Football Lawsuits This Week: Antitrust, Eligibility & NIL

The NCAA is fighting football-related lawsuits on three major fronts in 2026: a new antitrust class action challenging the revenue-sharing caps built into the House v. NCAA settlement, two multimillion-dollar jury verdicts over brain injuries, and more than 50 eligibility suits from individual players, most of them filed since late 2024. The NCAA football lawsuits now moving through state and federal courts are reshaping how college athletes are paid, how long they can play, and who gets to enforce the rules.

The New Antitrust Class Action Over Revenue-Sharing Caps

On June 9, 2026, USC freshman linebacker Talanoa Ili and Stanford senior quarterback Charlie Mirer filed a federal antitrust class action in the Northern District of California targeting the revenue-sharing caps and booster-payment restrictions that came out of the House v. NCAA settlement.¹ The case names twelve defendants, including the NCAA, the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, and SEC, the College Sports Commission, NCAA President Charlie Baker, and the four Power conference commissioners.²

The plaintiffs allege the defendants conspired to cap school-to-athlete revenue sharing at roughly $20.5 million per year and to ban NIL payments from “associated entities” like boosters and collectives. They argue those restrictions violate the Sherman Act and contradict NIL-protection statutes in 17 states, including California, New York, Ohio, and Michigan.³ The suit does not attack the House settlement itself. Instead, it targets how its terms have been imposed in states whose laws prohibit restricting athletes’ NIL rights, and notes that the House court “expressly declined to find that the settlement preempted state law.”⁴

The case landed before Judge Claudia Wilken, who approved the original House settlement in June 2025 and has kept jurisdiction over related disputes.²

Why The House Settlement Is Under Attack

Judge Wilken gave final approval to the House settlement on June 6, 2025, resolving three consolidated cases and creating a $2.8 billion back-pay fund to be distributed over ten years to athletes who competed between 2016 and 2024.⁵ Division I schools that opted in may pay athletes directly, with spending capped at 22 percent of the average Power Five school’s athletic revenue, an estimated $20 million-plus per school for 2025-26 and projected to reach roughly $32.9 million by 2034-35.⁶

The settlement also created the College Sports Commission as an enforcement body and set up “NIL Go,” a clearinghouse run by Deloitte that vets third-party NIL deals worth more than $600. Payments from boosters, collectives, or anyone who has given more than $50,000 over a lifetime to promote a school’s athletics can be blocked unless they serve a “valid business purpose” at fair market value.⁵

By May 2026, more than $125 million in promised NIL compensation was under review or had been rejected.⁷ The most visible fight involved Nebraska, where the CSC rejected 18 NIL deals totaling $7.5 million between Nebraska football players and Playfly Sports, a multimedia rights company. An arbitrator sided with the CSC on May 11, 2026, ruling that Playfly functioned as a “pass-through for University payments.”⁸ Attorneys for the original House plaintiffs have since asked a magistrate judge to rule that multimedia rights companies like Playfly should not be classified as associated entities at all.⁹

Settlement back-pay remains in escrow pending appeal. Eight female athletes have separately appealed the settlement’s allocation of funds to the Ninth Circuit, alleging gender discrimination under Title IX.⁷

Two Major Concussion Verdicts

Juries have twice held the NCAA liable in recent months for failing to protect football players from brain injuries. In May 2026, a Dallas County jury ordered the NCAA to pay $140 million to the estate of John Thomas “J.T.” Davis, who played football at SMU from 1955 to 1959 and later suffered cognitive decline and memory loss consistent with CTE. The award included $30 million in compensatory damages and $110 million in punitive damages.¹⁰ The jury found the NCAA acted with gross negligence by failing to warn athletes about long-term risks of repetitive head trauma, even though internal documents showed the organization recognized neurological risks as early as the 1930s.¹¹ The NCAA has disputed any connection between football and CTE and has indicated it will appeal.

Six months earlier, on October 23, 2025, an Orangeburg County, South Carolina, jury awarded $18 million to Robert Geathers, a 68-year-old former South Carolina State University defensive end who played from 1977 to the early 1980s, and his wife Debra Geathers. The jury found the NCAA negligent for each year from 1966 to 1986 for failing to notify member schools about the long-term effects of concussions, concluding the organization “unreasonably increased the risk of harm of head impacts” and “negligently breached” duties it had voluntarily assumed.¹² Jurors deliberated one hour and 50 minutes before delivering the verdict in a case overseen by Judge Frank Addy Jr.¹³

Both verdicts came after a separate class-action concussion settlement received final approval in 2019, under which the NCAA created a $70 million medical monitoring fund for athletes who played before July 2016 while denying wrongdoing.¹⁴ Davis and Geathers show that individual players, particularly those who competed before modern safety protocols existed, can still win large damages outside that class settlement.

