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College sports are getting ready to be shaken up. a settlement in the landmark House v. NCAA case will pay past athletes backpay for their stymied NIL rights, allow schools to pay revenue share payments to current athletes with a cap of around $20 million per year, and cap the roster sizes of Division I schools that opt in.
On Monday, a very important hearing was held about the proposed settlement between the NCAA and the House plaintiffs that would established the conditions mentioned above. And, one important conclusion came out of the hearing involving the roster caps.
As part of the settlement, the scholarship limits for Division I teams opting into the settlement (all major conferences and most mid-major conferences are opting in) will be gone. Previously, in football, for instance, you were limited to 85 scholarships at the FBS level and theoretically unlimited roster sizes. The settlement proposes a 105 player roster cap for football, but all of those players can be on scholarship.
Most major programs carry around 125 players, with around 40 players being walk-ons. If the settlement is approved by Judge Claudia Wilken, a federal judge in Northern California, as written, coaches would have to get down to 105 by the start of next season. But, in Monday’s hearing, Wilken expressed desires for both sides to agree to phase in the roster limits, meaning that current players won’t get cut. Here’s CBS Sports with more.
The crux of the issue Monday hinged on new roster limits, which are expected to lead to nearly 5,000 athletes without spots on rosters across the NCAA’s 43 sponsored sports. Wilken suggested that current athletes should be “grandfathered in” and allowed to remain on rosters until their eligibility expires. This would enable schools to temporarily exceed new roster limits, which include unlimited scholarships. NCAA attorney Rakesh Kilaru opposed the idea, though he agreed to work with the plaintiff’s attorneys on a solution.
“We didn’t come up with these roster limits in an arbitrary way,” Kilaru said. “… Roster limits were based on actual people participating in a season, not a particular game.”
That’s good news for current walk-ons, and probably the right thing to do.