How the Michael Port Sports Settlement Changes College Sports

The House v. NCAA settlement is a $2.8 billion antitrust deal, approved by Judge Claudia Wilken on June 6, 2025, that pays back damages to Division I athletes who competed from 2016 onward and, for the first time, lets schools pay their athletes directly under an annual cap that started near $20.5 million per school for 2025-26.¹ The deal resolves consolidated antitrust claims brought by former Arizona State swimmer Grant House, basketball player Sedona Prince, and others in a case titled In re College Athlete NIL Litigation before the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.² Revenue sharing is already live at schools that opted in. Back-pay checks are not; appeals have paused those distributions.

What the Settlement Pays and Who Gets It

The NCAA agreed to pay roughly $2.8 billion in damages over ten years to Division I athletes who competed at any point from 2016 to the present.¹ More than 100,000 class members are eligible. The money is meant to compensate athletes for the years NCAA rules kept them from earning income from their name, image, and likeness.³

Verita Global LLC administers the claims. Actual distribution of the back-pay fund remains paused because of pending appeals, and payments are expected to begin by 2027 if the Ninth Circuit upholds the deal.³ The proposed distribution formula sends roughly 90 percent of the damages to football and men’s basketball players, 5 percent to women’s basketball, and 5 percent to all other sports combined, a split driven by revenue rather than participation.⁴

How Direct Pay to Athletes Now Works

The bigger structural change is forward-looking. Beginning July 1, 2025, schools that opted into the settlement could pay their athletes directly, on top of scholarships and existing benefits, up to an annual per-school cap.¹ For 2025-26 that cap sits at approximately $20.5 million. It is calculated as 22 percent of designated athletics revenue and is projected to grow by about 4 percent a year, reaching an estimated $32.9 million by 2034-35.⁵

Schools decide how to divide the pool across their rosters. In practice, most of the money is going to football and men’s basketball. An early look at Texas Tech’s model shows 74 percent going to football, 17 to 18 percent to men’s basketball, 2 percent to women’s basketball, and 4 to 5 percent spread across every other sport.⁶

Participation is all-or-nothing. If a school opts in, every Division I program is subject to the settlement’s rules. A school that stays out but chooses to provide aid beyond the limits in the 2024-25 Division I Manual is automatically pulled into the settlement’s requirements anyway.⁷

Roster Limits Replace Scholarship Caps

Traditional scholarship caps are gone. In their place are sport-by-sport roster limits. Opted-in schools must have fall sports at or below their limits by the first day of competition; winter and spring sports must comply by December 1 or their first contest, whichever comes first.⁷

Objections during an April 2025 hearing prompted a modification. The deal now includes a “Designated Student-Athlete” category so that athletes who would otherwise have been cut to meet the new limits can stay on their teams for the rest of their careers without counting against the caps.⁸

A New Enforcement Body: The College Sports Commission

The settlement created the College Sports Commission, an enforcement organization independent of the NCAA, to police revenue-sharing caps, roster limits, and third-party NIL deals. Bryan Seeley, formerly Major League Baseball’s head of investigations, was selected as CEO by the commissioners of the four power conferences.⁹ The NCAA keeps authority over academic matters only.

Third-party NIL deals of $600 or more must be reported through NIL Go, a platform run by Deloitte, and each deal is reviewed for “fair market value” and “valid business purpose” to keep boosters from disguising recruiting payments as endorsements.⁵ Athletes whose deals are denied can challenge those decisions through neutral arbitration.¹⁰

By late 2025 the commission had denied 332 deals worth about $10 million, with roughly $35 million more in review. Representative Lori Trahan wrote to the CSC in October 2025 questioning staffing and processing, noting the commission had only four full-time employees.¹⁰

Why Athletes Haven’t Been Paid Yet

The revenue-sharing side of the settlement started on schedule. The back-pay side has not, because of appeals to the Ninth Circuit.

The most prominent challenge came on June 11, 2025, when eight female athletes who competed in soccer, track, and volleyball at Vanderbilt, the College of Charleston, and the University of Virginia filed a notice of appeal. Represented by attorneys John Clune and Ashlyn Hare, they argue that the back-pay formula contains a $1.14 billion error because it does not account for Title IX’s requirement of equitable treatment regardless of sex.¹¹ The National Women’s Law Center has estimated that under the current formula male athletes could receive tens of thousands of dollars while women may see roughly $125 per year played.¹² Women make up about 47 percent of Division I participants, and the appellants argue their share of the fund should reflect that.¹³

Judge Wilken rejected the Title IX argument during approval, finding the objectors cited no authority for applying Title IX to antitrust damages. At a November 2025 fairness hearing she heard from seven more objectors and again declined to modify the deal, citing Ninth Circuit precedent that the agreement “must stand or fall in its entirety.”¹⁴ Lead plaintiffs’ attorney Steve Berman called the Title IX appeal an effort to “hijack payments to college athletes that could be lifechanging,” and co-counsel Jeffrey Kessler said Title IX issues fall outside this antitrust litigation.¹³

