The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - University Of Houston Eddie Nunez Joins to Talk UH Cougars & College Athletic Landscape.

Episode Date: August 22, 2025

University Of Houston Eddie Nunez joins to Talk UH Cougars & College Athletic Landscape.

All right, our good friend, Annie Nunez, Vice President Inter-Coletian Athletics, with this hour on the radio program to talk all things about college athletics. So I tease the audience. I said, you know, I'm going to ask you to bring me a dummies guide to NIL and paying athletes and what you can do and when you can't say and what you can do and how you can leave them to your collective. I don't know if there's a book like that, but when there is one, can you send me a, a copy because I'm confused as hell right now. Well, I think you're in the same basket as a lot of people.

And I feel bad because people ask me about it. And I don't have an answer because my general response is that if an athlete wants to go somewhere, they'll figure out a way to get it done. And the schools will figure out a way to find that money for the kid. So there's real, the cliff notes version of it is NIL has come a long way, even in the last several years. If you think back when this first happened with. it happened with Ed O'Bannon. And he challenged the NCAA, and that opened up Pandora's box.

And last several years, we lived in a world of NIL. That NIL world that we lived in started well with a lot of unknown. It went into a whole different era of kind of more paying, got close to pay for play, but it wasn't. There was still a lot of business actions that were working. And then where we are today, that opened up many lawsuits, of course, throughout the last several years. case, the settlement, opened up an opportunity called RefShare. And this is where we are today. RefShare is basically an opportunity for every athletic department.

If they choose to revenue share up to a certain percentage with your student athletes, that percentage, that amount is roughly about 22% of the Power 5 or Power 4 now, athletic department revenues. So it equates to this year $20.5 million that we are allowed, that is our cap, to revenue share with our student athletes. You can spend all 20.5. I can spend zero. I can spend zero.

But as a power four member, that is the ACC, the Big 12, the Big Ten and the SEC, those four conferences are mandatory. If you are a member, one of those that you are going to be revenue sharing. Again, doesn't say how much, but I have to revenue share something.

We made a decision at the University of Houston to be all in, just like everybody else in the Big 12 and basically everybody else in the power 4. That's going to give us a chance to compete. Now it was hard. We had to do some things within our budget. We had to work with our campus.

We had to work with our board to make sure we were able to do what we were trying to do. That revenue sharing, how it's distributed to every one of our teams, it depends on each institution. But across the board, there's a pretty basic standard that football is your highest revenue sport,

basketball, men's basketball, and so on and so on and so on all the way down. And so those two are going to always have the higher percentages. Some schools will always do football at a much, much higher, you know, revenue distribution than what others do. For us, we want to invest more in basketball, still keeping football at a high, high level. At the same time, being able to do something for most sports. We've also added scholarships.

That's part of this process, too. With this has allowed us to open up some scholarship limitations that were there in the previously. So some sports have been able to add scholarships. Others have been able to do revenue sure. So that's the revenue component. The old NL, though, NIL that we are today, though, is true business purposes. If you as a business owner wants to do an NIL deal with a student athlete, we will give you that access to those student athletes, be able to go out and they'll if it's perform a commercial or do something for it for that work purpose. as long as it's within that market value, that...

The clearinghouse, revenue, you know, everything else, they have a chance to be able to do it. So we're coming a long way, but the one thing that is evident, and I keep saying this to everybody, we don't have all the answers. And we won't have all the answers until this continues to get closer and closer

to some federal legislation that allows bigger guidance and direction than we've ever had. So the $20.5 million, that's per season, correct? Per academic year? Yep. And for the next two years, though, it's going to go at 4% in the next two years.

And that's money that is at your disposal that you will choose to spend on programs according to what you as an athletic director in your department says. Yep. And I basically tell a coach, this is what your revenue distribution is. You can distribute it accordingly with your team as necessary.

I don't get into the minutia of if he wants to give this quarterback or this running back or this is power forward or this point guard. For me, it's about this is what it is. This is your cap. You can't go over it. And when do you give the caps?

Have you given your caps to your coaches? Yep. So that began. So starting July 1st of this year, we were able to start this process. So every program and in our department that was going to be doing revenue sharing started that process. What if one of your coaches and we'll throw your football and your basketball, let's say your women's basketball coach. You've got a brand new coach. Yes, sir.

I've got this. this top 25 kid that wants to come. And I can't get NIL because it's going to be harder for the non-REB sports, but you have the 20.5 that says, look, I need an extra $250,000. Can they come to you with that kind of stuff? They can come. They're not going to get it. But so you feel like you have to withstand a number that cannot go over the top.

You can't make adjustments on the fly. This is every institution. So what I've done with every program, as I've said, this is what you're getting. understand. If you spend it all, then I don't have any more to give you because we're going to maximize our revenue distribution. We're going to do everything we possibly begins. And I'm going to try to split it out. Now, if I save $20,000 at the end of the day and say, okay, I'm going to hold $20 over here just in case somebody needs a little sprinkling. We can do that. But because this is all still very new to us, we don't know what that's going to mean, how it's going to look. We also are using some of that money because part of this, This House settlement, $2.5 million of your 20.5 has to go to scholarships. So when I say that, any new scholarships that I open up, you have to utilize up to $2.5 million.

