Final Approval Granted to NCAA v. House Settlement, Changing College Athletics

A new era of college athletics has been ushered in.

Judge Claudia Wilken granting final approval to the House v. NCAA settlement Friday night. The changes include granting universities the ability to directly pay its student athletes, changes to roster limits and more.

The settlement creates a revenue-sharing system between athletes and universities, with schools able to begin direct payments to players beginning July 1. Schools are not required to take part in this revenue sharing.

Additionally, former players will be paid for money they missed out on for missed NIL opportunities. An estimated $2.8 billion will be paid by the NCAA to former players across the next 10 years. Former players will be paid an amount determined by a formula to calculate their estimated value. Of that sum, $2.3 billion will be given to football and men's basketball players who played on Power Four teams.

At the University of Missouri, the athletics administration has created plans to take part in revenue sharing. Missouri and other schools will have to remain under a cap across all sports that will be determined each year by the average revenue brought in by Power Four schools.

For the 2025-2026 athletics calendar, the cap is expected to be set around $20.5 million per school. The NCAA believes that cap number will push close to around 50% of revenue a athletic administration brings in.

"We're gonna need to do our part internally,” Missouri athletics director Laird Veatch said in a conversation posted by Mizzou Athletics. “We are doing a real deep dive into our budget process to really reduce expenses in some areas so we can reallocate those to the revenue share dollars.”

This system will create reveunue-sharing agreements between schools and athletes. These could function similar to contracts in professional sports, possibly bringing more long-term stability to rosters.

"Approving the agreement reached by the NCAA, the defendant conferences and student-athletes in the settlement opens a pathway to begin stabilizing college sports," NCAA president Charlie Baker wrote in a statement. "[The settlement] establishes clear and specific rules to regulate third-party NIL agreements marks a huge step forward for college sports."

However, athletics leaders are not wanting for athletes to be deemed employees, which would give them the ability to unionize. The details and legality of what those agreements will look like is undetermined.

“We need to do all we can to utilize what is already a very advanced NIL structure to shift gears into this revenue sharing model which will essentially be a lot like what the professional sports leagues operate," Veatch said

The settlement began hearings back in April, putting head coaches like Missouri's Eli Drinkwitz in limbo when looking to create plans for the future.

"I just kind of put a pause on it to see what the final thing is," Drinkwitz said on April 29. "I think the thing that's got us out of whack is preemptively moving before the settlement is in place. So we just kind of paused it and we'll roll with the punches whenever they come out."

Drinkwitz has often stated that he doesn't know who is in charge of college athletics, but that will change soon. The power conferences plan to create a new enforcement organization called the College Sports Commission to monitor payments coming from schools and boosters.

The target to be the CEO of the commission is former MLB executive Bryan Seeley, according to ESPN.

Making the adjustments to the settlement will take time. But there's hope it will lead to stability after going through chaos in the years following the approval of players earning the right to earn NIL payments.

"I don’t know who’s in charge," Drinkwitz said on April 8. "Can we get a structure in place? Something sustainable? So we can keep providing scholarships, keep bringing joy to the fanbase, and keep this awesome thing going.