The NCAA has approved a series of rule changes to pave the way for the House v. NCAA settlement to come into effect beginning on July 1.
A total of 153 rules and bylaws will be eliminated in anticipation of the settlement’s approval, setting the stage for college athletes to receive direct payments from their schools.
The Division I Board of Directors put forth nine proposals that will end many of the amateurism rules that have shaped college sports since the NCAA was founded in 1906.
The Board eliminated team scholarship limits for institutions and will now allow “institutions that provide student-athletes with settlement-related benefits to provide any amount of an athletics scholarship (up to cost of attendance) to any student-athlete included on a team’s submitted roster.”
The NCAA outlined some of the proposals passed on Monday:
Courtesy of the NCAA
- Permitting schools to provide full scholarships to all student-athletes on a declared roster and eliminating sport-by-sport scholarship maximums, giving schools much greater flexibility in providing athletics aid and doubling the scholarships available in women’s sports.
- Modifying rules to allow autonomy conference schools and others who opt to offer settlement-related benefits to provide up to $20.5 million in direct financial benefits to student-athletes.
- Introducing rules intended to bring clarity and stability to the NIL environment for all Division I schools, including allowing for additional independent review of third-party NIL agreements between student-athletes and entities that are associated with a particular school.
- The creation of technology platforms for schools to monitor their payments to student-athletes and for student-athletes to report their third-party NIL agreements.
- Rules that address steps student-athletes can take if an NIL agreement is considered outside of the range of compensation developed by the external, independent clearinghouse.
- The creation of an enforcement group — created and operated by the defendant conferences — that would provide oversight for rules relating to the terms of the settlement, including third-party NIL and the annual benefits cap.
- A requirement that for student-athletes to receive the new benefits, they must be enrolled full-time, meet Division I progress-toward-degree requirements and receive such benefits during their period of eligibility (e.g., five-year clock).
A summary of legislative changes the NCAA Board made today (contingent on House settlement approval), including elimination of many amateurism rules and addition of roster limits, the new NIL Clearinghouse and enforcement arm that align with settlement terms. https://t.co/ZtdwxbCmcZ pic.twitter.com/GUjg3pUQM3
— Ross Dellenger (@RossDellenger) April 21, 2025
The move from the NCAA comes in the wake of the final approval hearing in the House v. NCAA case earlier this month, where Judge Claudia Wilken raised some concerns with the settlement terms but ultimately didn’t indicate final approval was in jeopardy.
Plaintiffs and the NCAA filed a joint report last week addressing Wilken’s concerns, notably opting not to phase in roster limits, arguing that implementing roster limits immediately as part of the overall settlement compromise is both “fair and reasonable.”
Most recently, a note was added to the House settlement docket, with class members who are not named class representatives in the case sending letters to the Clerk.
I’ve had a lot of people message me asking about this. This just in. It looks like Judge Wilken will be docketing all the comment letters that were recently submitted. I interpret this to mean: “I hear you out there.” But let’s see if those letters influence her decision. pic.twitter.com/0BWfFcCvi5
— Philip Sheng (@therealshenger) April 18, 2025
Boise State assistant professor Sam Ehrlich has added a section to his College Sports Litigation Tracker that includes all of the letters that have been posted to the House v. NCAA docket, and the vast majority of them are related to roster limits.
Ehrlich noted on Monday evening that he counted 51 letters on the docket, all but two of which were roster limit-related.
However, at this juncture, the college sports industry continues to operate as if Wilken will grant final approval to the settlement in the near future.
any proposals about changing the “once you get a scholarship you keep it despite roster decisions” part? Worried that our just cut swimmers might not have funding to stay in school.
I think the 2025-9 Financial Aid change means there’s no limit on scholarships for cut swimmers to count against.
The NIL Clearinghouse will just create more litigation and uncertainty. I fully agree that we need to do something about the NIL collectives, which are essentially paying to play as the players don’t have many, if any, responsibilities related to these collectives. The Biden administration tried to provide some guidance here, by saying that NIL payments provided from the school must be proportionate according to Title IX (it did not do the same for third-party payments). The Trump administration immediately rescinded that.
Those collective payments do need some control for fairness purposes if the NCAA is to have any sort of rules. I do believe they are stretching their power too far when they try to regulate third-parties. First, why… Read more »
I know Bowman is not popular here right now and I’m not defending him (I don’t even know any details to have an opinion on that matter really) – but the communication on this matter has been inexcusably horrendous, their is zero care being given at all to who is baring the brunt of the consequences of this – I get the impression programs are scrambling just as much to figure out what to do as athletes are kinda just randomly having their world pulled out from under them – it all stems from chaotic decision making from the top that just doesn’t seem to care. That is to say as much as I do have some questions about his… Read more »
It’s professional athletics now. Athletes have to protect themselves. Get an agent or a lawyer.
