It’s been a couple of weeks since the House vs. NCAA settlement was approved, allowing revenue sharing and paying athletes directly. Now, athletic departments are dissecting and making changes to best utilize this change for the betterment of their university.

Last week, West Virginia University announced a new NIL initiative, Gold & Blue Enterprise, set to help student athletes navigate this upcoming era of college sports with revenue sharing. This initiative isn’t something new, and WVU even said in the release that it was modeled after other universities’ strategies.

The release is pretty broad about what this type of initiative will actually do, so the person tasked to lead WVU into this new era, Athletic Director Wren Baker, sat down for a question-and-answer session to talk about G&B Enterprise.

Baker said it’s not part of the athletic department, but it’s managed by it. The main purpose of the initiative is to create and grow revenue sources. The revenue sources could come from outside events, licensing WVU to restaurants or entertainment districts.

The strength of this initiative is that it can quickly adapt to the ever-changing world of college athletics. There are other collectives, like WVU Foundation, but that’s more creating and investing money.

“It is really to set us up for the future of college athletics,” Baker said. “We need an organization that can move at the speed of light and move at the speed of current trends.”

The revenue sharing settlement didn’t come without guardrails, though. Each university can only distribute $20.5 million to student athletes across its sports. This created the issue, though, of what sports get money and how much money.

Experts speculated that football would get 70-80% of the money, and then basketball 15-20% and the other sports get the rest. Some departments have better football or better basketball, or their claim to fame is their fencing, so it’ll depend on the athletic department to decide where to spend the bulk of the money.

WVU is one of the schools that has a popular football and basketball program, and with the success of baseball and women’s basketball, those sports are growing in popularity too.

Where will the money go? Baker didn’t completely give percentages, but he said it’ll depend on how much money each sport brings in.

“We really look at what percentage our sports are contributing to those revenues that we are sharing, and we are giving a corresponding revenue sharing out to the sports that are contributing,” Baker said. “Not all sports are contributing, but all of our ticketed sports are contributing at least something. They get a revenue share back out.”

The other guardrails created were the governing body of the College Sports Commission, led by former MLB executive Bryan Seeley. Seeley and his commission are in charge of deciding which NIL deals over $600 are acceptable.

College athletics is a unique organization that’s difficult to govern. Multiple people have influence. It’s influenced by donors, board members, coaches, agents and student athletes. There isn’t ownership like in professional sports.

Because of this, Baker and WVU have welcomed the guardrails, even with the issues they’ve created. Baker thought the new guardrails were necessary for the future of college sports.

“You cannot have a system that’s totally unregulated, unrestricted free agency at all times,” Baker said. “It just doesn’t work… I think this gives us a chance to keep broad-based programs. I think this gives us a chance to have a system to build three and five-year budget models around, and really start to plan for the future.”

Baker and G&B Enterprise will attempt to lead the WVU athletics into the future. This year, the student athletes have done their part, so now it’s on Baker and G&B Enterprise to take advantage and grow to keep WVU competing each year.

“I’m really proud of the work our coaches and student athletes are doing,” Baker. “I have not hid from the fact that we need to grow our revenues. We are in that bottom third of the league in terms of our budget. We are growing. We are moving. I think we have been increasing our revenue streams 5-6% a year, but we have to continue that growth and trajectory.”