The Florida Board of Governors on Wednesday approved the state's public schools to temporarily use university funds to pay athletes.
With the House settlement finally approved earlier month and set to come online July 1, several Florida universities asked their governing body for permission to use "auxiliary" funds previously forbidden from athletics departments in order to meet the $22.5 million revenue-share cap.
Auxiliary funds are those raised by universities that aren't directly related to teaching students -- i.e., housing, bookstores, parking. The deal runs for the next three years.
The Florida Board of Governors manages 12 universities within the state, eight of whom compete in FBS -- Florida, Florida State, UCF, South Florida, Florida Atlantic and FIU. Warchant's story notes that Florida State was pushing especially hard for permission to use auxiliary funds to meet the rev-share cap due to uncertainty around the ACC; FSU, Clemson and the ACC have since dropped all their lawsuits against one another as part of a new plan to pay the conference's top brands more than the rest of the league.
In March, the American Athletic Conference (of which USF and FAU are members) established a minimum of $10 million per school in revenue-share over a 3-year period. It's not immediately clear if any Sunshine State schools beyond Florida State plan to tap into auxiliary funds for a portion or all of their rev-share allocation, and/or if they plan to use university funds to go beyond any conference-mandated minimums. FIU and FAU did not immediately return messages seeking comment; USF told FootballScoop no decisions had been made at this time and would provide an update when appropriate.