BC officials, disputing the figures cited in the report by The Athletic, say they’ve lived up to that promise. Still, the story has renewed debate about whether the school is doing enough to compete and about its future in the ACC.
Flutie, the 1984 Heisman Trophy winner whose statue greets fans outside Alumni Stadium, said in an interview with the Globe that he knows university leaders face tough choices.
“We can’t compromise the standards of the university or who we are,” he said. “Football is not the end-all at Boston College.”
The university could place greater emphasis on steering money to players, Flutie said, but it’s not clear if the payoff would be worth it.
“You’re spending all this money and then the team goes 8-4 instead of 4-8,” he said. “Is that worth it to Boston College as a university? I don’t know.”
One day after the report in The Athletic, coach Bill O’Brien denied that BC’s roster budget is between $8 million and $13 million. The true figure, he said, is in line with ACC counterparts Wake Forest and Pittsburgh — near the bottom of the pack at $16 million-$20 million, but not last.
Athletic director Blake James has since repeated that assertion, saying his department is distributing the maximum revenue-sharing amount allowed by NCAA rules: $21.58 million to athletes across all varsity sports.
James says the school devotes about 75 percent of that total — around $16 million — to the football roster, in line with guidance from a court settlement last year that opened the door for schools to share revenue directly with athletes. Another 15 percent goes to men’s basketball, with 5 percent to women’s basketball and 5 percent to other sports.
Other schools have blown past the NCAA’s revenue-sharing cap through a mix of sanctioned and shady methods to get money into players’ pockets, including third-party deals to monetize athletes’ name, image, and likeness (NIL). The average ACC football roster budget is $21 million-$25 million, The Athletic found, with the University of Miami an outlier at $44 million-$50 million.
That means it’s hard for BC to land top players — and to keep them. After last season, the Eagles saw 26 football players transfer to other schools. The team brought in 28 transfers this year.
“Right now, we’re a steppingstone for kids,” Flutie said. “If he does well, he’s leaving for more money. If he doesn’t, he’s leaving for an opportunity.”
In response to questions from the Globe, James said BC is “fully committed to navigating the new landscape of college athletics” and remains “highly competitive with our ACC peers.”
“We look forward to continuing to invest in our student-athletes and believe that our approach to revenue distribution, coupled with our external partnerships, provides a sustainable framework where our athletes can thrive during their time on campus and beyond,” he said.
BC behind in ‘third-party’ cash
Before last year, starting in 2021, college athletes were only allowed to be compensated through NIL deals, not by schools themselves.
BC officials acknowledge that the school has lagged behind in that area. Third-party money is “the next phase for BC,” O’Brien said at a Sept. 17 news conference.
“How are we going to, you know, really help the football program and the basketball program with third-party initiatives and things like that?” he said. “We’re working on that.”
Other schools have redirected revenue to players from apparel and multimedia rights deals, or had university-owned bookstores and merchandise vendors pay athletes hefty sums to make appearances, The Athletic reported.
There are also more “devious” tactics, the outlet found, such as “creative” booster deals written to pass muster with the College Sports Commission, an independent body that approves or denies each contract.
“You just have a lot of schools out there that are exceeding the [revenue-sharing] cap through what I’ll say is manipulating NIL opportunities for their student-athletes,” James said in an interview published by Boston College. “If there’s legitimate NIL opportunities, we’re for that.”
The BC athletic department has six staff members who have “some form of responsibility related to NIL,” James told the Globe.
The Van Wagner agency, Boston College’s multimedia rights-holder, also helps athletes secure marketing deals. James said the agency plans to add a full-time NIL staffer who will work out of BC.
“Being in a major media and corporate market like Boston gives our student-athletes a distinct competitive advantage, and we are working hard to tap into the local business network and our national alumni base,” James said.
In interviews, Boston College officials, former players, and other alumni said the unfettered nature of player compensation has played to the on-field disadvantage of an institution that prides itself on competitive admissions and Jesuit values. BC placed 31st in US News & World Report’s latest college rankings.
Mathias Kiwanuka, a defensive standout for the Eagles in the early 2000s who went on to the NFL, said he was skeptical of BC’s approach before making a visit to campus earlier this year. His perspective shifted, he said, as officials explained their dual commitments to the football program and to playing by the rules, even as competitors bend them.
“Doing it the moral, the ethical way may take a little more time, but doing it that way will be worth it,” Kiwanuka said.
