“This is a monumental move that will change the college athletic atmosphere, as universities and conferences are allowed to directly pay players through revenue sharing for the first time in history.”
— Ranjan Jindal, “Breaking down the House v. NCAA settlement and the possible future of revenue sharing in college athletics,” The Chronicle, May 27, 2024
“What the proposed settlement has done is expose the dark belly of power conference athletics for revenue sports, the financial race that top teams have been engaged in, and how student-athletes have been the oil in this financial engine.”
— Sheldon Jacobson, “Power conference athletic departments did this to themselves,” Chicago Tribune, May 31, 2024
“Today, the Supreme Court said, ‘no’ to the NCAA’s monopolistic practices. For far too long, the NCAA has pocketed billions off the hard work and talent of student-athletes while limiting the support colleges can provide and denying athletes any of that wealth.”
— Sen. Nancy Skinner, Berkeley, California, “Cali’s Push to Let Student Athletes Gets Big Assists From SCOTUS, NCAA,” The Observer, July 6, 2021
“In the past month, settlement talks went into overdrive because the NCAA and the power conferences wanted to avoid a January trial at all costs. Given the NCAA’s recent track record in court, the defendants clearly didn’t like their chances. If they would have lost at trial, the damages would have tripled. They also would have had to pay them immediately instead of over a 10-year period.”
— Jesse Dougherty, “In major change, college athletes set to be paid directly by schools,” The Washington Post, May 23, 2024
“House is occurring in a transformative era for college sports and the law. Last year, in Alston v. NCAA, the U.S. Supreme Court held the NCAA is subject to ordinary antitrust scrutiny. Although Alston concerned only education-related costs, more important, the case confirmed that NCAA restrictions on athletes’ economic opportunities are not beneficiaries of preferable treatment under antitrust law.”
— Michael McCann, “NCAA Athletes Seek Class Status For Lost NIL Pay in Lawsuit,” Sportico, Oct. 22, 2022
“As college sports roared from regional passion to national obsession through the 1990s and this century, NCAA leaders and college presidents clung to a business model that didn't pay the talent. (The coaches, not coincidentally, were compensated at significant levels because the players never commanded a salary.) Just three years ago, the NCAA fought the notion of paying athletes a now-quaint $6,000 in academic-based awards all the way to the Supreme Court. So it's hard to overstate just how drastic the tenor change is surrounding college sports.”
— Pete Thamel, “NCAA settlement a historic day for paying college athletes. What comes next?” ESPN, May 23, 2024
“There’s no question about it. It’s a huge quantum leap,”
— Tom McMillen, “NCAA, leagues back $2.8B settlement, setting stage for major change in college sports,” NPR, May 24. 2024
“Even though it was only because of the overwhelming legal pressure, the NCAA, conferences and schools are agreeing that college athletes should be paid,”
— Ramogi Huma, “NCAA, leagues back $2.8 billion antitrust settlement,” Casper Star Tribune, May 23, 2024
“The revenue sharing piece that’s happening in college athletics is a good reset for us. I am not an advocate for ‘This is the end of college athletics.’ I don’t believe that. I think this is a new era of college athletics.”
— Alan Haller, “‘A new era’: Michigan State AD welcomes revenue sharing in college sports,” M Live, May 29, 2024
“The settlement, if accepted by Wilken, represents a turning point in college athletics, which have traditionally competed under the guise of amateurism, allowing a seedy underbelly of hidden payments and compensation to flourish. Numerous college programs have been punished by the NCAA for their players being compensated in some way for their exploits on the field, from thousands of dollars being paid to star players under the table to a coach buying a recruit a hamburger on a visit. As the business of college sports took off, the veil of amateurism had begun to seem absurd to many observers: Schools and conferences began raking in millions upon millions of dollars, coaches were preaching austerity and amateurism before leaving their players to take a new job with a massive pay raise and TV networks helped reshape the landscape of the sport to maximize their own profits. At the same time, the players on the field were being paid nothing, even though they were the ones playing in the games doing what had become a multibillion-dollar industry. The House vs. NCAA lawsuit sought to change it.”
— Jacob Lev, “NCAA and power conferences agree to settlement paving the way for schools to pay student athletes,” CNN, May 24, 2024
“We’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about it. We have this really special thing called college athletics in this country, and we have an enormous responsibility to make sure we fix a structure that’s been proven to be not legally defendable, not financially sustainable. It’s really important that we take our role seriously.”
— Danny White, “NCAA lawsuit settlement agreement allowing revenue sharing with athletes faces unresolved questions,” USA Today, May 25, 2024
“The entire system of college athletics was built on the idea of an unpaid labor force. With the highest cost in the sport eliminated, universities were free to spend nearly unlimited money on coaching and administrative salaries, facility upgrades and more. According to a USA Today analysis, programs wasted nearly $200 million on coaching buyouts alone during the 2023 season, an incomprehensible, and frankly offensive, amount of waste. Considering that the bulk of coaching salaries come from booster fundraising, it remains unlikely that high salaries will go away completely; however, programs will have to be much smarter about spending limited resources. The focus on facilities has lessened as name, image and likeness (NIL) payments take focus, and that should only increase now.”
— Shehand Jeyarajah, “How historic House v. NCAA settlement will impact college athletics on and off the field for years to come,” CBS Sports, May 24, 2024
“House v. NCAA will still be a historic settlement addressing some of the biggest underlying questions of college football. Most significantly, it permanently alters the relationship between athletes and universities by finalizing direct payment for athletic participation. College sports will never be the same.”
— Shehand Jeyarajah, “How historic House v. NCAA settlement will impact college athletics on and off the field for years to come,” CBS Sports, May 24, 2024
“Berman, a triathlete and cyclist who lives with his family in Seattle, is no stranger to big wins. He took down big tobacco. In fact, he has sued the NCAA more than a dozen times, the first a 2004 case on behalf of walk-ons. But this one — a settlement of three consolidated antitrust cases: House, Carter and Hubbard — is different from them all. This agreement topples the NCAA’s long-standing rules around amateurism and, he says, protects the organization from future legal challenges. Trust him on that, he says. If anyone would know, it’s him.”
— Ross Dellinger, “NCAA settlement Q&A: How will schools distribute revenue, what is the future of NIL collectives and more,” Yahoo Sports, May 24, 2024
“The NCAA is admitting what we’ve known all along: that consumer demand is not tied to athletes’ earnings, and for many reasons, college sports can have a future that is both fair and sustainable for athletes.”
— Attorney Steve Berman, “Cali’s Push to Let Student Athletes Gets Big Assists From SCOTUS, NCAA,” The Observer, July 6, 2021
