USTFCCCA CEO Worried By Future Of Track With House Vs. NCAA Settlement

In September, Sam Seemes, the CEO of the United States Track And Field And Cross Country Coaches Association, made one last pitch to Congress.

Meeting along with lobbying groups in Washington, D.C. to outline the stance eight separate collegiate coaches associations took with House vs. NCAA, the class-action settlement expected to be signed on April 7 which could make collegiate athletes employees of universities and advance back payments to former athletes, Seemes argued that if it was passed, Olympic sports would be at risk of being devalued by universities across the United States.

Some programs, in fact, may even be on the chopping block, he said.

“Right now, the conversation is one-sided,” said Seemes, who’s been the top executive of the USTFCCCA since 2005. “Everyone is talking about how great the House settlement is for student-athletes. Well, in certain parts.

“But in other parts,” he continued, “it won’t be great for student-athletes. If this does get enacted and approved, what are the consequences of it?”

The consequences of that billion-dollar settlement, which first saw preliminary approval by Judge Claudia Wilken of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in October, 2024, were of the utmost importance for Seemes.

What Is House vs. NCAA

If House vs. NCAA – an anti-trust lawsuit which also contains three separate cases: House vs. NCAA, Hubbard vs. NCAA and Carter vs. NCAA – does gain approval in April, the agreement would dole out just under $2.8 billion in retroactive payments to collegiate athletes from before the start of the NIL era in 2021 back to 2016, with just over 80-percent of that money going to former men’s football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball players. The other 20-percent would be divided out to athletes in sports like baseball, softball, volleyball and track and field, among other sports.

More importantly for Seemes, though, would be the flip side of that conversation. It would jumpstart a world in which current college athletes can be paid through a revenue-share system opted-in by Division I programs, which are estimated to pay out $22 million annually to Power Four schools by the 2025-2026 academic year.

The consequences of that decision, Seemes believes, will be the added pressure on athletic budgets, the elimination of available scholarships and even the outright elimination of sports. So far, the agreement would allow for a boost in scholarship sizes to sports across the NCAA: men’s football will go from 85 to 105, men’s baseball will bump from 11.7 to 34 and men’s track and field will go from 12.6 men’s scholarships to 45.

But the likelihood of those “perfect” scenarios playing out in real time are farther from the actual truth. Most collegiate programs won’t suddenly just decide to raise their level of scholarships from 12.6 in men’s track and 18 in women’s track.

Because for each new scholarship a men’s program adds, Title IX balance will be required on the other side, meaning there’s a likelier outcome that more women’s scholarships are added in the collegiate system as a result of the House vs. NCAA.

How Scholarship Limits Will Impact NCAA Track And Field With House vs. NCAA

On top of that, for each new scholarship that is added, according to a report by LetsRun, it will subtract from the revenue sharing cap up to $2.5 million.

Roster limits could also have another unintended effect: One Auburn University swimmer recently added a letter to the House vs. NCAA docket which explained that he would be forced to pay nearly $30,000 if he was no longer an athlete with benefits like healthcare, tutoring and dining.

Then again, money is money. Track and field budgets will already be strapped if the agreement comes to fruition over the 2025-2026 academic year. History has told us that athletic departments do not deal well with pressure. In 2020, as fears around COVID placed athletic programs into limbo, universities like Minnesota, Clemson, Brown, Akron and Central Michigan cut track and field teams.

It was only after public backlash and the risk of lawsuit from those very decisions that administrations were put under fire and forced to change, with some colleges deciding to U-turn.

“When there is extreme pressure, that is when I’d say most of the time, we as humans make our worst decisions,” Seemes said. “We become more reactionary to the situation. But we need to try to stay out of that reaction mode, and I would say in track and cross country, we need to raise our position on how we’re viewed by becoming more valuable.”

House vs. NCAA Will Force Track And Field To Change

Seemes used his time on the podium at the annual USTFCCCA coaches conference in Orlando, Florida in December to touch on what’s at stake while he was in front of NCAA track and field and cross country coaches.

“Let me be blunt,” Seemes said during the convention. “Our sports are under siege. Not in some distant future, but right now. The threats are real and they’re immediate.”

He spoke about the vanishing of opportunities for track and field athletes on campuses, shrinking budgets, the elimination of coaching positions and fear that other sports – perhaps like flag football or e-gaming – could take over in the position of track programs in the not-so-distance future.

Seemes, of course, was an apt arbiter for that position. The 72-year-old from Kentucky competed in high school track in the 60s, competed at Western Kentucky in the 70s, coached at Louisiana State University for 13 years and has overseen the direction of the USTFCCCA for the last 21 calendar seasons in track and field.

He’s seen the highs and lows. And to be honest, he isn’t even quite sure when the sport was first under attack by changing guardrails.

“It’s escalated over the years,” he said. “You can’t pick out a date of when it first started, but it’s become a bigger and bigger problem in recent times.”

Right now, however, he’s seen a public decline in interest in the sport.

How Track And Field Programs Can Enact Change In World Of House vs. NCAA

Which is why Seemes and those seven other leaders from coaches associations met in Washington, D.C., over a three week period in September. A month earlier, in August 2024, the USTFCCCA released an op-ed imploring Congress to reexamine the settlement and put an emphasis on protecting Olympic sports.

The biggest risk now, Seemes says, is in how track and field is being presented to its audience. How can this sport adapt in the modern era?

But what he’s really saying is that track and field teams on college campuses are missing opportunities to monetize their product in front of a captive audience.

Recently, he has stressed to the USTFCCCA’s delegation of coaches at all levels the importance of creating value.

Issues like hosting meets and charging for parking, that’s easy enough. But changing the perception of track and field for casual fans? That will be the more difficult proposition. Seemes has advocated for optimal schedules, better television partnerships and stellar draws with star matchups at major meets. He also wants to see more college programs hosting meets on their own campuses, or finding a solution to meet the demands of today’s market.

If programs don’t do that, he says, there are bigger problems.

“I would say the biggest thing we’ve got to do is we’ve got to find ways to get exposure for our sports,” Seemes said. “We’re not going to find a way to get exposure for our sports until we can find a way to have a presentable product that is consumable, and that when people see it, it will bring joy to them. But the reason we’re not getting that done is because, as a sport, as coaches, it’s much easier to find reasons not to do something, than it is to have the will and find a way to do something.”