Why are people objecting to the House settlement, and does it matter?

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

Today, I turn the time over to Extra Points Serious Professional Legal Correspondent Sam Ehrlich of Boise State, to explain a critically important college sports legal question. Why are multiple parties objecting to the House settlement? And do those objections matter?

The answer involves a lot more of the NFL than I expected. And rowers.

It’s been widely reported both in this newsletter and elsewhere that schools across D-I for life after the House v. NCAA settlement.  Discussions of which teams will be able and willing to afford giving athletes revenue sharing up to the $22 million (for now) cap, how new roster caps (instead of old scholarship caps) will impact walk-ons and low revenue sports, and discussions of the fairness of the back-pay portion of the settlement have dominated discussions about the future of college sports.

However, it’s important to remember that the settlement is, at this stage, still a “proposed” settlement.  There are plenty of interested parties who may have an interest in stopping the settlement from taking force, or at least taking force as currently written.  

The deadline to file objections to the settlement at this preliminary approval stage was August 9.  At that time, objections were filed by:

• The plaintiffs of Choh v. Brown University, a case challenging the Ivy League’s conference-wide ban on athletic scholarships (which we’ll call “the Choh objection”);

• The plaintiffs of Fontenot v. NCAA and Cornelio v. NCAA, two cases that more broadly attacks the NCAA’s remaining amateurism restrictions (including scholarship limits) as a giant cartel-run labor price-fixing scheme (“the Fontenot objection”); and,

• Six current or recently-graduated women’s crew athletes (“the crew objection”).

Steve Berkowitz of USA Today, Amanda Christovich of Front Office Sports, and Michael McCann of Sportico have written excellent general breakdowns of the three objectors’ arguments, so I won’t repeat too much of what they’ve already covered.  But one of the three filings—a filing by six current and former female crew athletes—intrigue the heck out of me, not only because of what was said in the objection but because of who said it.  So instead of talking broadly about all three objections, I want to focus on that last one … and talk about why it may stand out from the other two when it crosses Judge Wilken’s desk.

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