Jon Palumbo did not want to comment publicly Monday on Georgia Tech’s athletic director search, or his candidacy for Tech’s AD position.
Palumbo, Tech’s interim athletic director, flanked James Ramsey during a news conference at Russ Chandler Stadium that introduced Ramsey as Tech’s new baseball coach. Palumbo is serving a role held until recently by J Batt, who was named the athletic director at Michigan State on June 2.
The shift in leadership for Tech comes at a somewhat inopportune time.
Friday’s ruling by U.S. Judge Claudia Wilken that approved a final proposal in the House v. NCAA settlement will allow NCAA schools to share up to $20.5 million with its athletes during the 2025-26 academic year ($2.5 million of that total is expected to be put forth to new scholarships for most schools). Wilken’s ruling has been anticipated for some time, and that expected ruling has allowed schools to prepare how to best navigate the coming changes to collegiate sports.
Tech’s leadership, including Batt and president Angel Cabrera, has not shied away from its stance to be proactive in providing Yellow Jackets, current and future, with more revenue.
“We’ve been preparing for the House settlement for over a year,” Palumbo said Monday. “We have a really good plan that we feel very confident about moving forward. We’ve been very thoughtful about our plan across the board.”
Tech has not publicly divulged how it will distribute the $20.5 million figure to its athletes, i.e., how much of that figure goes to football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, baseball, etc. The Athens Banner-Herald reported in February that University of Georgia football players would get at least 75% of revenue after scholarships, men’s basketball players 15% and women’s basketball players 5%.
The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal reported Texas Tech plans to distribute “74% to football players, 17-18% to men’s basketball, 2% to women’s basketball, 1.9% to baseball and smaller percentages to other sports.”
Clemson athletic director Graham Neff recently told The State newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, “Stopping short of exact percentages, it’s revenue share by definition. So we’re thinking of it as having proportionality to where our revenues are generated from and having that to be the methodology of how we look to allocate the dollars.”
Payments from the $20.5 million pool, which can begin July 1, do not include name, image and likeness deals athletes can agree to or be provided with through third-party collectives. Thus, the age of NCAA athletes potentially making very, very large sums of money is at hand.
“The House settlement will be the opportunity to create a stable way in which we can provide even more to the student-athletes, frankly,” Batt told The Deal podcast in May. “I think it’s really important that we say that. It creates stability, it creates fairness, it creates the ability to manage for long-term stability for the student-athletes.”
As for Tech’s immediate future in athletics, its search for Batt’s replacement is ongoing, and Parker Executive Search is assisting the institute in finding its next AD. That search is expected to conclude sooner rather than later — time is of the essence because of the impending dawn of the NCAA’s new era of paying athletes.
Until then, Palumbo will continue to drive the train.
“In the interim and beyond, having (Palumbo) here was something that was a big deal to me,” Ramsey said. “A lot of people were freaking out, right? Sending text (messages) saying, ‘What’s gonna happen?’ To have a faith in this guy means a lot because it’s been a multiyear relationship.
“I think Georgia Tech’s lucky to have him here, and I know President Cabrera has expressed the same thing that a lot of great work is continuing on here.”
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