With Sept. 1 approaching and the NCAA vs. House settlement taking effect, college lacrosse programs from power conferences are taking action.
Earlier this week, Ohio State announced that director of men’s lacrosse operations Mo Lavallee has been promoted to general manager — a new role that includes oversight of the team’s NIL deals, donor relations and operating budget.
The position is one of the first of its kind in the sport.
“Mo is a difference maker,” Buckeyes head coach Nick Myers said. “In the ever-changing landscape of college lacrosse, Mo will be charged with making sure our men, and their families, are supported in every aspect of the Ohio State student-athlete experience.”
Like most trends in college sports, the rise of the GM started with football and men’s basketball. It’s part of a fundamental shift in the organization and administration of NCAA athletics programs that have opted into the new revenue sharing model that allows them to pay athletes directly for the first time.
Northwestern, for example, brought on veteran NFL scout and former Wildcats football assistant director of player personnel Christian Sarkisian to fill the role in May.
“It’s kind of cool to have someone like that to bounce off ideas and approaches,” Wildcats women’s lacrosse coach Kelly Amonte Hiller told USA Lacrosse Magazine’s Justin Feil earlier this summer. “He’s helping us calculate things and come up with strategies with the resources that we do have in place.”
Football and men’s basketball are expected to receive up to 95 percent of the revenue share, capped at $20.5 million for the 2025-26 academic year. With roster limits replacing scholarship restrictions, other sports have ramped up fundraising efforts to keep pace.
On the same day Ohio State announced Lavallee’s promotion, Virginia announced it had secured a historic $4.5 million scholarship endowment commitment for women’s lacrosse — the largest to a women’s program in UVA history. It includes a $3 million gift from an anonymous donor and a 50 percent match from the university’s Bicentennial Scholarship Fund.
The gift fully endows three scholarships, “just a portion of the broader capital needed to sustain a top-tier program in today’s rapidly evolving landscape,” the university’s press release stated. “The NCAA recently increased the scholarship cap from 12 to 38 for women’s lacrosse programs, and many peer programs are already moving quickly to fund all 38 scholarships. For Virginia to remain competitive, it must keep pace. This moment calls for bold investment — and it’s just the beginning.”
