Five Months After House v. NCAA: The Settlement That Settled Nothing
OPENING STATEMENTS
Five months after Judge Claudia Wilken’s approval, the House v. NCAA settlement has done what most rushed compromises do: it created more problems than it solved, unleashing a legal tsunami that’s threatening to reshape everything we thought we knew about athlete compensation and gender equity. The $2.8 billion back damages remain frozen in appeals court, while the $20.5 million annual revenue-sharing cap has begun, creating a patchwork of policies that leaves athletes more vulnerable than ever.
This week, alongside Professor Michael Leroy and Pamela Seidenman, I filed an amicus brief supporting the appellants challenging this settlement. Our core argument is straightforward: a settlement that allocates 90% of damages to male athletes while women receive just 5% doesn’t just violate Title IX but institutionalizes decades of discriminatory practices the NCAA created in the first place.
The brief presents five critical issues: 1) exclusion of Title IX expert testimony, 2) erroneous class certification, 3) structural conflicts favoring male athletes, 4) procedural violations under Federal Rule 23(a)(4), and 4) outright Title IX violations in monetary relief distribution. We argue that empirical data shows an 86.7% male advantage in NIL compensation under current models, a disparity that would have been addressable had Professor Barbara Osborne’s Title IX expertise not been excluded from class certification proceedings.
Most damning is our documentation of systematic NCAA undervaluation of women’s sports. From 1996 to 2025, men’s basketball generated $17.9B in media rights while women’s basketball earned just $163M, despite women’s viewership averaging 59% of men’s from 2021-2025. If valued equally, women’s deals would have totaled $4.8B – a $4.6B shortfall exposing the settlement’s discriminatory foundation.
With all of this in mind, I thought it would be worth level setting and looking at where various cases stand in objecting to various elements of the House settlement.
The most significant challenges come from three groups of female athletes arguing fundamental Title IX violations, each representing a distinct legal strategy that could reshape the entire settlement:
First Appeal Group: Eight female athletes filed the lead challenge claiming the settlement underpaid women athletes. They argue it ignored Title IX’s equity standards by relying on market analysis that reinforces past bias. Applying Title IX’s proportionality, they say women should get 47% of back damages ($1.14B) instead of 5%.
Second Appeal Group: Four female athletes filed a similar, Title IX-focused appeal. While their specific arguments remain sealed in briefs, their objection centers on the settlement’s failure to ensure gender equity in damage distribution.
Third Appeal Group: Ten female athletes filed what may be the most comprehensive challenge, arguing the settlement “deliberately ignored” Title IX and impermissibly extinguishes Title IX rights through an imbalanced process. Their brief contends that both the damages and injunctive relief violate Title IX’s nondiscrimination principles.
Additionally, Liberty runner Gracelyn Laudermilch was expected before Judge Wilken on Thursday to continue pressing her objections to the settlement, initially raised back in April, based on its impact on roster caps.
The Ninth Circuit has consolidated these appeals with briefings extending through November 2025. Opening briefs were due October 29, with answering briefs due in January 2026. The appeals have triggered an automatic stay on all back damages. But, crucially, they do not halt the revenue-sharing provisions that began July 1.
If successful, these appeals could require a complete restructuring of the back damages formula to comply with Title IX’s proportionality requirements, potentially redirecting over $1B to female athletes. Judge Wilken explicitly left open the possibility of future Title IX lawsuits regarding revenue-sharing payments, noting the settlement “does not compel schools to violate Title IX.”
Beyond appeals, the real danger lies in how schools implement revenue-sharing amid shifting federal Title IX guidance, which has flipped twice in six months. Athletics directors face uncertainty as four types of Title IX claims are accelerating:
Revenue-sharing disparities when most of the $20.5M flows to football and men’s basketball
Roster cuts as new caps squeeze Olympic-sport athletes
Program eliminations like Stephen F. Austin’s recent cuts to three women’s sports
Unequal NIL access as schools and collectives steer deals toward male athletes
Instead of clarity, the House settlement has created a legal minefield. Five months in, it hasn’t settled college sports – just changed the battlefield. The real fight is only beginning.
EXHIBIT A
A Front Office Sports story reveals something striking about the current landscape: while college football players are projected to earn $1.9B this year, women’s sports athletes are carving out their own significant piece. The $417.8M projected for women’s sports this year, projected to rise to $663M by 2028, represents 4.5x faster growth than men’s sports. Most telling? Women’s sports athletes account for 32.2% of all NIL deal applications through Opendorse, despite historically receiving far less investment. They’re 2.8% more engaged in the NIL process than male counterparts, suggesting untapped demand that smart brands are finally recognizing. Still wondering when this will flow to revenue sharing, which is only 8-12% of the $20.5 million cap set forth by the House decision.
EXHIBIT B
Unrivaled seems to get what everyone else misses. While the NCAA struggles and Congress caters to institutions, Unrivaled is quietly building the future of women’s sports, which Emma Baccellieri outlined in her Sports Illustrated article this week. Their NIL model is simple and smart: pay athletes to be themselves – no strings, no restrictions, just genuine relationships. All 14 athletes they approached said yes because Unrivaled gets it: today’s women athletes value choice. As schools juggle revenue and compliance, Unrivaled invests in what really matters: the connections that turn potential into loyalty.
ON THE DOCKET
Fairleigh Dickinson University’s strategy of adding men’s fencing is innovative and potentially transformational for college sports nationwide. By recognizing tuition from roster spots as revenue, FDU flips the usual focus from cost-cutting to strategic growth, showing that new sports can actually be profit centers instead of budget drains. This approach addresses declining enrollment, makes better use of campus assets, and provides opportunities to a new cohort of student-athletes. There’s reason to believe other colleges will embrace this model. The old “cut-to-save” mindset has reached its limit as schools face the enrollment cliff and stagnant applications. If athletic departments collaborate with university leaders and take the broader campus impact into account, adding sports could become a viable path to sustaining both finances and school spirit, especially for small and mid-sized institutions hungry for new strategies.
FOOTNOTES
“Over my almost four decades as a director of athletics, college athletics has never been at the current level of disarray, a condition of utter helplessness, or despair. The ecosystem is terribly broken, not sustainable, largely fueled by funny money which is activating an artificial market! The pay for play system, known as NIL, has served to deregulate the larger enterprise, wherein no rules, regulations, and/or guardrails exist. It should be noted that this level of deregulation does not exist within any professional sports league.”
- Kevin White, former Duke and Notre Dame athletics director.
