Latest news with #collegeAthletics
New York Times
3 days ago
- Politics
- New York Times
Even after House v. NCAA settlement, college sports remain broken. But what else is new?
College sports are at an inflection point. Approval of the long-awaited House v. NCAA settlement was finally granted on Friday, a decision set to reshape the future of college sports. And yet, so much of the industry's future is still pinned to Congress and the hopes of federal legislation, all while private equity and 'super league' models circle overhead. President Donald Trump recently considered a commission that would explore the issues facing the NCAA and college athletics, with Nick Saban expected to be involved. Advertisement An enterprise that has long had too many cooks in the kitchen now has all three branches of government and outside financing getting involved. (Wherefore art thou 'stick to sports' crowd?) That's on top of the current power struggle over the future of the College Football Playoff, and the expanding competitive gap between the power conferences and everyone else. All of it underscores just how fractured and dysfunctional college athletics have become, with no quick fixes in sight. But for as dire as all of this might seem, it's not a death rattle, either. College sports are broken and in desperate need of reform. And college sports will be just fine. For too long the NCAA was trapped in amber, still trying to operate as a singular, all-encompassing, amateur production, while its most prominent sports and conferences leaned further into a big-money, professionalized business model. Prior court rulings and allowing athletes to earn name, image and likeness (NIL) compensation have chipped away at the old notion, but only after the NCAA got dragged along, kicking and screaming. The organization consistently opted for incremental half measures over effective reform, which is how we swung from full-ride athletic scholarships feeling grossly insufficient to the guardrails getting ripped off via lawless, pay-for-play NIL deals. Yet college sports keep hanging tough, resilient through change and mismanagement. The House settlement is the latest example, a $2.8 billion agreement that peels away at the last remaining vestiges of amateurism in collegiate athletics by allowing schools to directly pay athletes, yet fails to solve the industry's biggest underlying issue: The NCAA is still ripe for litigation. To be fair, the House settlement is an attempt to find that Goldilocks solution to athlete compensation, as well as revamp the broader governance of college athletics. It improves the status quo, most notably because more athletes will receive a bigger cut of the billions in revenue dollars that college sports generate. It also reflects a shift in posture by the NCAA since Charlie Baker took the reins from Mark Emmert as NCAA president in 2023, and the growing influence of the power conferences. Rather than risking more legal defeats (and financial ruin), the NCAA opted for compromise, bundling a trio of high-profile antitrust lawsuits into one agreement and footing a multi-billion-dollar bill. Advertisement Except it doesn't change the fact that the NCAA and power conferences are still trying to live in two worlds at once — the old and the new — a luxury that even this pricey settlement can't buy. There are still questions about years of eligibility, collective bargaining, athlete employment status, conflicting state laws, Title IX, third-party NIL deals, and the likelihood of Congressional intervening on any of it. Unless Congress or this presidential commission — which is currently on pause — can drum up some legislative action in relatively short order, the House settlement does little to stop the onslaught of legal challenges that have kneecapped the NCAA's authority, again and again. 'The House settlement started with the goal of the NCAA putting an end to the losses it has taken in these litigations all over the country,' Cal Stein, a sports law lawyer, said in an interview with The Athletic earlier this year. 'But the great irony is that it's really just going to lead to more lawsuits.' This lack of harmony plagues college sports beyond the courtrooms, too. Yes, revenues keep climbing, and that money is a direct result of the continued popularity. But don't mistake it to mean every development has been fan friendly. Dollar signs also funded the Great Consolidation of conference realignment and power conference autonomy, dismantling so much of the regionality and tradition that makes college sports special. As fans continue to suffer lost rivalries and increasingly transient rosters (and whatever happens with the Playoff), it's reasonable to argue that enthusiasm has dipped as a result, at least in some corners. But what is unassailable, by any modern cultural standard, is that college sports remain extremely popular, warts and all. College football is the second most-watched sport in America behind the NFL. Men's basketball recently had its best TV audience since 2017 for a Final Four, featuring four No. 1 seeds from power conferences. Women's basketball has experienced exponential growth in the past few years. Nebraska women's volleyball filled a football stadium with 92,000 fans in 2023, breaking the world record for attendance of a women's sports event. Stanford softball set the sport's all-time attendance record this season. Times change. College sports plow on. There's more change ahead. What a much-needed reset actually looks like for the industry is up for debate, and competing voices can haggle over how to best restructure college sports and what role the NCAA should serve. But the House settlement required years of mountain-moving negotiations and billions of dollars in restitution that will totally upend the industry — only to reiterate more is needed. Advertisement '(The settlement is) not the end of the story,' SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said during a recent panel discussion. 'It is a chapter. It's a necessary chapter.' That's a nice way of saying the current Frankenstein approach isn't gonna cut it, and is merely delaying the inevitable. Until then, history tells us to expect more of the same resiliency from college sports in this post-settlement era … or if the College Football Playoff expands (again) to 16 teams … or if the NCAA Tournament expands to 76 teams … or if the President invokes an executive order … or if some version of the power conferences break away in football to form a super league. One of the few constants in college sports is the ability to prosper in spite of themselves. Though it would be nice if that didn't always have to be the case.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
Canadiens: Larionov's Wish About Demidov Is Not Montreal's Command
Livvy Dunne on NIL and ensuring future female college athletes will benefit like she did Meghan Hall chats with Livvy Dunne about the world of NIL and how she's setting a course for future college athletes to succeed like she did.
