Thousands of Former College Athletes Are Sharing $208 Million From the NCAA. Here’s What They’ll Do With It.

In college, Drew Ferris never had a part-time job, unless you consider Division I football — summer training, weekend travel, film study, daily lifting and practices, totaling “four to six hours a day, year-round,” he said — a job.

The NCAA didn’t. It still doesn’t. From 2011 to 2014, when Ferris served as a long snapper for the University of Florida’s football team, he was on a scholarship covering tuition and books, a meal plan, and housing.

That was fine by Ferris. He was thrilled to earn a scholarship after making the team as a preferred walk-on during his freshman year. It covered most of his expenses, but the cost of living in Gainesville, Fla., was not limited to books and food. Ferris’s parents, back in San Diego, chipped in for things like going to the movies or buying toiletries, and even if he wanted a part-time job, Ferris said, the football-heavy schedule left little time.

Some of his teammates weren’t so lucky. One worked on Sundays, at a Publix checkout, to make extra cash. Another took a part-time gig moving heavy boxes in the offseason.

Meanwhile, the football team was making — and spending — plenty. In Ferris’s four scholarship years, the program reported almost $300 million in revenue and more than $109 million in expenses. A multimillion-dollar video scoreboard had recently been constructed at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, and Will Muschamp, the head football coach, signed a deal that would compensate him $2.75 million each year.

“From my experience,” Ferris said, “there’s nothing amateur about college football.”

That’s still at odds with the current NCAA model, but lawsuits alleging antitrust violations have sought to chip away at policies limiting athlete compensation.

Last week the $208-million settlement that concluded one of those cases, the class-action lawsuit Alston v. NCAA, cleared its final hurdle. A former West Virginia University athlete had alleged that Power Five conferences and the NCAA colluded to put in place scholarship caps that did not cover the full cost of attendance. The NCAA changed its policy to allow extra scholarship money in 2015.

The settlement applies to Division I men’s and women’s basketball and Football Bowl Subdivision players who competed from 2010 to 2017 — 53,748 athletes in total.

Jonathan Wills, who played basketball for the University of New Mexico and California State University at Fresno, had just finished a workout last week when he got a text message from a friend, a former University of Southern California football player, who had big news: The settlement checks they’d long been awaiting would be on their way by August.

Most checks will be a few thousand dollars, depending on years played and which college. Ferris expects a check for about $5,800, which he’ll use for training — he plans to continue his long-snapping career — or a down payment on a Toyota Prius.

Stacy Davis IV, a former Pepperdine University basketball player who holds the program’s all-time scoring record, hopes to invest some of the $5,600 he’s expecting, and maybe take his daughter on a trip. His friend Allie Green, formerly on Pepperdine’s women’s basketball team, expects about $4,000. She’ll pay off some bills and rent, and deal with a few pesky parking tickets.

Living in Malibu, Calif., wasn’t cheap, but Davis, like Ferris, had financial support from his family. Green was more strapped for cash: Even with a full-ride scholarship covering meals and housing, the Sacramento native had to take out a small student loan for supplies like notebooks and pencils. Asked whether she could have held a part-time job while playing Division I basketball, Green said, “There’s no way.”

Neither Davis nor Green feel owed any money from the NCAA, but both acknowledge the reality of being a college athlete. It’s exhausting but rewarding, “some of the best four years of your life,” Davis said.

“Free money is free money,” Davis said of the payout, “but there were times where you struggle as a college student. So maybe having that money while I was in college would have been more beneficial than receiving this lump sum now.”

Otas Iyekekpolor shares that sentiment. The pro basketball player and former University of Central Arkansas athlete went to Conway, Ark., from Edmonton, Alberta, and as a Canadian citizen, off-campus job prospects were pretty much nil. Money was tight, so he worked as an intramurals referee and in the campus bookstore, on top of his pre-med classes and rigorous basketball schedule.

By his senior year at Central Arkansas, with a job and an unpaid internship at CHI St. Vincent Infirmary, in Little Rock, Iyekekpolor was putting in 18-hour days: up at 8 a.m. for class or work, then training, practice, intramural shift from 7 to 11 p.m., lift weights until midnight, dinner, and then asleep by 1 or 2 a.m. Repeat.

“I don’t want to speak bad on college as a whole because it was a vehicle to get me to where I am today,” he said. “I would say there are definitely improvements and ways that could make things more economically friendly for the student-athlete.”

Iyekekpolor thinks things have been easier for college athletes since the NCAA changed its policy on additional aid, but regarding his own experience, hindsight has given clarity. When Iyekekpolor was in college, former players would come back and criticize the NCAA, to which his thought was always: You probably had it so good.

“Now,” he said, “I kind of understand and see where they were coming from.”

Will Jarvis is an editorial intern at The Chronicle. Follow him on Twitter @willyfrederick, or email him at will.jarvis@chronicle.com.