Friday night was monumental for college athletics. California Judge Claudia Wilken approved the $2.8 billion House v. NCAA settlement — an agreement that was a long time coming after nearly a year of deliberation and months of waiting for approval.

The decision means Division I schools can now pay their athletes directly, while new scholarship and roster limits will be effective July 1. A salary cap will also be in place, which is estimated to begin at $20.5 million per school in 2025-26.

Additionally, the NCAA will pay back $2.8 billion in damages across the next decade at approximately $280 million annually to all D1 athletes who participated between 2016 and 2024.

Revenue sharing

Most athletic programs, including Penn State, plan to use the majority of the revenue-sharing money on football, but every other team is also set to receive investment from the Nittany Lions in this new era of college athletics.

Per NIL-NCAA, it’s been estimated that Penn State will spend 91% of that $20.5 million on football and men’s basketball. Men’s hockey comes in third with an estimated $394,839 available to pay its athletes, then wrestling with $310,241.

Women’s hockey and women’s volleyball are expected to receive $83,794 and $79,371 respectively, while women’s basketball is estimated to have $63,218 to pay its athletes. Men’s tennis is set to receive the least amount with just $15,064, an average of $1,674 per player.

Women’s soccer will receive $61,440 with the men getting $39,825. Baseball has $53,323 to use, while softball is estimated to have $47,991. In short, each sport at Penn State is getting some sum of money to share among its athletes.

It’s worth noting that these estimates assume “each school limits total revenue sharing to 22% of its annual athletic department revenues – this is the percentage utilized in the proposed settlement in House v NCAA.

This money is on top of scholarship earnings and separate from NIL money, which will now have to be reported through the new NIL Go portal. The portal will be run by Deloitte with the purpose of reviewing all third-party NIL deals worth $600 or more in aggregate to ensure deals are made at fair market value.

Roster limits

While the settlement eliminates scholarship limits, it adds roster limits, meaning each team will have to decrease the number of players on its roster. This change allows any athletes on the team to receive scholarship aid, allowing teams to offer a scholarship to each player up to the roster limits.

Men’s basketball is limited to 15 athletes, while the women are capped at 14. Baseball has a limit of 34, and men’s and women’s lacrosse are capped at 48 and 35, respectively.

Women’s volleyball is allowed 15 roster spots, men’s hockey has 26 and women’s hockey is capped at 23. How the revenue sharing allocated to each team is split among the roster is up to the discretion of the program.

There are rules to “grandfather” in the roster limits, which Judge Wilken requested when she paused the implementation of the settlement.

The final ruling reads: “…the parties modified the [settlement agreement] to provide that settlement class members whose roster spots were taken away or would have been taken away because of the immediate implementation of the SA will be exempt from roster limits at any Division I school for the duration of their college athletics careers.”

In short, those who would’ve been cut because of the new roster limits will instead have the opportunity to play out the rest of their collegiate eligibility.

Penn State will have until June 15 to fully commit to revenue sharing and will have to “designate” athletes it wants grandfathered in. Fall sports must have its roster cut down to its new limit by its first game of the 2025 season, with the exception of the designated athletes. Winter and spring sports must do the same by Dec. 1.

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College sports fans, the future is now.

A federal judge has approved the House v. NCAA settlement on revenue sharing, clearing the way for it to take effect on July 1.

From that day on, Division I schools will be allowed to directly pay their student-athletes, so long as they stay under a predetermined annual cap.

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NIL, or name, image and likeness, deals, including from booster-funded collectives, will remain available to college athletes, but most deals will now be reviewed by a clearinghouse aimed at making the NIL market more organized and fair.

The now-approved settlement will also bring with it new scholarship rules and roster limits, and it will resolve multiple antitrust lawsuits with a $2.8 billion payout to athletes who couldn’t access NIL funds in the past due to the timing of their college careers.

Lingering legal issues

Although the ruling will change college sports as you know it, it actually won’t create much work for school leaders in the short term.

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Most programs are already prepared for a post-settlement world since Judge Claudia Wilken granted preliminary approval of the plan in October.

Over the past few months, coaches have been meeting with athletes about the changes and school administrators have prepared for revenue sharing, such as by hiking the price of concessions, as the Deseret News previously reported.

Final approval of the settlement does open the door to new types of lawsuits, including legal battles over the clearinghouse’s assessments of NIL deals.

College sports experts, including Stewart Mandel at The Athletic, anticipate battles over athletes’ “fair market value” and athlete employment rights.

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“I remain skeptical that (the settlement) will solve much of anything,” Mandel wrote in early April.

The House v. NCAA settlement is expected to supercharge debates over related antitrust issues, including whether student-athletes are employees.

“Industry leaders have asked Congress to write a new law that would prevent athletes from becoming employees and provide the NCAA with an antitrust exemption to create some caps on player pay and transfers,” per ESPN.

Background of the House settlement

Although many legal battles are yet to be fought, most college sports leaders see the House v. NCAA settlement as an important step forward.

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Supporters believe it will help tame the chaos of the current NIL era, which began in 2021, when the Supreme Court ruled that individual athletes, not their schools, should control — and be able to profit off of — athletes’ name, image and likeness rights.

That ruling ultimately made it harder for many programs to hold on to their star players, since it made it possible for booster collectives at other schools to tempt them away with major NIL deals, as the Deseret News previously reported.

