Students may have mentally checked out since classes ended, but college sports don’t take a break.
This summer has been one of the biggest off seasons in the history of collegiate athletics.
The sentiment isn’t hyperbolic.
The last three months have led to schools across the country warning of an existential threat to entire sports programs. They have given rise to a College Football Playoff proposal from the Big Ten that the general public has ridiculed.
Even D.C. is getting involved, finally responding to a years-long cry for help from the NCAA as the Power Four becomes more powerful. And most importantly, student-athletes at Nebraska and beyond are now being paid directly by their schools.
Many have ignored the headlines or struggled to parse through the legal jargon, which has become a large part of the discussion.
Here’s a guide to all of the major changes in college sports that happened these past few months.
House v. NCAA settlement
The most pivotal moment of the year, the settlement of the House v. NCAA class action lawsuit, was truly five years in the making.
In June of 2020, Grant House and Sedona Prince, student-athletes at Arizona State and Oregon, respectively, filed a lawsuit against the NCAA. The two sought damages related to the use of their name, image, and likeness (NIL) and to lift restrictions that kept conferences from sharing broadcast revenue with their athletes. This was just one of many lawsuits filed at the time over the same restrictions, with many current and former athletes arguing they violated federal law.
In July of 2021, the NCAA dropped NIL restrictions for student-athletes in response to other court decisions and legislative action around the country. This meant that athletes could now make money from sponsorships and endorsements, marking a massive shift in college sports. This change, though, did not resolve the House case since it did not address the concerns raised over revenue-sharing.
By 2024, after years of sitting in court, the NCAA and power conferences were deep into negotiations to settle the lawsuit, fearing that a loss in court could ultimately lead to the national association going bankrupt. On May 23, 2024, the NCAA voted to settle the suit. A year later, after changes were made to address concerns raised by athletes, schools and conferences alike, the settlement was finally approved on June 6, 2025.
Here are just some of the ways the House settlement changes college athletics:
Schools can now pay student-athletes directly
The most widely publicized detail of the House settlement — Division I athletes’ ability to be paid directly by their schools — is arguably the biggest change to college sports since Title IX was passed in 1972.
Since July 1, participating universities can pay up to $20.5 million annually to their student-athletes. That cap is 22% of the average revenue of power conference athletics departments and will increase over the next 10 years as schools’ revenues increase. That $20.5 million figure is less than 10% of Husker Athletics’ $220 million revenue in fiscal year 2024.
The money that athletes earn from their schools is not their only source of income. NIL deals will continue, and dozens of athletes, especially in football and basketball programs, will be netting seven-figure salaries this year. That includes Nebraska quarterback Dylan Raiola, who will be making more than $3 million between revenue-sharing income and NIL deals, according to On3.
Roster limits and scholarship expansion
As part of the House settlement, scholarship limits have been abolished across all DI college sports. Now, every athlete at participating schools has the ability to earn partial or full-ride scholarships — a big change from the scholarship limits that all sports had to adhere to beforehand. But there are two important caveats.
First, every Division I sport now has limits on the number of athletes that can be on its roster. This shift will be gradual — Judge Claudia Wilken believed the sudden change would be unfair to athletes who transferred or were recruited to play at a school but would have to be cut to follow the new roster limits. That is why, despite the limit for football being placed at 105 players, schools like Nebraska can still have 125 players this year. While these roster limits will make it harder to become a DI athlete, the “Olympic sports” could now see huge increases in scholarship opportunities for those who make it.
Second, scholarships will come directly out of the $20.5 million that schools set aside for revenue-sharing. This likely means that private universities and expensive state schools will have less money to spend after scholarships are offered than Nebraska and other universities with cheaper tuition. This could make Lincoln a more attractive option for some athletes, ultimately giving them a leg up in increasingly money-driven competition.
$2.8 billion for former athletes
Current student-athletes are not the only ones benefiting from this settlement. Former athletes, including the original plaintiffs, House and Prince, will be paid a share of nearly $2.8 billion over the next ten years. The amount of individual earnings will be based on an estimated NIL valuation that those athletes could not collect as a result of NCAA rules.