Beyond the Title IX challenge, additional consolidated appeals are pending. Reply briefs on the appeals of final approval are due February 18, 2026. A separate set of appeals from objectors in the 2025-26 incoming class has briefing scheduled through April 29, 2026. No oral argument date has been set for either group.⁸

What It Is Doing to Programs

The costs of revenue sharing and the constraint of roster limits have already led some schools to eliminate teams. UTEP discontinued women’s tennis, citing “upcoming changes to college athletics, including revenue sharing and roster caps.” Cal Poly dropped swimming and diving, affecting nearly 60 athletes, and estimated the settlement would cost its programs at least $450,000 annually. Grand Canyon shuttered men’s volleyball, and Radford announced it would drop men’s and women’s tennis.¹⁵ Saint Francis announced it would move from Division I to Division III, citing “realities like the transfer portal, pay-for-play and other shifts.”¹⁶

Selling a Back-Pay Claim Early

With distributions delayed, a secondary market has grown up around athlete claims. Companies buy the right to a future settlement payout in exchange for cash upfront. Sycamore Grove Claims Group, one such buyer, says it has purchased more than $300 million in claims from over 3,000 athletes.¹⁷ Offers typically fall between 10 and 20 percent of the expected payout value.³

In September 2025, Judge Wilken issued an order regulating these sales. Buyers must fully disclose tax implications to athletes at least twice before closing a deal, notify the settlement fund in writing within 15 days, and provide a bill of sale and a signed indemnification form. Purchasers must also indemnify the claims administrator against losses related to the sale.³ Class counsel at Hagens Berman have said they have no connection to these companies, cannot vouch for them, and advise athletes to consult an attorney before signing.¹⁸

What the Settlement Does Not Decide

The deal does not answer whether college athletes are employees. That question is being fought in separate litigation, most notably Johnson v. NCAA, in which the Third Circuit ruled in 2024 that athletes could qualify as employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act.¹⁹ Some legal scholars argue the revenue-sharing model strengthens the employment case by creating an explicit expectation of compensation.²⁰ The House settlement itself is silent on the question.

The Unsettled Federal Picture

Congress has not passed legislation to codify or preempt any of this. The SCORE Act, introduced in July 2025, would have established a national NIL framework, blocked athlete employee classification, and granted the NCAA limited antitrust immunity, but Republican leadership pulled it from the House floor twice for lack of votes.²¹ Senators Maria Cantwell, Cory Booker, and Richard Blumenthal introduced the competing SAFE Act on September 29, 2025, which would let schools pool media rights and require institutions to maintain women’s and Olympic sports scholarship and roster spots at 2023-24 levels.²² Neither bill has moved.

On April 3, 2026, President Trump signed Executive Order 14400, “Urgent National Action to Save College Sports.” It directs federal agencies to evaluate whether violations of athletic governing body rules should affect a school’s eligibility for federal grants and contracts, bars federal funds from being used for NIL payments or revenue sharing, mandates reporting on roster sizes and spending by sex, and instructs the Attorney General to act against state laws that conflict with governing body rules.²³ Key provisions take effect August 1, 2026. The order does not amend NCAA rules or override court decisions, and legal observers expect litigation given the tension with existing federal orders expanding athlete rights.⁶

The result, as of mid-2026, is what one legal analysis described as a “patchwork” of NCAA and conference rules, settlement obligations, state NIL laws, litigation risk, and executive action, without a comprehensive federal statute to reconcile them.²¹

1
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2
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3
Brooklyn Law School Sports Law Clinic. College Athletes Know Your Rights
4
Morgan Lewis. From Settlement to Scrutiny Employment NIL and Title IX in College Sports
5
National Conference of State Legislatures. What the NCAA Settlement Means for Colleges and State Legislatures
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MultiState. How State Legislation Transformed College Athlete Pay
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8
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9
ESPN. MLB Exec Bryan Seeley CEO New College Sports Commission
10
U.S. House of Representatives. Representative Trahan Letter to CSC on Denied NIL Deals
11
The New York Times. House NCAA Settlement Appeal Title IX
12
National Women’s Law Center. Women Athletes Are Once Again Getting Shortchanged
13
Sports Litigation Alert. Women Athletes File Notices of Appeal of House Settlement Payouts on Title IX Grounds
14
Sportico. House v NCAA Settlement Objectors Overruled Title IX
15
Arizona Sports. Universities Adjusting Athletic Programs Ahead of NCAA Settlement
16
Yahoo Sports. Universities Cutting Sports Others Adding
17
Sycamore Grove Claims Group. Sycamore Grove Claims Group
18
Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro. Third Party Contracts and Settlement Claims for NCAA House Class Members
19
Harvard Law Review. Johnson v National Collegiate Athletic Association
20
OnLabor. College Athlete Employment Status After Johnson and House
21
Morgan Lewis. No Score Congress Leaves College Sports in Regulatory Limbo
22
U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Senators Cantwell Booker Blumenthal Introduce Student Athlete Fairness Enforcement SAFE Act
23
The White House. Urgent National Action to Save College Sports