What was Kris Jenkins’ title-winning shot worth? We just found out.

What was Kris Jenkins’ buzzer-beating, confetti-releasing, three-point shot to win the 2016 national championship for Villanova really worth?

It is a loaded question, of course, and one that needs a bit more focus. What was it worth to him? What was it worth to the school? What was it worth to Jay Wright? What was it worth to the Big East? What was it worth to college sports at large?

The answers are all different.

Take a drive along Lancaster Avenue and consider the question as it relates to the university. Maybe those beautiful stone buildings, that 150-seat restaurant, and that new 85,000-square-foot performing arts center would be there by now anyway. But it’s hard not to connect the timing of that development to the Wildcats’ two national championships, in 2016 and 2018. Ask any athletic director about the importance of sports success, and they’ll wax poetic about sports being the front porch to a university.

Villanova’s athletics website sells a filmstrip collage featuring five frame-by-frame shots of Jenkins sinking North Carolina, along with a piece of the Final Four court, for $199. Memorabilia featuring Jenkins’ shot or his signature have popped up on eBay, Etsy, and other places where people could pay for a piece of history. Pay anyone but Jenkins, that is.

» READ MORE: From 2020: Kris Jenkins and Quinton Rose are expert witnesses on NCAA name, likeness, image changes | Mike Jensen

Eight years have passed since Jenkins etched his name into March Madness and Villanova history, and he still hasn’t really been paid for The Shot, at least not directly. Earlier this year, Jenkins partnered with Goldin to auction off his game-worn shoes from the 2016 championship game. The winning bid was $12,000.

Jenkins did not respond to multiple attempts to participate in this story.

Unlike some of his Villanova peers, post-college life has not brought Jenkins NBA fame and riches. His career took him to places like Sioux Falls, S.D., Yakima, Wash., and a small port city on Germany’s North Sea coast — all places a long way in prestige and mileage from Madison Square Garden, where the most famous Villanova hoopers from that heyday now play. Jenkins suffered a hip injury that stunted his playing career. He briefly rejoined the Villanova basketball program in a support staff role in 2020.

The Shot, in a lot of ways, has come to define him. In 2021, Jenkins told The Athletic while laughing: “I’m just waiting on the NCAA to send me my money.”

The emergence of name, image, and likeness brought that possibility. There were lawsuits, lots of them.

The NCAA and its member conferences agreed in late May to settle three antitrust lawsuits — House v. NCAA, Hubbard v. NCAA, and Carter v. NCAA — that stand to change dramatically the college sports landscape and the payment structure related to athletes. The settlement includes back pay to athletes dating back to 2016, and while it won’t be a windfall to many of them, it will at least provide payments — likely in the tens of thousands for most — for their services.

As news of the settlement broke, Jenkins shared a post from an X account with his picture and news from the settlement that stated the back payments “will largely be allocated based on the athlete’s ‘market value,’” which Jenkins responded by posting a few exclamation points.

Some replied wishing Jenkins congratulations. “Time to get yours,” one person wrote.

But the immediate reaction to the settlement left out the fine print.

Jenkins and the Big East aren’t included in the broadest class dating to 2016 as part of the House case. Only members of the Power Five and Notre Dame are, according to Hagens Berman and Winston & Strawn, the law firm that largely paved the way in the historic settlement. The House case rewards Power Five men’s and women’s basketball players, as well as football players, dating to 2016, and rewards all other athletes at Division I schools from July 1, 2021 onward. Classes defined in Carter and Hubbard reward athletes at all Division I schools from 2019 and beyond. Jenkins graduated in 2017.

Why not a larger pool? Class-action attorneys typically like to make their classes as narrow as possible, and judge Claudia Wilken had already shown to be amenable to cases involving the Power Five, the conferences that generate the most revenue.

» READ MORE: After landmark settlement agreement, ADs have more questions than answers on the future of the NCAA

All of this comes with the caveat that Wilken has not yet approved the settlement, and remaining cases are still tied up in the courts.

But for now, lawyers representing college athletes, the NCAA, and its biggest conferences have decided that Boston College’s right guard in 2017 deserves money, and Kris Jenkins does not. That Arizona State swimmer Grant House deserves money, and Phil Booth, the other 2016 Villanova hero who won another title in 2018, does not.

The Big East is responsible for four of the last eight men’s basketball national championships but is not worthy, those parties decided, of being considered for broader back payments. The conference whose current king coach, Dan Hurley, was just wined and dined by the Lakers, whose list of other coaches features the likes of Rick Pitino, Shaka Smart, Greg McDermott, Thad Matta, Sean Miller, and Ed Cooley, was deemed not on the same tier as Vanderbilt football.

It should come as no shock to anyone that the settlement details were the latest example of Power Five football running the world, a reality that Big East commissioner Val Ackerman objected to in a letter to her members.

It’s not yet clear what kind of compensation Jenkins would have been awarded if he was part of the class. But at least he could have had some closure.

“Man, if I could have used name, image, and likeness, I’d not only have a lot of money in my bank account, I’d probably be living in a penthouse right about now,’’ Jenkins told The Athletic jokingly in 2021. “I would have really lived a bachelor life. I definitely deserved it. Hey NCAA, if you read this, I want it all.”

What was Kris Jenkins’ shot really worth? We just found out. The NCAA and others read it all. The answer, for now, remains the same: The shot was worth nothing.