Dear Bulldogs and Lady Techsters,
 
As I reflect on the past year leading this historic athletics department, I continue to be humbled by your enthusiastic passion and support. As Loyal Blue supporters, your generosity allows our student-athletes to participate and compete in the sport they love, while enjoying a quality athletics and educational experience. For that, and everything that you do, we are very thankful.
 
As I began this journey one year ago, I stated that "we have the ability, opportunity, and responsibility to dream big, bold dreams and we must not settle for anything less."  That statement remains as true today as it was a year ago. While the landscape of college athletics shifts around us, it is imperative that we continue to stay true to our vision and values.  Internally and externally, we have acknowledged that creating real movement requires an environment conducive to collaboration and enhancement.  Over the past year, we have made strides toward achieving that collaborative spirit and approach.   
 
Externally, we engaged in a series of "Tech Talks" and "Tech's in Town" events that provided an opportunity for engagement with our fans and supporters.  Through these events, individual meetings, and various surveys, we have gathered valuable feedback to help us enhance the game day experience across multiple sports.  Most recently, thanks to your feedback, we announced a new ticketing and donation structure that will streamline your purchasing and donor experience. Additionally, we introduced a fan/donor priority points system. These advancements will make supporting our student athletes more affordable and eliminate barriers for our fans.
 
In July, we launched our Bark Louder initiative to create a universal effort to engage, develop, and advance the Louisiana Tech Athletics brand.  We asked you, our ever-loyal supporters, to 'Bark Louder' with your time and talent.  With your time, we asked you to consume, support, and engage with the athletics department by watching and attending our events, engaging with our social media content, and wearing your Tech gear with pride.  Additionally, we asked you to invest your financial resources, knowledge, and abilities in the brand.  I am humbled by your response and how 'Bark Louder' is progressing.  At the end of the academic year, we will show you substantial results that originated from this initiative. Our message is consistent, everyone has time and talent to offer, and when you bark, we bark louder together!
 
The past year has been filled with staff reorganization. We have entirely new personnel in academic services, ticket sales and operations, and championship resources. Additionally, through the hard work and support of several individuals, we created our first broadcast and technology unit.  This unit has transitioned our ESPN+ broadcasts. Beginning with the current baseball season, this unit will be responsible for broadcasting all our non-linear television contests on the ESPN+ platform.  As a result of this unit creation, we will have significant cost savings from our previous arrangement and will be able to increase the amount of content we will be able to produce.          
 
Many of you have asked about the upcoming year and how Louisiana Tech will advance in the changing landscape of intercollegiate athletics. With the impending House vs. NCAA settlement, changes are coming, and we continue to work internally with our coaches, staff, general counsel, and conference to ensure we are in the best position to pivot and capitalize on these changes.
 
The House Settlement is a negotiated, preliminarily approved settlement between the NCAA, its conferences, and a collection of attorneys representing multiple class action lawsuits filed by student-athletes. The settlement continues to move through the approval process, with final approval hearing scheduled for April 7.
 
This agreement will fundamentally shift intercollegiate athletics operations. Should the settlement be approved as written, there are three main aspects that will have a profound impact on Louisiana Tech:

1) Back-Damage Payments: The settlement provides an estimated $2.8 billion in NIL back-damage payments for student-athletes. To cover damages, the NCAA will reduce annual distributions to all Division 1 member institutions.   The estimated total reduction of revenues for Louisiana Tech is $3M – $3.25M over 10 years ($300K – $325K annually). 

2) Revenue Sharing: The settlement removes previous restrictions and allows institutions to compensate student-athletes directly. Since 2021, student-athletes have had access to NIL deals with businesses and other third-party collectives (i.e. the Bulldog Community Outreach Collective). Along with this new ability to compensate athletes directly will come structure and rules that, in theory, should dramatically decrease any previous illegitimate NIL transactions (i.e. pay for play). While I believe collectives will still operate, our NIL efforts will be brought in-house to create a nimble structure that most benefits our student-athletes.  This structured approach will allow our supporters to directly enhance our student-athlete benefits while receiving a tax deduction for their gifts.

3) Roster Management: The settlement will also fundamentally change our approach to roster management. Teams will now operate under a per-team roster limit versus a scholarship maximum. While I believe this will provide some opportunities for institutions like Louisiana Tech through attrition and other operational realignment measures at the P4 level, it will bring on new challenges to our holistic approach to broad based sport success. Specifically, we will position our sports through fiscal and roster management initiatives, scheduling parameters, and ultimately, competition evaluation criteria. To achieve the desired results and to maximize our opportunities, we must focus on ways to increase revenue, while examining expense reallocation measures.

As a department, we have been working hard evaluating how the settlement will impact us. Through the Louisiana Tech Sports Performance Institute, we have developed and are launching a cloud-based General Manager system to support coaches, sport administrators, and staff in player acquisition and compensation models. Our partnership and collaboration with Victory GM will prepare us to be on the cutting-edge of roster management by:

1. Providing a platform to dive into performance analytics and identify position-related statistics that, paired with an AI model, will help us determine the per-game value of each position to build winning teams.
2. Providing a tool to identify, build, and set budgets based on total student-athlete benefits (scholarship, COA, Alston, NIL/Rev Share). This tool, combined with the performance analytics assessment, leads to a business-minded approach to distributing our student-athlete benefits, which should put us in position to compete for championships.

You are critically important as we continue to fine tune our efforts over the next several months. We are taking a competitive and balanced approach to the future of college athletics and working tirelessly to find our place within this new ecosystem. Together, we can and will continue to honor the past successes while creating and charting new ones.

Again, thank you for your continued and unwavering commitment to Louisiana Tech Athletics.

Go Dogs and Lady Techsters!
 
Ryan Ivey
VP/Director of Athletics
Louisiana Tech University