This new expense is coming on the heels of a series of changes in NCAA rules designed to increase the benefits athletes are allowed to receive.

USA Today reports.

A new expense looms for college athletic departments

After years of sharply raising the compensation for some of their best-known employees, college sports programs across the nation are now facing the prospect of having to make substantial pay increases for many of their less prominent workers.

The U.S. Department of Labor, acting on a directive President Obama issued in March 2014, on Tuesday revealed changes in the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) that beginning this fall will basically double the amount of money workers must make to be exempt from federal overtime-pay requirements.

Absent an exception for colleges or some other form of intervention, this update to rules and salary thresholds that have been unchanged since 2004 could require athletics departments to start giving hundreds of thousands of dollars more a year in pay and benefits to an array of staffers from assistant coaches, to trainers, to ticket-office personnel.