If you want to understand what's going on in NCAA (NCAA vs House), but haven't been following it, READ THIS ARTICLE NOW

Serious question - The new terms only say a school CAN keep athletes grandfathered, not that they would need to. What would be the benefit for a school in the SEC to keep the athletes they already planned to cut? I don't really see one. They schools I can see doing it are schools like Washington who have a ton of milers they might want to call "grandfathered" and then bring in more top level younger recruits. So they keep their good kids and it doesn't count against the numbers. Basically I don't understand how this benefits the athletes that were already going to get cut... For swimming where really good kids got cut because the SEC cap is so low this plays out differently than XC/track.

Nothing makes a school keep a minimum of athletes on a team. If Bama now only wants 9 Africans on the XC team, I believe they can just decide to do that.

This option to grandfather athletes is just to make the judge feel better. Conferences like the SEC are reducing below the new NCAA maximum, so it would be impossible for them to choose this option. Other top conferences will also likely set conference maximums too.

Frankly, it was ridiculous ask from the judge in the first place.

We don't want to preserve the careers of the individuals at the confs, NCAA, USOPC, USATF, etc. Sure they can live their lives out as regular people. We want to form our own teams and leagues as God want.

This ^^^

Disagree. It was entirely appropriate and warranted for the judge to do that. It will apply for many schools and athletes.

I believe at the end of the day, schools can still choose to pick smaller rosters. It is inappropriate, however, for fat cats and plaintiffs lawyers to be the ones to tell schools they can’t choose to have more athletes if they want to make it a school priority, IMO.

Here is the unfortunate truth of the situation. The NCAA cannot survive without this settlement. The roster limits are essential to that happening. This is the only way they can provide some sort of parity for their member schools. And before the mob start screaming the NCAA needs to die think about the fallout. The NCAA has only ever been responsible for two things, putting on championships and enforcing rules. The NCAA as an organization has never passed one single piece of legislation. The individual members (schools) are the legislative branch of the NCAA. College presidents and athletic directors have collectively decided to pass every single rule change that has led us to this point. Without the NCAA most of college sports will fall into chaos. You think roster cuts are bad if this deal falls through then program cuts and shuttering of entire athletic departments will follow. There is no way forward without this deal. If the NCAA cannot be in charge of scholarship then roster limits are the only other option. Track and XC will not survive the collapse of the NCAA as well as other sports. Change is coming no matter what. Lets make sure we exist to see it.

Its a negotiation. Those fat cat lawyers reduced roster sizes, but dramatically increased the number of scholarships school can offer. We know that today, most non power four schools will take advantage of this, but if the sport, which seems to be finally headed in the right direction, continues to grow. That will make a big difference one day.

You can't have everything and students have no entitlement to play sports for a certain school. The only realistic thing the judge should be fighting for is making sure students that are cut are made whole financially based on what they agreed to when they committed to a college.

I find it hard to believe that anyone sympathizes with non revenue sports claims to a few thousand / athlete of “revenue sharing.”

Nobody was ever under the illusion these athletes were direct money makers for the university. We saw the good in all the other benefits these sports give at the individual and university level.

Now these athletes — who have been subsidized for decades — are blowing up the system for a few thousand bucks. Nice

This seemed like decent reporting but lets replace it with the drivel of OAN as we are pumping that out into the world through VOA.

The entire system is not sustainable based on the money involved with football for a handful of schools and conferences. It continues to devolve with every desperate ad hoc fix. However, the money making machine needs to continue and it only keeps getting bigger. Cable networks need programming. The athletes were right in wanting to be paid though. The entire infrastructure built around them has so many people making money off of them. Yet, it is all going into trying to prop up something that isn't essential. The universities would be fine without sports. The quotes in the article reflect the sport obsession of our culture and the identity people build around an activity. That is not particularly healthy. How do other nations survive without having profit generating sports in their colleges and sustain a sports obsessed society?

