The NCAA and its most prominent athletic conferences are ready to enter their revenue sharing era, but final approval of their future plans may rest on how many athletes they’re willing to bring along for the ride.
In a hearing last week about lingering concerns with the proposed settlement in House v. NCAA, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken encouraged stakeholders to revisit the roster limits that will likely take effect on July 1 — limits that have already led to some athletes getting cut.
Wilken, who granted preliminary approval to the settlement in October, specifically suggested phasing in roster size adjustments so that current college athletes, as well as top high schoolers, don’t lose their spots.
“My idea is … grandfathering," she said during the April 7 hearing, according to USA Today. “It’s not that many people. It’s not that much money.”
But in their latest filing with the court, representatives of the NCAA and Power conferences made no changes to the roster limit plan, arguing that adopting a different approach at this point would cause “significant disruption.”
“Member institutions and student-athletes have been making decisions in anticipation of the roster limits being immediately effective if the Settlement is approved,” the filing said.
Wilken can’t actually force changes to the settlement during this phase of the legal battle, but she has final say on whether the settlement is fair and can go into effect.
Respondents, including athletes who are unhappy with the NCAA settlement, had until Tuesday night to file their own brief with Wilken about whether it should be approved.
New roster limits
Roster limits are just one part of the complex House v. NCAA settlement, and, until this month, they weren’t getting nearly as much attention in the media as aspects of the proposal related to back pay for past athletes, revenue sharing with current athletes and enhanced oversight of NIL deals.
But the attention on them has rapidly ramped up as athletes have shared their stories about losing a spot on their dream team or being forced to reopen their recruitment amid roster adjustments.
The roster limits ended up in the settlement because they enabled the drafters to address a couple of different issues, including the challenge of keeping the playing field level when different schools have very different budgets.
The limits go hand-in-hand with a new rule allowing programs to offer scholarships to all athletes; previously, there were scholarship limits, rather than roster limits.
With roster limits, the NCAA and conference leaders are trying to ensure that programs with smaller budgets can afford the additional scholarships and new revenue-sharing obligations.
They’re also trying to ensure that wealthier programs don’t take advantage of the new scholarship rules to put together huge, unbelievably deep teams.
But the roster limits will undoubtedly lead to lost opportunities, including for potential walk-ons who might have developed into stars if given the chance.
In a column for the Deseret News in February, Doug Robinson argued that, under roster limit rules, programs like BYU’s track and field teams will no longer be able to do what they do best: capitalize on unrealized potential.
House v. NCAA settlement
In their Monday filing, leaders from the NCAA and top conferences did make adjustments to other aspects of the settlement, including the rights of future athletes who will be affected by the settlement but didn’t have a say in how it was put together.
The filing says that future athletes will retain the right to challenge the settlement in the future, according to USA Today.
As they explained new adjustments, the people behind the filing continued to argue in favor of approval of the settlement.
“These revisions further confirm what over 99.9% of the class members have apparently realized — the Settlement Agreement is fair and reasonable, and should be approved so that its benefits can fully flow to the classes," they wrote.
An update from Judge Wilken on the NCAA settlement is expected any day.