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"The N.C.A.A. and the richest college athletic conferences joined with plaintiffs’ lawyers on Friday to enter a $2.8 billion settlement agreement of their class-action antitrust lawsuit.
The agreement, if approved by a federal judge in California, could deliver the final hammer blow to the amateur model of college athletics, which has begun to crumble in recent years under the weight of lawsuits and legislative action.
As soon as a year from now, schools could begin to spend up to slightly over $20 million a year to pay athletes, a ceiling that would rise along with college athletics revenues. The arrangement would last for 10 years.
The settlement also calls for tens of thousands of football and men’s basketball players to be paid retroactively for television and marketing rights. The settlement agreement sidesteps addressing Title IX, which among other things bars colleges from treating men’s and women’s sports unequally.
The N.C.A.A. plans to use the settlement agreement as leverage with Congress to ask for a shield from further antitrust suits and from claims that athletes be considered employees.
The agreement calls for establishing an outside entity to police what are known as name, image and likeness deals for athletes. Any such agreement that is worth more than $600 would have to be reported to the athlete’s school, and a clearinghouse would be set up to help determine whether the deals have been struck at fair market value.
The athletic conferences that are co-defendants in the suits — like the Big Ten, Southeastern, Atlantic Coast and Big 12 — are granted greater autonomy under the agreement to exercise their financial clout, further separating them from the 27 other Division I conferences.
Their pleas, though, seem unlikely to receive a receptive audience from Claudia A. Wilken, the judge hearing the case. On Wednesday, the judge dismissed a request for intervention from Houston Christian University, a small private school in the Southland Conference, which argued that it was being forced to divert money from its academic mission to pay athletes and that it had not had any say in drawing up the agreement.
Judge Wilken noted in her ruling that “H.C.U.’s membership in the N.C.A.A. and participation in Division I sports is voluntary.”
Looming over the settlement, though, is Title IX, which requires equal opportunity for men and women in college sports.
About 90 percent of the settlement payouts would go to football and men’s basketball players in the big-money conferences that are co-defendants in the suits. The average amount due to those athletes will be $135,000, according to Steve Berman, a lawyer for plaintiffs in the litigation. Mr. Berman said that one athlete who he declined to identify would be due $1.85 million. Women’s basketball players could each receive an average of $35,000 to compensate for lost marketing opportunities.
The agreement has been constructed in a way that the plaintiffs and defendants believe would survive court scrutiny. The back payments would come from the N.C.A.A. and go into a central fund; plaintiffs’ lawyers would then direct the money to athletes based on a formula that includes details of their playing careers, like how many snaps a football player participated in. Because the money does not pass through the schools themselves, the lawyers involved believe, they would not fall under Title IX.
The N.C.A.A. is leaving future payments to athletes up to individual schools, saying the payments would have to comply with Title IX, which is administered by the Department of Education.
Lawyers in the House case said in a filing on Friday that no athletes had opted out of the settlement, and that when scholarships, educational payments and various services provided by the schools are factored in, athletes will be receiving close to the 50 percent share of revenue that the players’ unions in the N.F.L. and N.B.A. have bargained for."
www.nytimes.com
The agreement, if approved by a federal judge in California, could deliver the final hammer blow to the amateur model of college athletics, which has begun to crumble in recent years under the weight of lawsuits and legislative action.
As soon as a year from now, schools could begin to spend up to slightly over $20 million a year to pay athletes, a ceiling that would rise along with college athletics revenues. The arrangement would last for 10 years.
The settlement also calls for tens of thousands of football and men’s basketball players to be paid retroactively for television and marketing rights. The settlement agreement sidesteps addressing Title IX, which among other things bars colleges from treating men’s and women’s sports unequally.
The N.C.A.A. plans to use the settlement agreement as leverage with Congress to ask for a shield from further antitrust suits and from claims that athletes be considered employees.
The agreement calls for establishing an outside entity to police what are known as name, image and likeness deals for athletes. Any such agreement that is worth more than $600 would have to be reported to the athlete’s school, and a clearinghouse would be set up to help determine whether the deals have been struck at fair market value.
The athletic conferences that are co-defendants in the suits — like the Big Ten, Southeastern, Atlantic Coast and Big 12 — are granted greater autonomy under the agreement to exercise their financial clout, further separating them from the 27 other Division I conferences.
Their pleas, though, seem unlikely to receive a receptive audience from Claudia A. Wilken, the judge hearing the case. On Wednesday, the judge dismissed a request for intervention from Houston Christian University, a small private school in the Southland Conference, which argued that it was being forced to divert money from its academic mission to pay athletes and that it had not had any say in drawing up the agreement.
Judge Wilken noted in her ruling that “H.C.U.’s membership in the N.C.A.A. and participation in Division I sports is voluntary.”
Looming over the settlement, though, is Title IX, which requires equal opportunity for men and women in college sports.
About 90 percent of the settlement payouts would go to football and men’s basketball players in the big-money conferences that are co-defendants in the suits. The average amount due to those athletes will be $135,000, according to Steve Berman, a lawyer for plaintiffs in the litigation. Mr. Berman said that one athlete who he declined to identify would be due $1.85 million. Women’s basketball players could each receive an average of $35,000 to compensate for lost marketing opportunities.
The agreement has been constructed in a way that the plaintiffs and defendants believe would survive court scrutiny. The back payments would come from the N.C.A.A. and go into a central fund; plaintiffs’ lawyers would then direct the money to athletes based on a formula that includes details of their playing careers, like how many snaps a football player participated in. Because the money does not pass through the schools themselves, the lawyers involved believe, they would not fall under Title IX.
The N.C.A.A. is leaving future payments to athletes up to individual schools, saying the payments would have to comply with Title IX, which is administered by the Department of Education.
Lawyers in the House case said in a filing on Friday that no athletes had opted out of the settlement, and that when scholarships, educational payments and various services provided by the schools are factored in, athletes will be receiving close to the 50 percent share of revenue that the players’ unions in the N.F.L. and N.B.A. have bargained for."
N.C.A.A. Settlement Agreement Reveals How Colleges Would Pay Athletes
The agreement, if approved by a federal judge, could deliver the final hammer blow to the amateur model of college athletics.
