Pending House settlement wouldn’t give college athletes full rights or fix NCAA’s problems

The settlement also won’t stop the transfer portal moves that rankle fans. Players still would be able to come and go multiple times for opportunities elsewhere, financial or otherwise.

Employment contracts would solve that problem — and many others — for NCAA schools. But that’s not happening because, even after numerous legal setbacks, schools can’t let go of the “amateur model” myth that’s allowed them to exploit athletes for decades.

The House settlement essentially is an end run by schools around classifying athletes as employees and bargaining with them for compensation and working conditions.

Deepa Das Acevedo, an associate professor of law at Emory University, said efforts for college athletes to be classified as employees face the decades-long headwinds of the shift to more workers being classified as something other than employees.

“Aside from all the actual monetary, administrative and legal consequences, it’s now that much harder to even tolerate the idea of switching people from being — not even independent contractors but this other, nebulous ‘student-athlete’ category — into being employees,” Das Acevedo said. “It feels like we should be heading that way, but it is a real and conceptual hill to climb.”

The House settlement, if approved, will push athletes ever so slightly up the slope.

Schools will share revenue for media rights, ticket sales and sponsorships, but it will be capped at 22% of the average for power conferences with no floor. That figure has been negotiated among attorneys involved in the class action lawsuit.

Professional athletes who reached agreements with three major leagues receive a much bigger share of revenue: about 50% for NBA players, 48% for NFL players and 45% for MLB (unlike the other two leagues, MLB has no salary cap thanks to longtime resistance from its players union).

If the House settlement is approved, college athletes still won’t have access to the legal protections available to employees. That’s an important consideration because of the many documented cases of abuse by coaches. They include sexual abuse of athletes, mishandling of concussions and serious injuries and deaths suffered during workouts ordered by coaches.

In recent years, professional athletes have made significant progress with improving workplace safety via collective bargaining. Meanwhile, NCAA lawyers have argued in court that schools have no legal obligation to protect athletes. The House settlement includes no provisions for athlete safety.

Das Acevedo said being classified as an employee “is the bedrock of many of the protections and benefits that we associate with a decent working life, and actually even a decent life in the United States.”

“Having that label attached to you allows you to not just engage in collective bargaining ... it also means that you are covered under multiple federal statues,” Das Acevedo said. “Whether it’s for wages and hours. Whether it’s for (Family and Medical Leave). Whether it’s employment antidiscrimination, not just Title IX concerns (sex discrimination) but Title VII concerns (including race and religion).

“Even if the dollar value (of the House settlement) pans out for everyone, you still lose something by not being classified as an employee.”

For decades, NCAA schools have fought against athletes gaining rights as workers. They argued that compensating athletes beyond the cost of their scholarship would ruin their business because “amateurism” is the main appeal of college sports. Never mind that college sports increased in popularity even as payments to athletes were uncovered at dozens of programs.

The NIL era also hasn’t harmed college sports. NCAA schools are tacitly acknowledging that by agreeing to pay athletes directly for publicity rights as part of the House settlement. That development comes after courts viewed the NCAA’s “amateur” argument with more skepticism in recent years.

Things came to a head in 2021 when the Supreme Court ruled unanimously against the NCAA in an antitrust case. Justice Neil M. Gorsuch wrote that the court would not grant the NCAA “immunity from the normal operation of the antitrust laws.” In a concurring opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a blistering takedown of the entire NCAA system:

“Those enormous sums of money flow to seemingly everyone except the student athletes,” Kavanaugh wrote. “College presidents, athletic directors, coaches, conference commissioners, and NCAA executives take in six- and seven-figure salaries. Colleges build lavish new facilities. But the student athletes who generate the revenues, many of whom are African American and from lower-income backgrounds, end up with little or nothing.”

Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion doesn’t carry the force of law. However, it was a signal to the NCAA officials that their “amateur” model was at risk of being dismantled if they ended up back at the court. Since then, NCAA schools have allowed athletes to receive money for additional educational expenses and for NIL rights.

Full classification as employees remains elusive for college athletes. In 2024, a regional director for the National Labor Relations Board ruled that men’s basketball players at Dartmouth are employees and have the right to unionize.

However, in February, the NLRB general counsel under President Donald Trump, William Cowen, rescinded an agency memorandum written by his predecessor that said college athletes should be classified as employees.

College athletes are unlikely to get help from a federal government that’s hostile to labor rights. Public opinion on compensation for athletes has shifted in their favor in recent years, but there are still many fans who don’t like the changes. I hear from some who are upset about the rash of transfers that they believe are motivated by athletes seeking more NIL money.

But athletes aren’t responsible for that. The blame lies with schools who clung to the “amateur” model long after it became clear it was dying. They could fix the transfer issue by signing athletes to employment contracts. Then athletes would be legally obligated to schools, and schools would be legally obligated to athletes.

Making such a fundamental change to college sports is a “conceptual block” that’s hard to overcome, Das Acevedo said.

“There is lot of investment, ideologically as well as materially, in the amateur athlete label,” Das Acevedo said.

At least the House settlement would pay ex-athletes who had their value stolen by schools. It’s good that current athletes would have a chance to receive revenue directly from the school (they’d still be able to sign NIL deals on their own). Hopefully, the parties to the settlement will come up with a solution to roster limits that won’t leave thousands of athletes with nowhere to go.

Those would be victories for athletes, but a true triumph would be getting the same rights as all other workers in America.