Part of the challenge is convincing wealthy BC boosters to open their checkbooks to compensate athletes. Several alumni told the Globe they’re uneasy about the NIL system and prefer to support the school in other ways.
Doug Guyer, a quarterback in the 1980s before Flutie took over, said he and his former teammates support players being paid but don’t want to contribute to a “Wild West” system that encourages athletes to leave.
“I don’t know any of them that are saying, ‘My money is going to go to the NIL collective,’ vs., ‘It’s going to go to scholarships or certain other places within BC,’ ” Guyer said.
Mark Mulvoy, a 1964 BC graduate and former managing editor of Sports Illustrated, said he knows multiple big-time donors to the university for whom “NIL is a swear word.”
“They will not give money to NIL,” said Mulvoy, who began his career at the Globe.
Where do booster groups fit in?
In the early days of NIL, booster collectives were created to pool donations, help athletes score brand deals, and pay them for community service — all so teams could land star players and prevent them from leaving in the transfer portal.
Independent of Boston College, Friends of the Heights formed in 2022 and helped secure NIL deals for star receiver Zay Flowers, who decided to stay at BC after his junior year despite lucrative offers elsewhere. Friends of the Heights continued its work through the end of 2024, when it celebrated a $2.4 million fund-raising campaign.
But the group has seemingly played a diminished role since, mirroring nationwide trends. An NCAA rule change earlier in 2024 said athletic departments could directly facilitate NIL deals for athletes, something that wasn’t previously allowed. The nonprofit status of NIL collectives also came under IRS scrutiny.
BC told Friends of the Heights that the school would oversee NIL matters itself, said Scott Mutryn, a Friends of the Heights board member who played quarterback for the Eagles in the mid-1990s.
“They didn’t really need us because they could handle it on their own,” said Mutryn, who is also a sideline radio reporter during football games. “That was just a decision by the school, and we understood it.”
But James said it would be “inaccurate to characterize our relationship with Friends of the Heights as a ‘step back’ or a scaling down of operations.”
“With Boston College fully committing to direct internal revenue sharing, the daily baseline administrative framework naturally moved in-house,” James said. “This intentional shift actually empowers Friends of the Heights to optimize its impact by focusing on other fund-raising activities and philanthropic campaigns that will continue to directly benefit our student-athletes and keep our programs highly competitive.”
Asked about Friends of the Heights at the Sept. 17 news conference, O’Brien said the group “still exists.”
“But, you know, can we do more with that?” he said.
Boston College’s struggles in recent years have spurred conversations about whether the school still belongs in the ACC.
Beyond the football team — which is 2-3 to start this season — the men’s basketball program hasn’t had a winning conference record since 2010-11. The women’s basketball team is coming off a 5-26 season.
BC remains a contender in men’s and women’s hockey. The men’s team missed the NCAA Tournament last year but has won five national championships and reached the title game in 2024. Still, those teams don’t generate nearly as much revenue as the football and men’s basketball teams.
There’s incentive to stay: The ACC distributed $47 million to Boston College in the 2025 fiscal year, according to its latest tax filing. But it’s not a given that BC will be there forever.
The Rev. William P. Leahy, BC’s president for 30 years before he stepped down this summer, said in a parting interview that if the federal government doesn’t overhaul the current structure of college sports, he “would love to see like-minded schools form a national conference that places priority on academic success and the formational experiences of their student-athletes.”
The school’s new president, the Rev. John T. Butler, hasn’t publicly weighed in. Many fans are hopeful that “Father Jack,” who has served as a chaplain for the BC football team, will make athletics a priority. Through a university spokesperson, he declined to speak with the Globe before his inauguration on Oct. 16.
Meanwhile, an overhaul of the NCAA could be coming soon in the form of the Protect College Sports Act, which passed the US Senate last week. The bill would grant the NCAA a “limited antitrust exemption” to establish new rules for eligibility, transfers, and future conference realignment while raising the revenue-sharing cap to almost $50 million.
“I’m not saying that is exactly the way Boston College would write a bill, but that bill will provide some structure,” James said in the interview published by the university.
Mutryn said he believes in James, O’Brien, and university leaders to turn things around.
“I think there’s so much potential,” Mutryn said. “I really do.”
But he knows the perception. “It sounds [expletive] crazy,” he said.
Globe correspondent Trevor Hass contributed to this report.
Aaron Leibowitz can be reached at aaron.leibowitz@globe.com. Follow him on X @aaron_leib.