The ADs are the ones to direct your disappointments to. Coaches are just following orders with different conferences taking different approaches. Judge Wilken should demand the House settlement roster caps are a universal number that can’t be changed by conferences. And grandfathering is absolutely the right thigto do. It’s pennies on the dollar long term.
Looking at the scholarships limits by gender a few things can be teased out.
Men scholarships: Under the old rules 224.9 full scholarships. With the new rules 497 full scholarships or a 221 % increase.
Women scholarships: Under the old rules 231.5 full scholarships. With the new rules 574 full scholarships (Note 140 of these are from Stunt 41 Tumbling 51 and Crew 48) The scholarship increase is 247 % but if you take out the 140 you end up with a 181 % increase. I feel that the high number of scholarships for stunt, tumbling and crew were made by the schools to allow them to state that they had more than doubled the number of scholarships for women.… Read more »
Don’t worry, an 8 team dual meet “playoff” will save the sport 🤣 or just ensure a quicker death by eliminating dozens of teams from ncaa championships.
Both the men’s and women’s numbers are inflated. The 497 and 574 numbers are only possible at schools that sponsor every NCAA sport, which I think only Harvard does, and they don’t offer scholarships anyway. SEC schools sponsor 16-20 teams and B1G schools sponsor 20-26 teams. So, you’re right that the numbers there are massively inflated.
However, I think cuts to swimming programs will largely be limited to P4 schools. Most mid-major D1 programs have no expectation of being competitive at NCAAs currently, so it doesn’t follow that they will suddenly be expected to be competitive at NCAAs after the settlement rules are implemented. I predict that most mid-majors will keep their current scholarship levels and won’t be much… Read more »
If you’re getting 8th at your conference meet consistently, you’re gonna be cut no matter what you do with dual meets or fan engagement.
A program getting 8th at a conference meet that is packing the stands throughout the season is WAY less likely to get cut than a program getting 8th at conference meets and showing little to no effort to raise the bar from a fan engagement POV. ADs care about attendance, they care about fan engagement, and they care about programs that are trying to speak their language. You can try to deny that all you want, but it’s just not true.
SOURCE: I have asked quite a few ADs this exact question.
Kyle, i heard you were so triggered by my comment you decided to tweet it. I joined twitter to reply, because you’ve brought nothing here to refute it, and it’s crickets there as well. Is this just one of those if you don’t agree with my delusional vision for the sport, then you must be bad moments or what? I hope you like my twitter handle, because you were the inspiration.
This is what is going to rock the sport as much as the roster limits. No scholarship limits. As soon the settlement is final I think you’ll see a huge wave of schools announce increases in scholarships. But will the portal still be open then?
Scholarships will still be limited, but by what the Athletic department thinks the revenue sports need compared to the total budget, You won’t be seeing very many schools with 30 full swim scholarships (or 52 in SECland). You may see a few however.
Schools such as Texas still don’t have a full set of scholarships for swimming at the moment. However, they are on their way to phasing them in where there will be a full 30 for women and 22 for men by the 2028 season. It will all depend on how much money a school has to offer. Some obviously will have plenty more than others.
Disagree. It will have the opposite impact. Already schools have cut swimming scholarship and are finding ways to limit the impact. Of note, a D1 mid-major swimming program that had tuition waivers plus scholarship dollars to cover room/board/books/fees has now done away with all scholarships and will only provide tuition waivers, but for every team member up to the roster cap.
So now, instead of having what amounted to 9.9 & 14 full scholarships, they will have 30-ish tuition waivers & nothing else to cover room/board/books & fees. The outcome will be a bunch of mediocre swimmers all on tuition waiver, but the team will never get the more talented swimmer to be able compete even in their own… Read more »
All depends on the school. There will be many schools that increase scholarships. And many that will decrease or restructure as you bring up. My point was that the changes in scholarships will rock the sport just as much as roster limits. Not that it would be good or bad. That will be school dependent. I see many top 25 schools increasing scholarships…many smaller decreasing possibly as you mention. But either way will be massive changes
Any chance you’d share which school? Or at least the conference and we can all speculate at home? 😆
men’s portal update?
A lot of DI programs will be up on the chopping block in the next few months.