BMatt’s Monday musings

AUBURN | College athletics took an important and necessary step toward its future last week approving approximately $15 billion to settle the House, Hubbard and Carter antitrust cases.

It’s a step, however, into a dark and murky maze-like future with no discernible conclusion in sight.

And frankly, that’s OK.

The settlement, which must be finalized by a judge, includes approximately $2.8 billion in back damages to be paid out over 10 years to athletes that played from 2016-2020 and a new revenue-sharing model to begin for the 2025-26 season.

The revenue sharing will consist of approximately $22 million to start out, which will include scholarships.

The settlement will also eliminate scholarship limits and allow full scholarships for all players on a roster. New roster limits per sport will have to be finalized but it’s a big boost to sports like baseball, which previously had to divide 11.7 scholarships between approximately 30 players.

And yes, more problems remain starting with exactly how Title IX will figure into revenue distribution. That issue could spawn a new round of lawsuits, and what will it mean for Olympic sports?

There’s NIL and NIL collectives. The NCAA wants to bring them in-house and strictly regulate them. The courts and some boosters see it differently.

While revenue sharing should bring some stability and consistency to how athletes are compensated, there will likely be some schools, perhaps many, that will feel like they have to continue to pay top athletes in football and men’s basketball even more to win those key recruiting battles and retain those players for as long as possible.

There’s also the continued supplication by NCAA executives, conference commissioners and school athletic directors to congress to pass legislation to better regulate the antitrust issues in college athletics and keep athletes from becoming employees.

This continues to feel like a long shot to me with more lawsuits including the Johnson case and several rulings and pending rulings from the National Labor Relations Board that could grant athletes employee status in the near future.

For now, there remains so much unknown about the future of college athletics and it’s impossible to predict what it will look like in five or 10 years.

Still, I see plenty of positives. First of all, it's about time college athletes started getting compensated for the $14 billion in annual revenue and rising they bring in every year.

I see advantages to athletes becoming employees, which would give schools the opportunity to collectively bargain and have enforceable contracts that could benefit college sports and be an avenue to reduce transfers and stabilize rosters.

With this much money and history at stake, I feel pretty certain that all the parties involved will eventually reach an equitable solution.

And while the structure of college athletics remains in flux, the big games, upsets, pageantry, rivalries and everything that makes college sports so great will continue.

All the changes and uncertainty shouldn't distract you from the sports and competitions that you love.

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In today’s musical journey, we go back 42 years to the day of the opening of a hit film in a franchise that included a new theme song based on a line from the movie. On May 28, 1982, Rocky III starring Sylvester Stallone opened in theaters. It includes a new song by Survivor, “Eye of the Tiger,” which Stallone asked them to write and record for the movie after being denied permission to use Queen’s “Another One Bites The Dust.” The third movie in the franchise featured Mr. T as Clubber Lang facing off against Rocky, who is now coached by his former adversary, Apollo. It grossed $270 million worldwide, which was second-best in 1982 behind E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The song spent six weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 100 and was the second best-selling single of 1982. It won a Grammy Award for Best Rock Performance by Duo or Group with Vocal and was nominated for the Best Original Song at the 55th Academy Awards, losing out to “Up Where We Belong” from An Officer and a Gentleman. “Eye of the Tiger” was written by guitarist Frankie Sullivan and keyboardist Jim Peterik and included a riff that matched the timing of punches during the film’s opening montage. The band sent Stallone a demo, which he ended up using in the movie, while the band rerecorded it for the single and album. “Eye of the Tiger” was used as Auburn football’s entrance song during a period in the 1990’s and has been a staple of the AU band for decades.

Survivor was formed by Sullivan and Peterik in Chicago in 1978. The name of the group came from Peterik missing out on a plane trip to make a guest appearance with the band Chase in 1974. The plane crashed killing Bill Chase and most of his band. Peterik was referred to as a survivor in the liner notes of his 1978 album, Don’t Fight the Feeling. Two former members of Chase’s band, drummer Gary Smith and bassist Dennis Keith Johnson, were added to Survivor along with singer Dave Bickler. The band has cycled through more than 20 members over more than four decades with Sullivan the only one remaining from the original group. Survivor’s first two albums, 1979’s Survivor and 1981’s Premonition, didn’t produce any hit singles. Their breakthrough came with “Eye of the Tiger,” the band’s only No. 1 single, and their fifth album, 1984’s Vital Signs, which included two top 10 singles in “High on You” and “The Search is Over,” and another top 15 hit in “I Can’t Hold Back,” and coincided with Jimi Jamison replacing Bickler as lead singer. They nearly had another No. 1 single with 1985’s “Burning Heart,” which was also commissioned by Stallone as part of the Rocky IV soundtrack. A final top 10 single came in 1986 with “Is This Love.” Survivor has produced eight albums and remains active to this day. Jamison passed away in 2014.