This means that former football and men’s basketball players would certainly make more than athletes from smaller sports — one estimate places “lost opportunity” payments for former men’s basketball and football players at $17,000 on average, with some making north of $800,000.
To be eligible for this back-pay, athletes must have competed any time from 2016 to the House settlement. Despite nearly all of the $2.8 billion being paid for by the NCAA and Power Five conferences, any former DI athlete can collect back pay.
NIL regulations and payment enforcement
With such a big change coming to college sports, the country clearly needs a way to regulate revenue-sharing before it goes off the rails like the early NIL days. Luckily, two bodies have been created that will keep these coming seasons in check.
The first is the College Sports Commission (CSC), an organization formed by the power conferences and Notre Dame — not the NCAA — to oversee NIL and revenue-sharing compliance.
The second is NIL Go. This clearinghouse, formed by the CSC, is the organization to which Division I athletes are required to report NIL deals. Any contract or series of contracts valued at over $600 must be reported to NIL Go and be evaluated to ensure the deal is at a fair market price.
While those brief descriptions make it seem otherwise, the formation of these two bodies is by far the most interesting thing to come out of the House settlement. It’s not because it shows the college sports world is more prepared this time than at the beginning of the NIL era. It’s certainly not because of the countless lawsuits that are destined to crop up over the next few years, such as gender equity in revenue-sharing, student-athletes as legal employees, inevitable rule-breaking, and more. It’s because this summer saw one of the biggest transfers of power from the NCAA to the power conferences ever.
The NCAA still oversees all amateurism rules — except Division I players’ being paid means the rules may only apply to DII and DIII. So, the Power Four oversee the revenue-sharing rules instead.
The NCAA still distributes cash to conferences for participation and other operating expenses, except that tens of millions of dollars will now have to go to former athletes each year. So, the Power Four may become less dependent on NCAA funding.
The NCAA already oversees and profits from almost every national championship, besides football. Again, that’s the Power Four.
It is clear that the NCAA is losing its grasp on college sports regulation and has been for years now. So, they went to the only place on earth that could slow the organization’s fall from grace.
Response from Washington
In July, the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted to advance the Student Compensation and Opportunity through Rights and Endorsements (SCORE) Act. The main goals of the SCORE Act are to provide a federal framework for NIL rules, provide legal protections to the NCAA and power conferences and to limit the ability of student-athletes to be considered employees of their universities.
If passed, the act would be a huge win for the NCAA, especially in regards to antitrust protections, given the large number of lawsuits the organization has lost in the past decade. It also pushes regulatory power back to the NCAA at a time when conferences and universities are playing bigger roles in athletics administration.
Attorneys general from multiple states have criticized the bill for consolidating “too much power in the hands of the NCAA.”
The SCORE Act is not expected to pass the Senate should it successfully make its way through the House when it reconvenes in September. No members of the Nebraska delegation sit on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Also in July, President Trump signed an executive order titled “Saving College Sports.” The Order has multiple pieces aimed at combating the “out-of-control, rudderless system” that is NIL and revenue-sharing.
The most substantive section of President Trump’s order splits athletics departments into three groups based on revenue and demands each group to follow a set of guidelines to protect non-revenue and women’s sports.
For universities like Nebraska, where annual athletics revenues exceed $125 million, they must provide more scholarship opportunities in “Olympic” sports than in previous years and fill the maximum number of roster spots permitted under the new House rules.
The order also directs members of the President’s Cabinet to put together guidelines tackling increasingly pertinent issues in collegiate athletics. This includes combating “pay-for-play” NIL schemes, clarifying the employment status of student-athletes, and providing legal protections to iron out inevitable future litigation.
Where do we go from here?
For better or for worse, college athletics has become just as much about money as it is about sports. NCAA President Charlie Baker has estimated that up to $1.5 billion of revenue will be doled out to college athletes each year on top of the billions that already go into scholarships and NIL deals. It is abundantly clear, less than two months into this new era, that collegiate sports are fundamentally different from what they were just a couple of months ago.
The fans will keep watching, athletics departments will keep growing and college sports will look different by the day.
Because no matter how big it gets, the beast may never stop growing.
sports@dailynebraskan.com
