$2.8 billion NCAA settlement gets final hearing with seismic changes looming for college sports

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — The landmark $2.8 billion settlement that will impact every corner of college athletics in the months ahead had its final hearing Monday, including athletes who criticized the sprawling plan as confusing and one that undervalued them, and attorneys who said they were concerned about the impacts on campuses across the country.

U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken gave no indication Monday the complaints have changed her mind, though she acknowledged the concerns. That sets the table for the plan to move forward and plaintiffs' attorneys were hopeful she will issue her final decision in a few weeks.

“Basically I think it is a good settlement, don’t quote me, and I think it’s worth pursuing," Wilken said. "I think some of these things could be fixed if people tried to fix them and that it would be worth their while to try to fix them.”

She asked both sides to come back in a week with how they might be able to address some of her concerns, saying, “Some of them are big-ticket items, some of them aren’t." Then, there would need to be some re-drafting done, she said.

Wilken has already granted preliminary approval of the settlement involving the NCAA and the nation's five largest conferences. Barring any changes, the plan will take effect July 1 and clear the way for every school to share up to $20.5 million each with its student-athletes annually.

“We are optimistic,” said attorney Steve Berman, representing current and former NCAA athletes. “The judge said it was a good settlement, although she said not to quote her on it. But I'm quoting her anyway. And we think we can do what needs to be done to get it over the finish line. She had questions at the end of the preliminary approval hearing, just like this, we answered them and we moved forward.”

The settlement hashed out last year by attorneys for the defendants and those representing thousands of current and former athletes has its share of critics and they had the floor before Wilken. Smaller schools say it will leave them behind deep-pocketed, donor-heavy programs, and the proposed guidelines are not expected to slow the massive spending now common across college athletics.

LSU gymnast and millionaire influencer Olivia Dunne was one of four athletes to testify against the settlement. Three represented Olympic, non-revenue sports and Benjamin Burr-Kirven was from a big-money sport as a former star linebacker at Washington.

Dunne said the settlement should not be approved. She specifically objected to the formula used to set an athlete's name, image and likeness value, arguing that hers was estimated too low. In testimony over a Zoom video call, Dunne described herself as “a Division I athlete, a businesswoman, and I've been the highest-earning female athlete since the NIL rules changed.”

She said the settlement hardly acknowledges her true value and potential earning power; a plaintiffs' attorney later said Dunne should be receiving an updated allocation.

“This settlement uses old logic to calculate modern value,” Dunne said. “It takes a narrow snapshot of a still maturing market and freezes it, ignoring the trajectory we were on and the deals we lost and the future we could have had.”

Burr-Kirven, who went on to a brief NFL career before a devastating leg injury, also questioned the errors in establishing an athletes' NIL value.

“It's within the specific allocation that things get real squirrely," he said. "I was a fairly decorated football player and I'm getting paid the same as walk-ons I played with and then there are kids who I played with who were rotational players who are getting five times as much.”

Wilken listened and occasionally asked questions, but gave no indication that the concerns would upend the settlement, which also calls for replacing scholarship limits with roster limits. The effect would be to allow every athlete to be eligible for a scholarship while cutting the number of spots available — a proposal that Wilken indicated could be phased in initially.

There will be winners and losers under such a formula, though some fear it could signal the end of the walk-on athlete in college sports and, as Utah freshman swimmer Gannon Flynn noted, also imperil smaller sports programs that feed the U.S. Olympic teams.

Steven Molo, an attorney for a group of athletes objecting to the plan, told the judge that roster limits would unnecessarily restrict opportunities. He noted that football teams would be capped at 105 players. The average roster size in 2024 was 128.

“In a free market,” Molo said, “a team should be able to have as many players as they want.”

Wilken said she understands athletes and families being concerned about roster spots being eliminated with little warning — it would be “pretty difficult to bear” — because of the settlement agreement.

“My idea there is to grandfather in a group of rostered people. There’s not that many," she said. "It’s not that expensive. It would save a lot of good will and angst and unhappiness from a lot of students and their parents, so why not just do it?”

NCAA counsel Rakesh Kilaru argued that could happen with or without the settlement.

“Whether they can show it’s because of the settlement or not is sort of the big causal question, because it can happen independent of the settlement," Kilaru said. "If it’s the reason given, it doesn’t mean it’s the only reason and again it’s a conversation that can be happening today independent of the settlement.”

The so-called House deal, named after Arizona State swimmer Grant House, includes three similar lawsuits that were bundled into one. The defendants are the NCAA and the Southeastern, Big Ten, Atlantic Coast, Big 12 and Pac-12 conferences, all of whom have been touting the settlement as the best path forward for a college athletics landscape in turmoil even as they continue to seek limited antitrust protections from Congress to stave off even more legal challenges.

Universities across the country have been busy making plans under the assumption Wilken will put the terms into effect.

The most ground-shifting part of the settlement allows schools to pay 22% of their revenue from media rights, ticket sales and sponsorships — which equals about $20.5 million in the first year — directly to athletes for use of their name, images and likeness. NIL payments to athletes from outside sources would still be allowed.

The settlement calls for a clearinghouse to make sure any NIL deal worth more than $600 is pegged at fair market value, which has appeared to be a challenging set of numbers to settle on. This is an attempt to prevent straight “pay for play” deals, though many critics believe the entire new structure is simply NIL masquerading as that.

Overall, the plan would pay more than $2.5 billion in back damages to athletes who played sports between 2016 and 2024 and were not entitled to the full benefits of NIL at the time they attended schools. Those payments are being calculated by a formula that will favor football and basketball players and will be doled out by the NCAA and the conferences.

Plaintiffs’ counsel Jeffrey Kessler told the judge that 88,104 college athletes have filed claims to participate in the settlement and another 30,775 have indicated they will file claims.

TCU basketball player Sedona Prince, a primary plaintiff in the case, said there are necessary adjustments to the settlement to be made, but she said she trusts Wilken’s leadership.

“I know she has the athletes’ best interests in mind, always,” Prince said during a break in the hearing. “She obviously is touched by the athletes that have been here and spoken today. I’m confident that we’ll reach a settlement. Obviously there are many more things people have brought up here that we need to address and talk about and fix. It’s the first step to a very long road of change and the beginning of a new industry.”

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AP College Football Writer Eric Olson contributed. Pells reported from San Antonio.

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