Wall Street Journal
29-05-2025
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
The SEC Launches Its Latest College Sports Power Grab
This was already shaping up to be a seismic summer for college sports. For weeks, officials have been bracing for a multibillion-dollar antitrust settlement that will launch the sport into a new era in which colleges will share revenue with the athletes who help generate it.
Washington Post
16-05-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
In dispute over college roster limits, a trial could loom if judge doesn't approve latest proposal
The final arguments over the contentious issue of roster limits have been filed in the $2.8 billion NCAA antitrust settlement and it is once again up to a federal judge to determine the next move. In the eyes of one attorney, the choice is simple. Either U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken signs off on the latest proposal or it's on to a trial that would throw the college athletics into chaos for the foreseeable future.
Associated Press
16-05-2025
- Politics
- Associated Press
In dispute over college roster limits, a trial could loom if judge doesn't approve latest proposal
The final arguments over the contentious issue of roster limits have been filed in the $2.8 billion NCAA antitrust settlement and it is once again up to a federal judge to determine the next move. In the eyes of one attorney, the choice is simple. Either U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken signs off on the latest proposal or it's on to a trial that would throw the college athletics into chaos for the foreseeable future. 'She made it very clear,' said attorney Jeffrey Kessler, who represented thousands of players in the case against the NCAA and the nation's biggest conferences. 'She said, 'You have one chance to fix it.' I believe we 100% fixed it. If she disagrees, we go to trial.' Sent back to the bargaining table last month by Wilken, attorneys on both sides agreed to a proposal that would allow players who were cut due to the expected implementation of roster limits to regain spots on their previous teams or move to new ones; either way, they would not count against the newly implemented roster caps. Athletes objecting to this solution argued that the damage has already been done when their spots were lost. They urged the judge to reject the proposal and Friday was the deadline for the latest round of filings. Wilken is expected to rule soon — perhaps by next week — on whether to accept the latest proposal or put the possibility of a trial that likely wouldn't begin until at least next fall on the table. 'If they don't appropriately deal with how they harmed the current students, I would be surprised if she approved it,' said Mike Rueda, who leads the sports and entertainment division at the law firm Withers. 'That was her issue previously, that they prematurely took steps before the settlement was approved.' One brief filed on behalf of athletes objecting to the solution spoke bluntly about that harm. It noted that 'our firm has continued to receive emails and phone calls from class members and their parents telling us of student-athletes who would be harmed by the immediate implementation of roster limits. Many communications have included words like 'unfair,' 'blindsided,' 'chaos,' 'harm,' and 'disservice.'' In initially rejecting the roster-limits part of the settlement, Wilken suggested players be 'grandfathered in' to their spots through the rest of their college careers. The roster limits in the overall plan would cut the sizes of teams but would make everyone on those teams eligible for a full scholarship. In women's swimming, for instance, this would eliminate up to 10 spots per team but could add as many as 16 scholarship opportunities. The plaintiffs' attorneys argue this is just one of many benefits that would come out of a settlement, the core of which is designed to allow schools to directly pay players for use of their name, image and likeness, while also offering around $2.8 billion in damages to players who attended before being able to fully partake in NIL. They say their solution puts the thousands of athletes who could be harmed by roster caps — many of them walk-ons or partial-scholarship players — in no worse a situation than they were in before they were cut: They have a chance to compete for — but no guarantee they'll earn — a roster spot that does not count against any prescribed limits from the settlement. But the attorneys for the objectors wrote that they continue 'to hear from many athletes and their families whose lives are being turned upside down as a result of the implementation of roster caps.' Among the resolutions they propose: — Players who were cut be restored to their previous team even if they had already transferred to another school. — An arbitration system if there's disagreement over whether a player was cut due to roster limits, which is forbidden under the new proposal, or for another reason. — No release of claims for possible damages due to being cut as the schools prepared for a settlement they thought would be approved. Kessler said he was certain the objectors wouldn't agree to virtually anything the plaintiffs and defendants proposed. 'They say when you're a hammer, you're looking for a nail, and these are objectors, so they're looking for things to keep objecting to,' he said. 'We have solved this problem, and that's the thing they should be recognizing.' ___ AP college sports:
