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Jonathan Perrin (Zachary Lucy/Four Seam Images)

The phrase “a new era of college athletics” has gotten a lot of run over the past decade thanks to the advent of things like NIL and the transfer portal. As of July 1, 2025, fans of college athletics—especially baseball—find themselves in yet another new era. 

For college baseball, the results of the House v. NCAA settlement mean an increase to 34 scholarships for programs wanting to fully fund. Schools can also now provide “direct institutional support for talent acquisition,” allowing programs to pay athletes as independent contractors to play at their schools.

Jonathan Perrin, a former Oklahoma State and Brewers minor league righthander who now works as a certified financial planner, joined the latest episode of BA’s ‘From Phenom to the Farm’ podcast to discuss the winners and losers of this new phase of college baseball.

And he can easily point to one obvious winner. 

“The biggest winner (is) the SEC,” Perrin said. “It just means more down there. There are certainly levels to this in terms of levels to investment when it comes to NIL, and even, quite frankly, legislation at the state level … They have the most money, they have the most resources and I think you can see in the transfer portal with the types of players they’re getting, they are just offering numbers that schools in other conferences can’t offer.”

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On the opposite end, mid-major programs that lack resources of Power 4 schools—especially ones coming off highly-visible postseason runs like the recent displays from Murray State and UTSA—will struggle to keep a roster together. 

“It used to be you run to Omaha, and the coach gets a contract extension or he’s going somewhere else,” Perrin said. “Now, it’s the coach gets a contract extension or he’s going somewhere else, and your entire starting nine is thinking about the same thing.

“Murray State had a player just recently go in the portal, and go to Ole Miss—if you can’t beat them, pay them to come to your school.”

Mid-majors have naturally always had a tougher time building an Omaha contender than Vanderbilt or Tennessee, but that task has become even more difficult. Teams that have the financial resources and allure of a big conference mean the path to contending in the postseason for mid-majors will require a specific type of roster creation. 

“You gotta be old, and you’ve have to have played a lot of baseball,” Perrin said. “Junior college is going to be a huge component of that, where you’re able to get guys who have played a couple years of junior college baseball—they’ve played a lot of games.”

It’s easy to see benefits on the player side, as teams are no longer capped at finding a way to spread 11.7 scholarships across a roster. More scholarship availability, plus NIL dollars for top contributors, means less out-of-pocket school cost and more money being paid to baseball players than ever before. 

However, for Power 4 schools, that means players viewed as fringe roster types—like preferred walk-ons who would previously have found themselves on a P4 roster—could lose out in deference to teams choosing to allocate their resources to proven contributors at lower levels. College rosters have never been older, meaning there’s less opportunity for young players to slot into a power conference lineup. 

This also affects the draft decision for high school prospects. Initially at the onset of the NIL era, some draft-eligible players were asking for higher figures to sign because they had NIL leverage. But the increased age of Power 4 rosters could lead some players to opt for the clearer developmental path of pro ball. 

“It’s really hard for freshman right now to get playing time, especially at P4 schools,” Perrin said. “Agents and parents are starting to realize that, ‘Wait a second, if my end goal is to get to the big leagues, what is the best opportunity to make that happen?’”

Although the new rules may keep some players from reaching campus, it could keep older players around for another year. Draft-eligible juniors and sophomores landing in the 11-20 round range who teams are unlikely to break into their bonus pool for might actually lose money in the short run by opting for pro ball. 

“That $150,000 bonus is not what it used to be,” Perrin said. “There are a lot of kids in college baseball this year who are going to make more than that … Ff you’re getting $150K to go play for the Royals, and Arkansas or LSU are paying you $250K to stay here, I can’t speak for everybody, but I’m going back to school in that situation.” 

Even top Power 4 programs are going to feel the strain when it comes to tapping their finances to keep up with competitors. For top talent out of high school and in the portal, the NIL bill comes due yearly, and programs who want a yearly seat in Omaha will need top-tier facilities. 

“The demands on the recruiting base and the alumni donor base are going to be so much higher moving forward,” Perrin said.

It’ll take years for the ramifications of the July 1 changes to be fully understood, but in year one, the theme of this new era of college baseball is clear. 

“It’s going to very much be a financial arms race when it comes to being competitive,” Perrin said.