The Flood Of Player Eligibility Suits

More than 50 lawsuits challenging NCAA eligibility rules have been filed since November 2024, and football players have been at the center of the trend.¹⁵ Most target the NCAA’s “Five Year Rule,” which requires athletes to complete four seasons of competition within five calendar years of first enrolling. Players who spent time at junior colleges have been hit hardest, and many frame their challenges as antitrust claims, arguing the rule restricts their ability to earn NIL income.

Tristan Smith (Clemson)

Clemson wide receiver Tristan Smith sued the NCAA on January 21, 2026, after being denied a fifth-year waiver. Smith had played two seasons at Hutchinson Community College, one at Southeast Missouri State, and one at Clemson, and his attorneys argued missing the 2026 season would cost him between $300,000 and $600,000 in NIL and revenue-sharing income. On June 12, 2026, South Carolina circuit court judge Jessica Ann Salvini granted a temporary injunction ordering the NCAA to declare Smith immediately eligible, finding that losing the season would cause “immediate and irreparable harm.”¹⁶¹⁷

Trinidad Chambliss (Ole Miss)

Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss sought a medical hardship waiver for a sixth year, citing respiratory problems related to chronic tonsillitis that limited him during his first two seasons at Ferris State. The NCAA denied the waiver three times between January and February 2026, arguing Chambliss had chosen to manage the condition with medication rather than undergo surgery so he could keep playing. On February 12, 2026, Judge Robert Whitwell of Lafayette County Chancery Court granted a preliminary injunction, ruling Chambliss “clearly met the criteria” for a medical redshirt and that the NCAA had “ignored medical evidence” and “didn’t act in good faith.”¹⁸

Louis Moore (Indiana)

Indiana safety Louis Moore sued on August 9, 2025, in the 134th District Court of Texas, arguing the five-year rule violated the Texas Antitrust Act and that denial would cost him an NIL contract worth roughly $400,000. Judge Dale Tillery granted an injunction on September 24, 2025, allowing Moore to play the rest of the 2025 season.¹⁹ The NCAA appealed, and in February 2026 the organization threatened to vacate wins, erase statistics, and fine schools that successfully defend players in these suits.²⁰

Other Cases

Cal Berkeley football player Aidan Keanaaina filed a federal antitrust suit in Colorado in March 2026 challenging the five-year rule.²¹ It was dismissed on May 4, 2026, for lack of personal jurisdiction over the NCAA in Colorado, without any ruling on the merits.²² Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby won a temporary injunction in Lubbock County from Judge Ken Curry, who found Sorsby would suffer “probable, imminent and irreparable injury” without one. A full trial is scheduled for the week of February 8, 2027.²³

One clear pattern: players have had much more success in state courts than federal ones. State judges have generally been willing to find irreparable harm based on lost NIL earnings, while federal courts have sometimes dismissed on jurisdictional or standing grounds.¹⁵

Can The Conferences Enforce Rules The NCAA Can’t?

The eligibility injunctions have triggered a secondary legal fight. After the Sorsby ruling blocked the NCAA from enforcing its eligibility rules against Texas Tech, the Big 12 Conference filed its own federal lawsuit in the Northern District of Texas against Texas Tech, university officials, and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.²⁴

The Big 12 wants a court declaration that the conference has independent authority under its own bylaws to sanction member schools regardless of what a state court has told the NCAA. It also wants an order preventing Texas from retaliating against the conference, arguing retaliation would violate the dormant Commerce Clause. The outcome will determine whether conferences can fill the enforcement gap created when state courts neutralize NCAA rules case by case.²⁴

Georgia v. Damon Wilson II: Testing NIL Exit Clauses

A separate dispute is testing whether schools can use liquidated-damages clauses in NIL contracts to penalize players who transfer. After Georgia defensive end Damon Wilson II transferred to Missouri following the 2024 season, the University of Georgia Athletic Association sued for $390,000, the amount set in an exit clause in Wilson’s 14-month NIL agreement. Wilson countersued in Boone County, Missouri, arguing the clause was being used to “punish” him for entering the transfer portal.²⁵

