VMI Athletics announced Monday that the school will begin providing compensation to student-athletes under the terms of the NCAA House settlement starting in the 2026-2027 academic sports year.
Terms and totals were not made public in the press release announcing the pending move; the school did note that the money for the compensation to student-athletes “would be derived from private contributions for such purposes, and not from tuition and fees paid by cadets and their families.”
According to the Knight-Newhouse College Athletics Database, student activity fees accounted for $6.4 million (36 percent) of the $18.9 VMI Athletics budget in fiscal year 2023-2024, with private donors providing $8.6 million (47 percent).
The House settlement caps payments to student-athletes at the D1 level to $20.5 million per year, a total that itself would surpass the 2023-2024 VMI Athletics budget.
Let’s assume that VMI isn’t intending to commit anywhere near the cap to its annual House settlement outlay.
Even so, gonna have to hit the private donors up for at least a couple million more per year going forward.
“Competition is part of who VMI is as an institution. It builds leaders, instills discipline, increases challenges, develops resilience, and provides opportunities for support by the Corps of Cadets,” said Lt. Gen. David Furness, the new superintendent at VMI.
The press release noted that the House settlement was finalized earlier this year “while the Institute was going through a leadership transition.”
That “leadership transition” was a self-own on the part of the VMI Board of Visitors, which forced out Maj. Gen. Cedric Wins, a VMI alum who was the Institute’s first Black superintendent, at the urging of soon-to-be-former Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a MAGA Republican who made fighting civil rights progress a focus of his administration.
Eight of the 10 member institutions of the Southern Conference opted in to the settlement for the 2025-2026 academic sports year.
The Citadel has since announced its intention to opt in to the settlement, leaving VMI as the last SoCon member to opt in.
“Opting in to the House settlement will allow the Institute to recruit talented individuals who first seek the leadership challenge provided by VMI’s unique method of education but also wish to continue competing in their sport at the Division I level. Our coaches and athletics staff are committed to building a culture that adds value to the leadership journey of the entire Corps of Cadets and to each cadet-athlete,” said Jamaal Walton, the athletics director at VMI.
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Chris Graham
