NCCU Eagles Commit to House Settlement Revenue Sharing While Navigating the UNC System’s Toughest Financial Picture

North Carolina Central University announced at its June 24 Board of Trustees meeting that its athletic department will opt into the House settlement, the landmark $2.8 billion antitrust agreement that, for the first time, allows Division I schools to share revenue directly with their athletes. The announcement came the same morning the university’s vice chancellor for business and finance, Laurie Wilcox, presented the board with a financial picture that underscores just how much discipline that commitment will require.

The two presentations, delivered within hours of each other, put a clear frame around the choices ahead for the Durham HBCU. The athletic department is signaling it intends to keep pace with the new era of college sports. The finance division reports that NCCU remains the only institution in the UNC System that has not met the system’s minimum financial health threshold.

Opting in, with more costs likely ahead

Athletic Director Perkins made the commitment plain at the board meeting. “The House settlement creates new opportunities for student-athletes through direct financial support and expanded name, image, and likeness benefits,” the athletics presentation stated. “Continued support from donors, fans, and partners will be essential in helping NCCU sustain and grow these opportunities for Eagles student-athletes.”

That reality lands differently at a Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference program than at a Power Four school. Unlike programs in the ACC or SEC, NCCU does not receive meaningful television revenue to help offset the new cost of athlete payments. What the Eagles can deliver on the settlement’s promise will depend significantly on what donors and fans choose to invest going forward.

Women’s flag football could add further to the athletic department’s expense picture. The MEAC announced June 16 that it is adding the sport as a conference championship offering beginning in the 2026-27 academic year. Two-member programs, Norfolk State and Maryland Eastern Shore, have already committed to fielding teams. NCCU has not yet announced a decision. Flag football can be run on existing football fields with shared training infrastructure, which makes it among the lower-cost options for programs looking to expand women’s athletic participation, but it does represent an additional program cost for any school that adds it.

On the field and in the classroom, athletics have had a strong year. The department posted a cumulative grade-point average of 3.33, the highest in university history, and earned its best-ever academic progress score of 992 for the 2024-25 academic year, earning the program a $10,000 award from the MEAC Foundation. The men’s tennis program won the 2025 HBCU National Championship and qualified for the NIT.

A COVID funding hangover

Much of NCCU’s current financial position traces to decisions made during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Wilcox, who joined the university last year. Federal COVID relief dollars were a one-time funding source, but previous university leaders made recurring financial obligations against those funds. When the federal money ran out, the ongoing commitments remained.

“Now, we’re trying to correct that by making sure we’re generating revenue streams that are recurring to cover the costs,” Wilcox said at the board meeting. “We’re trying to find other expenses to reduce to get back to a point where we are operating at surpluses where we need to be.”

Deferred maintenance has compounded the problem. Aging HVAC systems have experienced what the university describes as “critical failures,” and NCCU is currently operating four temporary chillers, costing more than $30,000 per building per month. The university absorbed $2.1 million in unplanned repair and maintenance costs this academic year, on top of increased utility expenses. Wilcox said “small, stackable wins” are likely the key to NCCU’s financial recovery.

The only school below the floor

The UNC System measures the financial health of all 17 of its institutions each year using a four-part composite score. The system’s minimum threshold is 3.0. NCCU is the only institution in the system that has not cleared that floor. Every other UNC system campus, from Appalachian State to Winston-Salem State, finished above 3.0 on the composite score.

“We’ve got work to do,” Wilcox said at the board meeting. “The realities are that recovery is not going to happen overnight. Unless someone wants to step up and write an $11.1 million check to the institution.”

That $11.1 million figure addresses just one of four financial benchmarks that make up the composite score. Each benchmark measures a different dimension of financial health, and together they paint a detailed picture of where the university stands.

The first is the primary reserve ratio, which is essentially a rainy-day fund test. It asks: if revenues stopped coming in tomorrow, how long could the university keep operating? The UNC System requires institutions to maintain reserves equal to at least 40% of their annual expenses. NCCU came in at 36% in the 2024-25 school year. Closing that gap is where the $11.1 million figure comes from.

The second is the viability ratio, which assesses whether the university could cover its long-term debt, primarily from building loans and bonds, using available assets. Think of it as asking whether the university’s financial cushion is large enough relative to what it owes on its facilities. The target is 1.25 times, meaning for every dollar of debt, the institution should have $1.25 available. NCCU came in at 1.24 times. The gap is roughly $1.1 million.

The third is the return on net position ratio, which measures whether the university is getting financially stronger over time. It works like asking whether a family’s overall net worth is growing year over year. The UNC System sets a 6% annual growth rate as the benchmark. NCCU came in at 4.08%, reflecting progress but still short of the target.

The fourth is the net operating revenues ratio, which is the most straightforward of the four: Is the university bringing in more than it spends on day-to-day operations? The system looks for a 3.9% operating surplus as evidence that an institution is living within its means. NCCU came in at 1.43%, meaning it is generating a surplus, but a smaller one than the benchmark requires.

NCCU’s composite score has improved from the prior year under Chancellor Karrie Dixon’s leadership, and the university has cited this trend as evidence of improving financial position. The Raleigh News & Observer and WUNC News have both reported that the score has hovered around 2.0.

The road ahead

Dixon arrived at NCCU two years ago and has led efforts to reduce costs, improve financial management, and grow enrollment. She said enrollment growth has already contributed to the improvement in the composite score, and that adequate state funding for that growth is essential to the university’s continued financial progress.

“It’s going to take making the tough decisions, culture change, and transforming our mindset,” Dixon said Wednesday. “The Dixon administration is doing things differently.”

The university’s finance team presented a range of improvement strategies at the board meeting, including enrollment growth targets, revised student billing practices, investment portfolio management, and fundraising goal-setting. Reducing service contract costs and increasing minimum class sizes are also part of the plan. NCCU is also pursuing roughly $100 million in state funding to address its deferred maintenance backlog.

Board Chair Courtney Crowder offered a measured read of where the university stands. “We’re in the rough right now, but understand that we’ll come out of it soon,” Crowder said.

What the MEAC’s new sport means for member schools

The MEAC’s addition of women’s flag football comes at a time when every member school is deciding how to allocate limited resources. Commissioner Sonja Stills said the expansion “represents an exciting step forward for the MEAC and our member institutions” and reflects the conference’s commitment to growing women’s athletics.

Women’s flag football is set to make its Olympic debut at the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles, a moment that is expected to significantly raise the sport’s national profile. The NCAA has designated women’s flag football as an Emerging Sport, a status that puts it on a path toward full NCAA championship status as early as spring 2028. The MEAC now sponsors 16 championship sports.

For schools still evaluating the decision, the cost argument is more manageable than most new sport additions. Teams can practice on existing football fields and share existing training resources. That relatively low barrier is part of what makes it an attractive option for departments looking to expand opportunities for women’s participation without significant facility investment. HBCU Gameday has reported on how women’s flag football could serve as an equity game-changer for MEAC programs, noting the sport’s potential to address Title IX participation gaps and open new recruiting pipelines. But it is still an added expense, and for a program operating under NCCU’s financial constraints, every new obligation must be carefully measured.

Data Driven HBCU will continue tracking NCCU’s financial position and the MEAC’s development of women’s flag football as the 2026-27 academic year approaches. NCCU’s most recent athletic department financial data is available in the NCCU financial dashboard.