So in essence, I have $18 million that we can share within our department. And so our coaches within that distribution, this is what they know. And so the likelihood of them coming at the last minute saying, hey, I need $100,000 more. well, they already knew where we were when we started this. And come next July 1st, there'll be a whole other process. And so this is, they are in a very challenging position because it's not just that they're coaching their team, they're managing their rosters, they're doing everything they've been doing for years.

It's a salary cap too. It's a salary cap. It's everything. And then they're saying, okay, this young man or young woman, they're going to be leaving at this point. Okay, at that point, do the contract, how much have we paid them? So there's a lot of nuances that everybody's going through, and they have to have great coaches around them. Every one of our coaches is assigning somebody that's helping them within their own staff.

In our department, we have people that are helping them in all these different aspects. But, you know, and I use men's basketball because the success they've had, if you look back at the success they had, there's many reasons. But one thing that I keep referring to and I keep telling everybody, the consistency of his staff, the continuity of who he has, has and what they do and everyone knows their role and they all do a great job with it, allows coach to maximize how he communicates, who's responsible for what. Ultimately, he's his hands on everything, but he also has trust within Kellyn and others to be able to maximize and do things that they can do well. These kids are getting these dollars on a yearly basis. Can their number fluctuate? Yeah, oh yeah, everybody's done. So these are all negotiated with

their representatives or their agents. Some coaches decide, you know what, I'm going to do a use a roundabout number of $1,000 for every kid. Well, that's great. Some people will say, Matt, you're worth 10,000. Eddie, you're only worth 1,000. Yeah. Great.

That's a decision that was worked. And when I come in and that's what I decide with my representation and coach, if I say, okay, this is good, I'm going to sign it. You sign a contract. Everybody's on a contract. Because they're one-year deals, essentially. They're all one-year deals, essentially. So that's the reason why, frankly, we're seeing so many general managers now in college football.

Absolutely. Because, I mean, I love Willie, but I don't want Willie Bounds in. the books. I want Willie drawing up plays and go recruiting kids to come to school. You need others that have more of, I don't want to say expertise. I mean, that's the easiest way to say it, but that have an understanding of what managing this. And that's why I spent this summer time with a lot of the professional organizations here in town and others outside of the city asking questions, trying to understand rescher and how all that works. And I mean, I sat down with Patrick Furtita for a little while because, and many times, but one of the times

was to understand some of the dynamics and the nuances that they deal with with the rockets. This is in an essence what they do. And so, and they do a great job of it. They maximize their, their, the contracts that they have in place. They're maximizing and getting the most out of kids. Well, if you talk to him next time, tell him his radio broadcaster, could use a little bit more money in his next contract. So I don't know if you're going to see Patrick enough. If you could drop that in.

I will try to do what I can. On the NIL, which is completely separate. There's a clearinghouse. Yes, sir. That will say, we don't think you can pay a golfer $75,000 when there's really no marketability towards that golfer, unless the program is very popular and this person doesn't have an Instagram follow of $250,000. The clearinghouse tells you know, but if I want that kid bad enough, should we be concerned that there's going to be the back room deals? There's going to be the handshake deals. There's going to be the, well, this kid wants to come here, even though the clearinghouse said no, we'll take care of that person.

Well, again, the clearinghouse is saying no to that deal. The first thing they do is you're going to, if, let's just use an example, Coca-Cola is a great partner of ours. I'll throw a plug in for them there. Sure. And so they, if they come to you, Matt, say, hey, Matt, we want to sponsor a one of your players. Okay, well, I have to get this young man or young woman. Coca-Cola's willing to put $5,000, let's just say, into an NIL deal.

The NIL deal will be written up. you'll put in there or they'll put in there what they expect from it. That's submitted to the cleaner house. The cleaner house will basically say, okay, is it a true market purpose, business purpose? Is it in the range of compensation? Now, this is where you're going with this. Yes. We have a bigger range of compensation probably because of the city size here in the demographics and everything else.

So it should help you, yeah. It should help us. And that's what we're looking to partner more with some bigger partners here in the city, not just the small and the mediums, but everyone. at the same time, there's other schools that it can help as well. When you have brands like other schools at other institutions or other conferences that have a lot more tradition or their fan bases are more robust, they might have a same claim. They could say we have a stronger fan base.

Like Alabama has the entire state as compared to you're competing with all these Texas schools. And they have had success in a certain sport and they show it in this. And so that's the dynamics that we don't know yet how it's going to come to life. I do believe this first part is going to be a little bit rocky and bumpy with everybody as we go through it. They're going to come back and say it doesn't meet the range of compensation. Can you please redo this or it's not accepted? So we have a chance. Once we get it back the first time, we can redo it, add some more things that the student athlete has to do.

It's resubmit it. And if they see it then and say, okay, this now makes sense. You're doing a lot more work. That money equates to that. You're good. If they reject it at that point, then it's done.