How is a judge supposed to create a college athlete player's association?

Good morning, and thanks for your continued support of Extra Points.

Yes, Yes, I know UC Davis just joined the Mountain West, but I want just a teensy bit more time to make more phone calls before I write about that.

But there’s another thing I’d like to talk about first…the House settlement.

We’ve still got a ways to go before the settlement is completely approved and executed, something that would create a quasi-CBA for college sports. The NCAA shared an update on the House proceeding to membership earlier this week, which I’ll get to in a second, but I want to point out a rather unusual letter to Judge Wilken.

The three named plaintiffs in the case: Grant House (ASU Swimming), Sedona Prince (Oregon/TCU WBB) and Nya Harrison (Stanford Soccer), wrote a letter to Judge Wilken, dated December 2nd.

That letter called for college athletes to have “independent representation” in conversations surrounding NIL regulation, health protections and minimum payments. Specifically, they say that Athletes.org should be that solution.

Via the letter:

The letter ends with:

I don’t know if ‘imprimatur’ is a common word in the legal world, but I’m not as smart as these three athletes, so I had to look this one up. It means to give sanction or approval. It also apparently has a different, very specific meaning in the governance of the Roman Catholic Church, but I don’t think that’s what the athletes were going for here.

Priest readers, feel free to sound off in the comments for clarification.

Anyway, it appears the athletes are asking the presiding judge here to grant some sort of special approval to Athletes.org.

Is that…a thing? Can Judge Wilken do that? And why are the athletes asking for this?

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