep current players and exceed new limits until their eligibility expires.

“I’d like for these guys to stay a part of the program until they graduate,” Franklin said after the Blue-White game this year. “And a lot of these young men chose Penn State to get their degree from Penn State and play football. I think that’s one of the reasons why the judges decided this is you’re going to have people leave schools because they want both.”

Other notable roster size changes include baseball, which now adds 22.3 scholarships, men’s basketball, which added two scholarships, and wrestling, which added 20 scholarships. The sport that gained the most from the settlement is women’s acrobatics and tumbling, with 41 new scholarships. Somewhat surprisingly, women’s basketball saw the least change with no added scholarship players.

The ability to give more students scholarships helps Penn State exponentially. The Nittany Lions have the money and athletic backing to use scholarships to their full potential. A large increase in the talent on rosters, such as wrestling, would not be surprising, as Penn State can now hold on to talent for longer.

Another piece of the agreement making headlines is that the NCAA will pay nearly $2.8 billion in back damages over the next 10 years to athletes who competed from June 15, 2016, to September 15, 2024.

These damages will likely follow the aforementioned back-payment formula that allocates 75% of the money to football, with the remaining 25% going to other sports. The settlement is very clear that the damages are not for the schools but rather the athletes, with the amount each person gets based on an internal distribution plan.

Per 247 Sports, Penn State ranked seventh in the country in athletic revenue in 2023 with $202,200,023. This means former Nittany Lions will likely make a decent amount of money compared to athletes of less profitable schools.

One thing Nittany Lion fans can expect is that Kraft and Penn State athletics are more than prepared for these changes. The settlement has been pending for more than a year, with the expectation during the 2024 football season that an agreement could be found as early as May 2025.

“Penn State enters this new era of college sports in a position of strength and ready to attack this new collegiate landscape,” Kraft said in an open letter. “While change can be difficult, it also can provide new opportunities, and I assure you we will embrace every opportunity this new model creates.”