What to expect from next week's House settlement hearing

Good morning, and thanks for spending part of your day with Extra Points.

Every college football team has a coach. They’ve got coordinators, recruiting analysts, graduate assistants, trainers, and other staffers. But as we move deeper into the post-House era, another job title may join them as truly essential personnel: The general manager.

Some programs have already hired GMs. Others have folks doing GM-type work under different job titles, like Director of Player Personnel. At other programs, perhaps all the coaches are involved. But no matter how you set up the organizational chart, every program will need to figure out how to manage a payroll and construct a championship roster under very different rules.

We want to better understand that world. So today, we’re excited to announce a new five-part series, partnered with Teamworks, to explore how GMs are building championship rosters.

This series will include interviews with GMs and player personnel staffers from large programs and small, as well as careful examinations of the software, tools and organizational chart structure used to build rosters in this new era of college athletics. Our hope is to demystify, not just for our audience of collegiate athletic professionals, but also regular fans, what a GM is, and how that role fits into today’s college athletic landscape. 

Look for this series to kick off later in April.

Hey, speaking of the rules and structures around roster management

There’s a big hearing on Monday on the House settlement

On Monday, April 7, at 10:00 AM PST, the settlement approval hearing for the House case will begin. If you’re the sort of person that wants to watch this during your work day, you can do so right here.

This is an important event for many reasons. The House settlement has created the structure for the revenue sharing-era of college athletics. As we speak, athletic departments are trimming their rosters, staffing up their administrators and sending out contracts to athletes, all based on the assumption that this settlement will be approved.

It would be nice if every single major question that administrators, coaches, fans, and reporters have about, uh, how all of this is actually supposed to work, will get answered by Monday afternoon. But I’m afraid that isn’t very likely. While I expect to write more about the settlement next week, let me drop in a very brief Q&A on what is likely to actually happen on Monday.

Will the settlement actually get 100% super-duper official approved on Monday?

Probably not.

Now, that doesn’t mean the settlement won’t be approved. While nobody can say for certain, most legal analysts working in and around college sports very much expect this settlement to be approved, even though there was more skepticism earlier in 2025.

What is more likely is that on Monday, Judge Wilken will hear from the plaintiffs and various parties objecting to the settlement terms. Then, a few days later, she’ll offer an official ruling. It could happen on Monday. Could happen on Thursday. Could happen next week.

Functionally, I don’t think the date matters all that much. But I want folks to know, so nobody freaks out if the work day ends without white smoke coming from the federal courthouse in Oakland.

If the settlement is approved, does that mean litigation surrounding athlete compensation will end?

Probably not!

A key provision right now that is generating a lot of concern in and around the industry centers on the proposed third-party NIL clearinghouse that will determine Fair Market Value. This is pretty critical to the settlement terms being executed…because there’s no real “salary cap” if boosters and donors can exceed it via fake NIL deals with impunity.

But will the clearinghouse have legal or practical authority to restrict athlete NIL activity? What about state laws that say athletes don’t need to disclose their NIL deals to anybody? The second the clearinghouse tries to nullify an athlete deal, I’d expect an agent to file a lawsuit.

Beyond that, there could be appeals of the House settlement decision by some of the various objecting parties. Athletes that opted out of the settlement could attempt to also sue the NCAA and power conferences on antitrust grounds. The list goes on.

Without federal legislation that either grants the NCAA an antitrust exemption, codifies the House settlement terms or more explicitly defines how college athlete compensation should work, I believe we will continue to see more lawsuits.

Who is objecting to this settlement again?

Great question. Lots of people. Their concerns are mostly centered around the roster limits provision, the potential violations of Title IX in revenue sharing, and antitrust law. I wrote an explainer last month, if you’re interested. 

Okay. So uh, if the settlement might not get completely approved on Monday, and if settlement approval doesn’t stop future limitation, do I need to care about this?

Well, I guess that depends. If you’re a random fan, maybe not. If you’re the athletic director at Illinois State? Yeah, you probably still need to pay attention.

I’m not very good at predicting the future, and I don’t want to spend too much time here speculating about what could or could not happen in six months. I do know enough to feel good about saying that most athletic departments have been operating on the assumption that the roster limits and compensation structure in House will eventually be permitted, and that they should expect those to be the rules of the land come July.

So, if that ends up being the case? Great. Lawyers will sue, hours will get billed, but the system will have enough predictability to at least function in the immediate future. I also expect the settlement, if approved, will also shape the debate over federal legislation…making it easier for Republican lawmakers to push for NCAA-friendly legislation on employment classifications and limited antitrust exemptions.

If the whole thing gets spiked? Then woobuddy, this summer is going to be a MESS….on every level.

Here’s what else we wrote this week:

• I caught up with the AD at Coastal Carolina to learn how about the nuts and bolts of their big idea to make lots of food options completely free at football games this Fall. If you dig into the numbers, I think you’ll see that this isn’t nearly the risk that you might think.

• A lot of the work that I do is centered around what I can learn from Open Records requests. But you don’t need to be a Serious Professional Journalist to file an open records request. Anybody can do it! And in fact, I'll even teach you how. 

• I also shared some specific suggestions on how athletic departments can cut costs in the near future…stuff that could be applied whether you’re a huge athletic department, or a small one. 

Over the coming days, I expect to have at least one more conference realignment story dropping, more open records-centered stories, reporting on athlete health care, and much, much more.

I’ve also been hard at work in the lab growing Extra Points Library.

In addition to the dozens of new budgets and contracts we’ve added from D-II, we’ve also added over a dozen contracts for General Managers, dozens of new apparel contracts, updated coaching contracts, and more. If you want the most current financial data in college sports, check out Extra Points Library.

If you want to support our work, get access to every newsletter we write and get to play Athletic Director Simulator 4000, become a premium subscriber today. It’s just nine bucks a month, and you get a lot.

And with that, I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. Today is my birthday, and I hope to celebrate by getting this email inbox to zero a more reasonable number, and demolishing my hapless children at Mario Kart.

I’ll see you all on the internet next week. Enjoy the basketball!