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The NCAA Could Be Busted by the House If a Settlement Isn’t Soon Reached

The NCAA chickens of arrogance and neglect are coming home to roost with yet another lawsuit

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Inside NCAA Headquarters located in Indianapolis on Friday
Inside NCAA Headquarters located in Indianapolis on Friday

By Rock Westfall

The NCAA chickens of arrogance and neglect are coming home to roost. Negotiations continue for a legal settlement that would create a future format for revenue sharing with athletes. The NCAA faces over $4 billion in damages if the House vs. NCAA case goes to trial and is lost.

Pay Billions Now, or Pay Billions More Later 

Pete Thamel and Dan Murphy of ESPN reported on April 30 that the Power Four and the NCAA are working on a class action lawsuit known as House vs. NCAA. The NCAA is accused of breaking federal law by placing restrictions on how athletes make money off selling the rights to their name, image, and likeness (NIL). Concurrently, the trial is scheduled for January 2025. However, because of potential damages, the NCAA is trying to negotiate a settlement.

NCAA president Charlie Baker, the Power Four commissioners, and a battalion of lawyers met in Dallas last week to begin finding solutions to avoid the case ever going to trial. A settlement is expected to be in the multi-billion dollar range.

What is interesting is that money is not the sole motivating factor. College sports leaders see the House case as an opportunity for a future framework that would bring desperately needed structure to college football.

Of course, the process will be the equivalent of negotiating a minefield of competing interests, such as Title IX, and who would ultimately write the checks.

Legal relief and stability must be the number one goal of college sports. Because of the legal pitfalls involved, football has become nearly lawless and ungovernable. A settlement on the House case could be the winning parlay for college football sanity.

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A Vision of Reason By a Legal Powerhouse 

As negotiations begin, college sports could potentially have the equivalent of a pro sports salary cap. Texas A&M athletic director Trev Alberts estimates that schools could add up to $20 million for what he labeled a “new expense category” for college sports.

If college football fans have not heard of Jeffrey Kessler, perhaps they should learn about him. Kessler is a veteran sports labor attorney who is warning the NCAA to save itself before it is too late.

Kessler has told both ESPN and Ross Dellinger of Yahoo Sports in an in-depth April 19 piece that the NCAA is a decided underdog in the House case. In fact, the NCAA could be financially wiped out in its expected loss if they do not negotiate a final pre-trial settlement.

One reason Baker, the former governor of Massachusetts, was hired as the new NCAA president was to find a compromise solution to such cases. The theory was that Baker, a popular Republican governor in one of the most pro-Democrat states in the union, was a man who could work through deep partisan lines to achieve compromises with opponents.

Although Kessler is seen as a villainous attack dog against the NCAA, he has some surprising philosophical agreements. Kessler does not believe that football players, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, should be forced to help subsidize non-revenue sports often comprised of more affluent athletes.

Most refreshingly, he says that the Power Football Conferences are NOT like everybody else. In that non-politically correct perspective, he is the ultimate realist.

Kessler was a driving force behind a case known as NCAA vs. Alston that finally made it to the Supreme Court in 2021, where it scored a 9-0 win to blow the lid open on NIL and related matters. College football has been chasing its tail ever since. 

Kessler’s Vision of Uncommon Common Sense 

Last month at Howard University, Kessler said it was time for the power conferences NOT to be considered the equivalent of schools without major football programs. He also tore into schools using revenue sharing for “scare tactics” regarding the elimination of non-revenue sports. Kessler made a point of how non-playing personnel are grossly overpaid with money that should instead be going to the athletes, shooting down wealthy schools that perpetually cry poor.

While the road ahead is difficult with the potential of NCAA financial destruction, Kessler did offer hope at a recent event.

“A possibility is that this all gets settled in our litigation in which we agree on a new system with the NCAA,” Kessler told a crowd at an event hosted by the Drake Group. “There are proposals out there by [NCAA] President [Charlie] Baker to compensate the athletes. There are systems that could be negotiated as part of a settlement. That’s up to the NCAA. They’ll have to decide if they can actually agree on what it is, and then we have to agree to it.”

It’s a good bet that the NCAA will settle the House case, as painfully expensive as that will be, because the alternative is utter destruction. 

Will a Settlement Take Us Back to Under the Table Payments?

A settlement, framework, and NCAA plan that offers stability, structure, and sanity sounds great. But it does beg the question: If all else is even, could the good old-fashioned Bag Man rise from the grave to be a difference-maker in college football again?

There is no reason that what Jimbo Fisher alluded to being the previously unacknowledged NIL payments would not return in some form. If a player can get virtually the same deal at any school he chooses, it would make sense that some well-heeled boosters would take the sport back to old times and sweeten the pot under the table along with handshakes containing tens of thousands of dollars of non-taxable cash.

The hilarious irony is that the more college football player payments are regulated, the greater the possibility that the sport would go back to the future.

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