College athletics has officially entered a new era.
On Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Claudia Wilken issued a long-awaited final approval of a settlement in the landmark antitrust case that paves the way for direct sharing of revenue between schools and thousands of athletes while upending decades worth of tightly held college amateurism rules.
“Despite some compromises, the settlement agreement nevertheless will result in extraordinary relief for members of the settlement classes. If approved, it would permit levels and types of student-athlete compensation that have never been permitted in the history of college sports, while also very generously compensating Division I student-athletes who suffered past harms,” Wilken wrote in her order, which was posted slightly after 9 p.m. ET. “The reaction of settlement class members has been very favorable, as only a very small fraction of them have opted out or objected. The Court will, therefore, grant final approval of the settlement agreement.”
The $2.8 billion class-action settlement was first approved by the NCAA and Power 5 conferences in May 2024 before slowly making its way through the Northern District of California court in a process that was anything but expedient and straightforward. At a final in-person hearing that took place on the day of the Division I men’s basketball national championship game this April, several objectors raised enough issues around thorny subjects, such as proposed roster limits, that caused Judge Wilken to threaten to send the case to trial if changes were not made.
Both parties quickly reworked select parts of the agreement in recent weeks that were later submitted to the court and subsequently had much of the college athletics world waiting for Friday’s final go-ahead for new rules to come into effect on July 1.
“Many looked to April’s hearing about the House settlement as a culmination of sorts, but the court’s final approval of the settlement in fact marks a new beginning for Division I student-athletes and for the NCAA,” NCAA president Charlie Baker said in a statement. “Approving the agreement reached by the NCAA, the defendant conferences and student-athletes in the settlement opens a pathway to begin stabilizing college sports. This new framework that enables schools to provide direct financial benefits to student-athletes and establishes clear and specific rules to regulate third-party NIL agreements marks a huge step forward for college sports.”
The end result is a significant change to the entire college athletics ecosystem. The settlement actually wraps up three antitrust cases against the association and its member schools. In addition to the namesake lawsuit that was originally filed in 2020 by Arizona State Sun Devils swimmer Grant House and then-Oregon Ducks women’s basketball player Sedona Prince, the deal also addresses issues raised in the (focusing on academic awards) and (challenging rules against performance pay) cases.
While the top-line $2.8 billion figure is certainly an eyebrow raiser, the NCAA and its fellow defendants were on the hook for upward of $20 billion had the case gone to trial and lost. The total amount is set to be paid over the course of the next 10 years, with the tab being split 60–40 by the Power 5 conferences and the remainder covered by the NCAA and the rest of Division I in the form of reduced distributions for the next decade. Players who participated in college athletics going back to 2016 will receive most of that—save for hundreds of millions in attorneys fees—with the bulk directed toward football and men’s and women’s basketball players whose lost NIL opportunities were at the heart of the case.
The forward-looking sums are nothing to overlook as schools across Division I will now be able to “opt in” to the settlement on a yearly basis and share revenue directly with their athletes up to a predetermined cap. For the upcoming 2025–26 school year, that mark is set at $20.5 million and all Power 5 conference schools will be required to opt in, though plans for how that money is distributed will vary in terms of the total amount and how much athletes get depends on campus priorities.
In addition to the back damages and pending revenue sharing, there are two other notable tenants of the settlement that are set to change the nature of college sports.
The most controversial from a legal perspective concerned new roster limits for every Division I–sponsored sport. In the past, teams were mostly limited by the number of scholarships they could hand out, such as the longtime cap of 85 in FBS football or the dozen in women’s volleyball. Moving forward, programs will face a hard cap in terms of the number of players—football is moving to 105, for example—but can offer full scholarships to everybody on the roster.
This is expected to greatly increase the number of athletes getting a full ride to their respective school, but will come at the expense of some players’ spots on a team in so-called equivalency sports like rowing or swimming (where overall numbers greatly exceed the number of scholarships handed out). This was perhaps the most contentious part of the settlement over the course of the spring, with objectors raising enough concern over the issue to ultimately force Judge Wilken to withhold final approval until things were amended to include such roster limits already in place over the next few years for those currently on a team or set to be enrolled as freshmen this fall.
On a day-to-day perspective, most athletes and administrators will have to come to grips with another key aspect of the settlement concerning name, image and likeness deals. While there has always been a bit of a Wild West element to the burgeoning NIL space, the settlement attempts to rein things in significantly, particularly with regard to payments coming from booster collectives.
Moving forward, all deals with athletes over $600 will now have to be submitted to a new clearinghouse—dubbed “NIL Go”—that is being run by accounting firm Deloitte and will attempt to determine if such agreements are market value. For those deemed to be above such a benchmark, the deals can either be sent to a neutral arbitrator for review or can be turned down by the athlete. Players who still accept such deals, and even the schools themselves, could face punishment for a new enforcement apparatus that is separate from the NCAA which is set to police such aspects of the settlement and will have penalties ranging from fines to withholding eligibility.
To support all this foundational change, the NCAA’s Division I Board of Directors approved changes to nearly 150 rules in the organization’s byzantine rulebook in April that were contingent on the approval given by the court this week.
Another unprecedented aspect of the settlement is the impact it will have on enforcement of both existing NCAA rules and those terms mandated over the next 10 years as part of the injunctive relief approved by the court. The power conferences incorporated a separate limited liability corporation this spring called the College Sports Commission, which is tasked with overseeing the cap on revenue sharing and empowered with enforcing rules surrounding NIL moving forward—taking the latter away from the NCAA’s existing group overseeing such cases. A source confirmed to that Bryan Seeley, MLB executive vice president of legal and operations, is set to become the organization’s CEO and will soon become responsible for adjudicating many aspects of the settlement with schools, players and possibly even boosters.
While the final settlement in the Housecase is set to upend the status quo in college sports virtually overnight, the changes the larger enterprise is set to undergo will not stop with Wilken’s signature. NCAA leadership has been active on Capitol Hill the past few years lobbying for an antitrust exemption from Congress and has even drawn the attention of the current administration with talk of a presidential commission—fronted in part by former Alabama Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban—being floated in recent weeks.
Meanwhile, the courts will continue to soak up their share of billable hours. The settlement is expected by many in the legal community to draw additional lawsuits challenging parts, or all, of the issues it addresses and there remain several other notable class-action suits already making their way through the system. , which challenges direct compensation on the basis of athletic performance, is one notable example and there are dozens of other pending cases involving athlete eligibility that have been filed in numerous states across the country.
Such concerns will be saved for another day, however, as the furious amount of planning that has gone on in recent months at athletic departments across the country will finally go into overtime in order to hit next month’s start date that, finally, became official on Friday.
