§ 131.007.Distribution of Damages

A distribution rule that answers who the conference’s claim ultimately benefits.

A regional association that prevails in an action under the conference provision shall distribute the awarded damages to its member institutions in the same manner that it regularly distributes proceeds it receives in connection with athletic contests.

"Shall" makes it mandatory, and the measure is the conference’s own existing practice rather than any formula the statute supplies.

That is a sensible choice. Conferences distribute television and post-season revenue by arrangements their members have agreed, and imposing a different allocation for these damages would be arbitrary.

The provision reveals the theory of the conference’s claim. The conference is not compensated for its own loss so much as acting as a collecting party for members who all suffer when a member is sanctioned.

Sanctions against one school reduce the conference’s television inventory and post-season standing, and that loss is shared across the membership.

Note that the offending school shares in the distribution. The section requires distribution in the regular manner, without excluding the institution whose program was penalised — which follows from using the existing arrangement rather than a bespoke one.

Nothing here limits an institution’s own claim. A school with a direct loss sues under its own provision and keeps what it recovers; this section governs only the conference’s recovery.