Syracuse Orange: With revenue-sharing on the horizon, SU Athletics hires its first GM

Beginning with the 2025-26 season, the Syracuse Orange and its peers in the Atlantic Coast Conference and around the country are likely to be able to directly pay their athletes for the first time ever, and the 'Cuse has created a new position within its athletics department to prepare for this seismic change in college sports.

SU Athletics announced via a press release that it has hired veteran sports executive Kevin Morgan as the athletics department's first general manager and chief revenue officer, a new role that will focus on "positioning Syracuse Athletics for success in the future of intercollegiate athletics."

First and foremost, a huge congrats and welcome from Orange Nation to Kevin, who most recently has served as the president of Morgan CS, a revenue consulting and implementation firm based in Chester, N.J., according to its Web site.

Morgan's hiring by SU Athletics comes as the NCAA and its major conferences, including the ACC, have agreed to let schools directly pay players to help facilitate a settlement of several pending antitrust legal cases at the federal level.

The landmark settlement still needs final approval, according to media reports. Assuming that approval comes, and it is expected to, schools will be able to share up to around $20 million in revenue per year with their athletes, although that amount could vary from school to school.

Plus, certain leagues, such as the Big Ten Conference and the Southeastern Conference, have more lucrative television contracts than other conferences, such as the ACC, a league whose media rights deal with ESPN I discussed not too long ago.

SU Athletics has created a new position within the Syracuse Orange athletics department.

Morgan, in his new role with SU Athletics, "will focus on growing existing and creating new revenue streams and provide day-to-day leadership and oversight of all revenue generating departments at Syracuse, as well as the budget office," according to a statement posted on cuse.com.

Among his prior positions, Morgan from 2016 to 2021 served as the executive vice president and chief revenue offer of the National Lacrosse League. He was also the chief marketing officer and chief revenue officer of the NHL's Washington Capitals, one of my hometown sports teams!

"With the college athletics landscape continuing to evolve at rapid and dramatic pace, our team must also continue to evolve to remain competitive at the highest level," said Syracuse Orange athletics director John Wildhack in the media release. "Kevin's depth and breadth of experience and broad skillset is exactly what Syracuse Athletics needs in this moment. Kevin will bring fresh perspective, big ideas and challenge us all to think entrepreneurially about how to advance our revenue goals."

Morgan, a 1991 graduate of William Paterson University in Wayne, N.J., and his wife, Nicole, have three children, Michael, Juliana and Cole.