owl game As Judge Weighs Landmark N.C.A.A. Settlement on Pay, Not All Athletes Approve

Updated:2024-09-27 15:19 Views:202

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When the N.C.A.A. and the nation’s marquee athletic conferences agreed in May to settle an antitrust lawsuit with a group of athletes, it was viewed as a landmark development that would usher in a new era of college sports in which schools could pay their athletes big money for their talents.

As the parties in the suit, House v. N.C.A.A., laid out details of the agreement, complaints came largely from the smaller schools that had been cut out of the negotiations and were being required to subsidize more than a third of cost of the proposed $2.8 billion settlement.

Now, just over three months later, as a judge prepares to weigh more arguments at a remote hearing on Thursday on whether to grant preliminary approval to the 300-plus page settlement, those early voices of dissent have largely been quieted. Instead, the protests now come from an unlikely source: a raft of athlete advocates who are urging the judge, Claudia A. Wilken of the Northern District of California, to send the parties back to the negotiating table.

Lawyers in another antitrust case have raised objections to the House deal. So has a former leader of the N.B.A. players’ union. Even an athlete who is one of the plaintiffs in the House case, the women’s basketball player Sedona Prince, expressed uneasiness amid her support of the deal.

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The proposed settlement of the House lawsuit would for the first time establish a framework allowing schools to pay college athletes directly, essentially disposing of the amateur model of college athletics that has stood for more than a century. That model had begun crumbling in recent years as revenues from college sports soared into the billions and athletes began demanding compensation.

If the proposal is approved, schools could begin to spend more than $20 million a year to pay athletes as soon as a year from now, an amount that would rise with revenues. All athletes would automatically be opted into the deal unless they request to be removed. The agreement would also allow tens of thousands of football and basketball players to be paid retroactively for lost compensation from television and marketing rights. It could also bolster the N.C.A.A.’s ability to fend off further antitrust suits that have weakened the organization’s ability to regulate itself.

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