The core question is whether $390,000 represents a legitimate estimate of the school’s anticipated losses or an unenforceable penalty. Under general contract law, liquidated-damages provisions are valid only if they reasonably approximate the harm expected at the time the contract was signed. Wilson’s case is considered the first that could produce a binding ruling on whether schools have legal authority to enforce these clauses against transferring athletes. No final ruling has issued; Georgia is pursuing arbitration while Wilson’s countersuit proceeds in Missouri state court.²⁵

The Bill That Could Reset Everything

Senators Maria Cantwell, Ted Cruz, Chris Coons, and Eric Schmitt introduced the Protect College Sports Act on May 27, 2026. The bill would replace the current patchwork of state NIL laws with a national standard and grant the NCAA and the College Sports Commission antitrust protection to enforce rules on transfers, eligibility, and spending caps.²⁶ It would also guarantee scholarships for ten years after eligibility ends, require medical coverage for Division I athletes, mandate a $60 million annual trust fund for long-term conditions like CTE, and allow conferences to pool media rights similar to professional leagues.

The bill faces opposition on multiple sides. The Congressional Black Caucus has expressed “serious substantive concerns” about athlete protections and institutional accountability. The SEC and Big Ten have said the bill “does not meaningfully preempt the patchwork of state laws.” Several Senate Democrats have also voiced hesitation.²⁷ If the legislation fails, the conflict between state NIL laws and the House settlement’s rules will keep playing out in courtrooms, with the Ili-Mirer class action positioned as the most direct challenge to the current framework.

1
USA Today. NCAA Antitrust Lawsuit House Settlement Revenue Sharing Cap
2
PACER Monitor. Ili et al v. National Collegiate Athletic Association et al
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The Athletic (NYT). Stanford USC Lawsuit House Settlement
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SWX Local Sports. Division I Mens Football and Basketball Players Filed a Class Action Against Sports Governing Bodies
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CBS Sports. House v NCAA Settlement Approved Landmark Decision Opens Door for Revenue Sharing in College Athletics
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Athletes.org. House v NCAA
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Yahoo Sports. Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against NCAA Power Conferences and College Sports Commission Over House Settlement
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The Athletic (NYT). Nebraska NIL Case Playfly College Sports Commission
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Sportico. Nebraska Football Playfly NIL Arbitration
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PR Newswire. Shrader and Associates LLP Jury Hits NCAA With 140 Million Total Verdict in Landmark SMU Football Brain Injury Trial
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Sports Litigation Alert. Jury Hands Another Loss to NCAA in a Concussion Case
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The State. Former SC State Player Awarded $18 Million in NCAA Concussion Lawsuit
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The Times and Democrat. Orangeburg County Jury Awards $18 Million in NCAA Concussion Lawsuit
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College Athlete Concussion Settlement. FAQ
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Morgan Lewis. Recent NCAA Eligibility Rulings Highlight Expanding Judicial Role in College Athletics Governance
16
Las Vegas Sun. Clemson Receiver Tristan Smith Granted Temporary Injunction
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Greenville Online. Tristan Smith Lawsuit NCAA Clemson Football Wide Receiver
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ESPN. Ole Miss QB Trinidad Chambliss Granted Injunction Judge
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ESPN. Indiana Moore Wins Suit vs NCAA Play Rest of Season
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Hoosier Huddle. The Louis Moore v NCAA Lawsuit Explained
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Courthouse News. College Athlete Challenges NCAA Eligibility Rule
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CaseMine. Keanaaina v. National Collegiate Athletic Association
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The Athletic (NYT). Brendan Sorsby Injunction Decision Texas Tech
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SW Law. From Lubbock to Dallas the Big 12s Federal Lawsuit Against Texas Tech and What It Reveals About the Future of College Sports Governance
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Los Angeles Times. Georgia Lawsuit Damon Wilson NIL Transfer Portal Liquidated Damage Fees Missouri
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U.S. Senate Commerce Committee. Cantwell Cruz Schmitt Coons Release Bipartisan Bill to Stabilize College Sports Protect Athletes and Expand Revenue Sharing
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The Hill. Cruz Cantwell NCAA Overhaul