There hasn’t been a direct college presence in the world’s oldest ice hockey tournament since the early 1980s.

That’s about to change.

A select team of NCAA men’s hockey players will compete in the 2025 Spengler Cup, according to sources.

The group will include players, coaches and staff members from Division I programs, both conference-affiliated and independents.

The tournament, which will hold its 97th edition in Davos, Switzerland, from Dec. 26 to Dec. 31, dates to 1923. Minnesota played in it in 1981 and North Dakota followed a year later but there hasn’t been an American-based team in the field since the AHL’s Rochester Americans in 2013.

A college select team’s participation now is possible only because of a 2024 NCAA bylaw change that carved out an exemption to rules prohibiting college players from competing for other teams during the academic year.

Now, men’s hockey athletes also can compete on a team representing College Hockey Inc. in the Spengler Cup.

“Allowing student-athletes to represent College Hockey Inc. will allow more student-athletes to engage in a historic, high-level competition in conjunction with a unique cultural experience without missing class time, as the competition occurs during winter break,” officials wrote in the rationale for the rule amendment, which was adopted by the NCAA Division I Council on June 26, 2024.

“While absences from regular-season intercollegiate competition are possible, such absences are expected to be minimal. Although the Spengler Cup offers prize money for participating teams, existing amateurism legislation would remain applicable.”

The college hockey select team’s logo and uniforms are still being developed, as is the framework for who’ll be on the coaching staff and invited to play. Last year’s tournament allowed team delegations to include 27 players and 12 officials.

The team will get an appearance fee from tournament organizers to cover expenses, according to sources.

HC Davos hosts the tournament and is one of the other five teams in the 2025 field. Team Canada fields a group typically made up of players from North American minor leagues and European pro leagues; former college players often take part.

Defending champion HC Fribourg-Gottéron of Switzerland is returning to the 2025 tournament along with HC Sparta Praha of Czechia and IFK Helsinki from Finland.

The tournament, which takes place Dec. 26-31 each year, includes 11 games over six days, and the recent format has guaranteed each team at least three games.

The 2024 format had two three-team pools, with round-robin play in each over the first three days. The top finisher in each pool advanced to the Dec. 30 semifinals to face the winners of Dec. 29 games between the second-place team from one pool and the third-place team in the other. The New Year’s Eve championship game wraps up the event.

Already, EA Sports College Football 26 is generating plenty of buzz a month before release. Speculation about Bill Belichick’s appearance is certainly palpable. 

In addition, players will be paid $ 1,500 for appearing in the game, an increase from $600 in the previous year’s game. Those same players could receive NIL money thanks to the gamers themselves, per Darren Rovell of CLLCT media. 

Schools featured in the game could get paid based on how frequently gamers play with their team—a radically innovative approach in the era of NIL for college athletes. 

Athletes will be able to showcase their talents broadly through the game. The players’ exposure could land them sponsorship deals as well as grow their fan bases. 

Furthermore, the players will have their name, image, and likeness on full display throughout the game. Before the NIL era, gamers would solely have to come up with names for players. 

The players also have the option to opt in or opt out of this deal, allowing them to maintain control over how they utilize their NIL. From a gaming perspective, this sparks a significant shift from the way things were prior to NIL. 

The evolution of gaming and NIL 

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Before the NIL era, college athletes were barred from earning money from their name, image, and likeness. That included appearances on EA Sports games. 

The straw that broke the camel’s back was the historic O’Bannon vs. NCAA case. In 2009, former UCLA basketball player Ed O’Bannon filed a lawsuit against the NCAA

He claimed its amateurism rules illegally prevented college athletes from being compensated for their name, image, and likeness.  This derived after seeing his image featured on EA Sports’ NCAA Basketball 09 without his consent, nor did he receive any compensation.

The outcome resulted in schools being allowed to offer athletic scholarships covering full cost of attendance. In addition, the case ruled that schools could place up to $5,000 into a trust for each athlete to use their NIL. 

Thus paving the way for where we are now regarding video games. 

A federal judge signed off on arguably the biggest change in the history of college sports on Friday, clearing the way for schools to begin paying their athletes millions of dollars as soon as next month as the multibillion-dollar industry shreds the last vestiges of the amateur model that defined it for more than a century.

Nearly five years after Arizona State swimmer Grant House sued the NCAA and its five biggest conferences to lift restrictions on revenue sharing, U.S. Judge Claudia Wilken approved the final proposal that had been hung up on roster limits, just one of many changes ahead amid concerns that thousands of walk-on athletes will lose their chance to play college sports.

The sweeping terms of the so-called House settlement include approval for each school to share up to $20.5 million with athletes over the next year and $2.7 billion that will be paid over the next decade to thousands of former players who were barred from that revenue for years.

The agreement brings a seismic shift to hundreds of schools that were forced to reckon with the reality that their players are the ones producing the billions in TV and other revenue, mostly through football and basketball.

The scope of the changes — some have already begun — is difficult to overstate. The professionalization of college athletics will be seen in the high-stakes and expensive recruitment of stars on their way to the NFL and NBA, and they will be felt by athletes whose schools have decided to pare their programs. The agreement will resonate in nearly every one of the NCAA’s 1,100-member schools, boasting nearly 500,000 athletes.

The road to a settlement

Wilken’s ruling comes 11 years after she dealt the first significant blow to the NCAA ideal of amateurism when she ruled in favor of former UCLA basketball player Ed O’Bannon and others who were seeking a way to earn money from the use of their name, image and likeness (NIL) — a term that is now as common in college sports as “March Madness” or “Roll Tide.” It was just four years ago that the NCAA cleared the way for NIL money to start flowing, but the changes coming are even bigger.

[Related: Top 25 college athletes with highest NIL valuations]

Wilken granted preliminary approval to the settlement last October. That sent colleges scurrying to determine not only how they were going to afford the payments, but how to regulate an industry that also allows players to cut deals with third parties so long as they are deemed compliant by a newly formed enforcement group that will be run by auditors at Deloitte.

The agreement takes a big chunk of oversight away from the NCAA and puts it in the hands of the four biggest conferences. The ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC hold most of the power and decision-making heft, especially when it comes to the College Football Playoff, which is the most significant financial driver in the industry and is not under the NCAA umbrella like the March Madness tournaments are.

Winners and losers

The list of winners and losers is long and, in some cases, hard to tease out.

A rough guide of winners would include football and basketball stars at the biggest schools, which will devote much of their bankroll to signing and retaining them. For instance, Michigan quarterback Bryce Underwood’s NIL deal is reportedly worth between $10.5 million and $12 million.

Losers will be the walk-ons and partial scholarship athletes whose spots are gone. One of the adjustments made at Wilken’s behest was to give those athletes a chance to return to the schools that cut them in anticipation of the deal going through.

Also in limbo are Olympic sports many of those athletes play and that serve as the main pipeline for a U.S. team that has won the most medals at every Olympics since the downfall of the Soviet Union.

All this is a price worth paying, according to the attorneys who crafted the settlement and argue they delivered exactly what they were asked for: an attempt to put more money in the pockets of the players whose sweat and toil keep people watching from the start of football season through March Madness and the College World Series in June.

What the settlement does not solve is the threat of further litigation.

Though this deal brings some uniformity to the rules, states still have separate laws regarding how NIL can be doled out, which could lead to legal challenges. NCAA President Charlie Baker has been consistent in pushing for federal legislation that would put college sports under one rulebook and, if he has his way, provide some form of antitrust protection to prevent the new model from being disrupted again.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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