In not approving the settlement it sounds like the judge is actually doing what judges should do and is protecting the rights of innocents who are collateral damage to the avarice of those pushing the settlement. In a nutshell, third tier football athletes are getting paid at the expense of athletes even being able to participate in a sport. The whole lawsuit was couched in terms of equity but really its just contingency fee greed. NCAA football players are not professional athletes and are rewarded via full scholarships at schools they may have struggled to have gotten in to. If there was an open tiered system of professional football (like English soccer) most of these football players would be in the lower leagues making very little. The part that seems to escape the Plaintiffs is that they are not professional athletes. They are specifically amateur athletes in colleges, rewarded directly via scholarship. So, you squeeze a little revenue sharing, framed as equity, and negatively impact scores of other athletes who have spent years developing in their sport. Good for the judge for seeing through it all no matter how it is presented by lawyers on both sides. The whole debacle makes you wonder why this case was ever settled and not tried. The settlement clearly clearly prejudiced scores of people in unanticipated ways (including some named Plaintiffs?). The focus was on a quick money grab from the outset and the NCAA did no one any favors by settling it. The Plaintiff's lawyers prejudiced some of their own clients and the the NCAA did the same. The thread in the middle is money and greed.

Surprised no one mentioning the downstream effect this will have on kids in highschool and our entire next generation of running. If D1 turns into this mess I dont see it lasting more than a few years before xc and track are totally gone. The transition is just a transition to an easier softer extermination. Current coaches lose incentive to recruit fast high schoolers because current D1 runners that are getting cut are leaving their own programs trying to fit somewhere else…makes more sense for a D1 coach to grab the 4:02 d1 guy than the 4:12ish kid in HS. Then the high schoolers see that even if they run 4:10 it doesn't matter anymore for college. So why do it? Yeah yeah, it should never be for that anyway, stop with that argument.

What school did you go to? Or if you don't want to share that, what conference did you compete in? I'm just trying to get a sense for how the allocation of the money is going to be distributed.

If you were a non-power 5 like the American Conference or Big East, which are really competitive conferences, or if you were in a smaller conference like the NEC. ~$3000 is significant.

Dismantle NCAA, USATF, USOPC, Conferences, and so on.

My take (or opinion) is that the ncaa knows they will lose the case and thus they are trying to dictate a solution that would save D1 college sports to some degree in it's current form. (note, the words in it's current form)

Maybe that shouldn't happen. But my take (opinion) is that if this case isn't settled and is allowed to go through the full process, the end result will likely be much worse for non-revenue sports than this particular settlement is dictating.

Of course, it will likely end up that way anyway because you can't prevent future athletes from suing for more than this settlement might dictate.

w/o carve out laws for college sports this problem likely will continue.

It seems the NCAA sold out many current athletes in non-revenue sports by settling. A trial at least gives the opportunity for expert witnesses to be called and the issues to be fully litigated. Here, it is evident that the settlement evolved in unanticipated ways because neither side understood the consequences from the beginning. The judge took a look at it and realized that it is inherently unfair and only serves narrow, monetary interests. The parties clearly cared about the money involved and not the people involved.

This just made my day. You wanted roster cuts and you get them. Leopards eating peoples faces party esque complaint.

Pretty standard mid-major conference. A decent amount of the cash I'm getting is from the Hubbard settlement, which is slightly separate and more connected to academic performance than athletic. Still getting 4 figures for House vs NCAA though. Qualifying for NCAA XC regionals 4 times and being on TV at a few meets seems to have been the majority of my money.

Sucks for the kids getting cut no doubt, especially the ones relying on the scholarships. But I still think this may have a silver lining - a significant increase in the number of club sport participation, especially for XC and distance running.

I played club volleyball in college and had a blast. Club provides a much more balanced approach for students juggling academics and training time. Best of all, clubs open up participation to a wider group of athletes and costs the college a pittance - basically use of facilities and limit travel expenses. Plus the colleges could market their club programs to attract prospective students.

It would be a great thing for runners who want to continue to train hard and compete on a team, but without the meat grinder aspect of NCAA athletics.