While top athletes will still be able to snag huge deals moving forward, the settlement returns some power to schools — and should reduce the influence of collectives.

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“NCAA president Charlie Baker and others believe the deal will help schools regain control and tamp down the sky-rocketing, largely unregulated market for paying college players through third parties,” ESPN reported.

In a letter released Friday after the House settlement was approved, Baker wrote that he believes stabilization is on the way for college sports, but knows challenges remain. He called on Congress to take action to ensure that schools can enter the new era on solid ground.

“Opportunities to drive transformative change don’t come often to organizations like ours. It’s important we make the most of this one,” Baker wrote.

WILMINGTON, Del. – Senior Maddie Aho and sophomore Delaney Miller of the Skidmore College women’s rowing team were both named to the Collegiate Rowing Coaches Association (CRCA) All-America Second Team as announced by the organization on Friday.
 
The CRCA All-American Awards recognize the most outstanding collegiate rowers and coxswains across all NCAA divisions and the lightweight category. These athletes have demonstrated elite athletic performance, leadership, consistency, and dedication throughout the season, earning distinction among the top rowers in the nation.
 
This prestigious recognition honors athletes who have contributed significantly to their teams while meeting high standards in competition and training. The All-American teams also serve as the foundation for the selection of Athlete of the Year Finalists—with one ultimate Athlete of the Year selected from each division.
 
Both Aho and Miller earned All-Liberty League accolades on Thursday – Aho on the First Team, Miller on the Second Team. The recognition makes them just the second and third student-athletes in program history to claim All-America honors.

2025 CRCA All-Americans

 

On Friday, Sept. 2, 2022, the first domino fell.

That day, the College Football Playoff board voted unanimously to expand the current field of four teams to 12 by 2026 with the hope of it being implemented by 2024 — a wish that ended up coming true.

Fast forward three years, and a second domino is close to its tipping point. Higher ups continue to debate the idea of once again expanding the playoff to 14 or 16 teams in the bracket, a change Penn State athletic director Pat Kraft said he’s “not against” back in February — but Kraft wants some other snags in college football smoothed out before that happens.

“The more teams in and the more kind of tournament you have, I think it’s great,” Kraft said. “We got to continue to look at all the other aspects of that. If you have 16 going on playing into like March, be going to February, I mean, my football players do go to class. They got to go to school. So what are we doing? And so I think we have to understand the bigger impact of that.”

It doesn’t seem like any of Kraft’s concerns are en route to being amended, but there are other aspects of a potential expansion that find themselves at the forefront of these debates. The Big Ten and SEC have both expressed desire to have four automatic qualifiers in each conference.

The pair’s argument dates back to the fall when debates were swirling over which conference was better in 2024 and which one deserved to have more teams in the playoff. As someone who’s been a head coach in both, James Franklin addressed those comments directly on Nov. 20.

“The right thing to be talking about is the two best conferences in all of college football are the Big Ten and the SEC and we should have the most teams in,” Franklin said. “I don’t think we need to take shots in the Big Ten at the SEC because that’s been proven over time. And I don’t think the SEC should be taking shots at the Big Ten.”

Franklin’s comments suffice as foreshadowing for the now ongoing debate about altering the format of the playoff. Ohio State head coach Ryan Day said plainly Wednesday that the Big Ten should have four automatic bids.

“We’re in the Big Ten, and we have 18 teams and some of the best programs in the country,” Day told ESPN. “I feel like we deserve at least four automatic qualifiers.”

Speaking with the media for the first time since the Blue-White Game, Franklin was asked right off the bat if he agrees with the comments made by one of his rivals. While the Nittany Lions’ head coach indirectly declined to give an answer, Franklin did share some thoughts on the matter.

“It’s an interesting discussion with a lot of different perspectives and a lot of people that have very, very strong feelings in terms of what’s in the best interest of college football, what’s in the best interest of fans, what’s in the best interest of the sport. And I get all of it,” Franklin said. “The majority of people that have strong opinions have an agenda and are biased based on what’s good for them, right?”

As for the Big Ten and SEC specifically, Franklin pointed to the “discrepancies” he notices across college football. Some teams play less conference games, while others aren’t even in a conference, things Franklin feels are reasons why the pair are fighting to have their way with the playoff.

“When you have some conferences playing nine games, some conferences playing a conference championship, some teams not in a conference. It makes it really difficult,” Franklin said. “The other issue you’ve had in the past, every conference and every team or every AD would have the same vote. Well, if we have more teams in our conference now, and have a greater level of competition week in and week out. Why should it be balanced?”

Former Temple head coach and Penn State running backs coach Stan Drayton gave his thoughts on the matter as well, sharing Franklin’s sentiment that there are a lot of different ways to decide who makes the playoff and college football just needs consistency across the board.

Regardless, the debate remains scorching hot, and it’s unclear whether a decision will be made any time soon. One thing is clear, though — the College Football Playoff could look very different come 2026, and more dominoes might keep falling to create a world where the Big Ten and SEC run the sport.

“Our conferences are built differently. Everybody shouldn’t get the same vote… A Penn State vote shouldn’t be the same vote as a school X,” Franklin said. “The way it worked in the old NCAA structures, everybody got the same vote, all the conferences got the same vote, and I guess what I’m saying is I agree with it the way it sits right now, because it’s not even, but let’s spend as much time as we possibly can on trying to get it consistent across the board.”

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