Fighting Roster Limits in House v NCAA settlement

Unless you can convince Congress to exempt football and basketball from Title IX, good luck fighting roster limits. No athletic director or university president is gonna want to mess with the cash cow that is football and basketball, especially if they're the sports that are bankrolling the rest of the sports.

If this means roster limits for the other sports, so be it.

Good luck. You don't get to share millions of dollars in revenue with athletes and then get to have unlimited rosters. Thats not how this is going to work. Team are going to cut spots and whole sports whether you sue the NCAA or not.

The harder you fight and the more noise you make the WORSE it is going to be for college athletics especially in Olympic sports.

Track and XC was funded by football/ basketball for decades. Now that money is going to be gone. If you think we can get loud and force schools to carry larger rosters, they will just get rid of the teams all together.

Everything will be DIII soon

This is the problem. These lawsuits just weaken the NCAA. Contrary to popular belief they are the only ones looking out for your sport. The roster limits are the only way for the NCAA to remain the regulator of college sports. They have lost every lawsuit in the last 15 years in regards to money for student athletes. The roster limits take their liability of controlling the money out of the equation. The schools can give a full ride to every athlete on their campus but have to limit spots in order to afford it. Even the power 4 have to consider this when they can fund up to 22 million towards athlete pay. If this settlement fails to get approved then the top 40-60 D1 programs will break away to start their own pro leagues. That is game over for the NCAA and for olympic sports. PLEASE DROP THIS LAWSUIT IMMEDIATLY. You are signing the execution papers of your sport if you win. It blows my mind that people think that this is helpful. Your kid is not good enough.........opportunities are earned not given.

Um, nah I don’t buy it. Why is the roster limit legally needed? Just say scholarships aren’t limited. What’s the different between 30 on roster and the school choosing to only give 17 scholarships and saying the roster is 17 with 17 scholarships?

Adding the roster limit is a made up thing as near as I can tell. Maybe it’s good business for football AD’s to be able to say to the Olympic sports “sorry, rules limit your roster size.” But I don’t see the legal need.

SLCC has 50+ distance guys. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? *Hint - it’s a good thing for the student athletes and Wood is running a great program for them.

Why should D1 be limited to 17? There’s no legal reason. Let schools manage their own budgets.

No one is saying “force” schools to carry a big roster. Let the schools manage their budgets as they see fit. If Bama wants only 10 runners in XC, fine. If they want 30, also fine.

Very valid points. I have spoken to coaching friends at the Power 4 schools and they are already cutting scholarships so they can fund paying for the football and basketball players and it's only going to get worse. You can't sue a school for cutting scholarships. That is their business.

What is going to happen from here is the schools that decide to not pay athletes and don't have to opt into the roster limits, will get better athletes that can't make it to the P4 level. Division II will get better, Division III will get better, NAIA will get better, JUCO will get better. No longer can the P4 school hoard all of the top athletes for themselves, while also not even giving many of them the opportunity to compete.

There are many small DI, DII, DIII, NAIA and JUCO coaches that are as good or better than that P4 coaches. They just don't get as much talent.

NIL is the issue. Schools with unlimited budgets would be able to pay 30 athletes through NIL.

Because if you open it up to unlimited scholarship on top of 22 million set aside for athlete salaries then there is no incentive to offer sports beside football and basketball. 99% of the athletic money comes from those sports. Athletic departments and schools in general are beholden to that money. If there is no limit of some kind, whether it is scholarship or roster limits, then the olympic sports will disappear. The NCAA (NAIA and JUCO as well in their respective associations) is the only advocate for the comprehensive athletic department approach. They mandate that D1 members have to sponsor 16 sports per gender. If this House settlement is not approved or this stupid lawsuit listed above is allowed to continue then it spells the end of the NCAA. Football and basketball schools will leave the NCAA to follow the unregulated money. The NCAA cannot survive without the March Madness money thus causing them to fold or become a mere shadow of the organization that they were. Without outside regulation most bigger schools have no reason to fund all these other sports that most people dont care about. The house settlement takes the NCAA liability away without blowing up the collegiate model completely.

They don’t need to share with every athlete…

Exactly. The House settlement is the only protection olympic sports have. Even then there will be deep and mostly negative results for olympic sports at the D1 level. It also effects all the lower divisions and associations. If the talent shifts down then there will be thousands of kids that will lose their chance to be college athletes. You may not care about that, but how much would it suck to finish at the bottom of some weak NAIA conference with a top 5 all under 26:00 for 8k because the talent shift has elevated the talent pool. When Title IX was planned the purpose was to force schools to elevate womens sports to the level of mens sports in the name of equality. The problem is that schools could not afford to do that, so they had to cut mens sports in order to be compliant. This lawsuit will force schools, that cannot afford it, to cut sports they will never make money on. This is simple math and the olympic sports are not valued enough to be saved without a regulator making the schools save them. By the way the club alternative will not happen at the college level. There will be a club system but it will be privatized.

I think what most current student athletes want is to be grandfathered in and not be cut while in the middle of their college career/education. It's not fair to have the rules changed after they have committed 1,2,3 years already at a school. Also, schools will continue to carry the amount of roster spots they can afford like they do now.

You are exactly right, they dont have to. However...........they will consolidate the money to pay for scholarship, and salary for 105 football players, the basketball team and however many women's sports they need to be Title IX compliant. If there is money left over then that goes back into facilities, coaches salaries, and operating budgets for previously listed programs. If there magically happens to be any money left then sure fund the traditonal powerhouse sport the school has always had. Hopefully they have anyone to compete against.

We are not suing the NCAA. We are letting student athletes know that they have been given the right by the court to object to the settlement as it is written now. Obviously my kid was good enough to get a large athletic scholarship at a D1P4 SEC school, but due to injury has not had a chance to compete. My athlete was told IF the roster limits remained in the settlement as is, they would not have a spot next fall. If the roster limits weren't there or if there was some sort of grandfather clause for existing student athletes in the settlement that they would keep their spot.

Same thing for my daughter. Can't believe that a bunch of wealthy parents won't get together after their kids are cut. Most are oblivious at this point.

I agree but this is about money now. Schools will honor scholarships best case scenario but they are under no obligation to provide opportunities for competition. They have never guaranteed the ability to play or stay on the team. Kids get cut all the time. Everyone thought that college athletes should be paid so here you go. Welcome to the pro college league. Can't produce.....bye, get hurt........bye. Your lawsuit will likely kill whatever opportunities kids have left at the D1 level.

Can't have it both ways! Reap what you sow.

You realize that right now, before anything happens, a student athlete can decide to go to a non-P4 school, right?

It's their choice to be on that team that is 'hoarding all of the top athletes and not even giving them the opportunity to compete'.

You can't blame that on the P4s... that's on the student athlete for making the decision to go to the "big name" school.

Just thought I'd point that out.

Agreed