College Sports’ Billion-Dollar Settlement Demands Athlete Empowerment, Not More NCAA Control

In a landmark decision on Friday, Federal Judge Claudia Wilken approved a sweeping $2.8 billion antitrust settlement between the NCAA, its most powerful conferences, and thousands of Division I athletes. This ruling will significantly reshape the structure and governance of college sports, signaling a formal end to the NCAA’s century-old claim to amateurism.

For decades, the governing body maintained the illusion that college athletes were students first and foremost. Now, universities will soon be permitted to directly compensate the very athletes who fuel a multibillion-dollar industry.

While many fans have grown accustomed to the post-2021 world of NIL compensation, where collectives and boosters write the checks, this marks a fundamental shift: the money will now come directly from the institutions themselves. However, what should be a major step forward for athlete empowerment has been clouded by skepticism.

The NCAA and its partners have simultaneously introduced new layers of regulation, including the College Sports Commission (CSC), a newly formed enforcement arm, headed by former MLB executive Brian Seeley. Alongside it, Deloitte will operate the "NIL GO" clearinghouse, a watchdog entity tasked with evaluating the legitimacy of NIL deals.

On paper, these initiatives are being framed as tools for restoring integrity to college sports. In reality, they appear to be yet another attempt by universities, coaches and administrators to regain control of a system that is evolving without them. These organizations will review NIL agreements to determine whether they meet a “valid business purpose” and are not simply pay-for-play disguised as marketing.

Here’s the critical issue: despite promising to compensate athletes, the NCAA and its member institutions remain firmly opposed to recognizing these athletes as employees or granting them collective bargaining rights. That alone creates a gaping hole in any claim of fairness or equity.

In professional sports, salary caps, free agency restrictions and contract terms are considered legal because they are the result of collective bargaining agreements negotiated between leagues and recognized player unions.

Furthermore, in the professional realm, there is no "enforcement entity" monitoring or questioning the legitimacy of endorsement deals—what NIL agreements essentially are—no matter how much money an athlete earns or where those payments originate.

In college sports, no such union exists. And if the NCAA and its member schools get their way, athletes won’t have any say in how compensation structures or transfer limitations are created or enforced moving forward, either.

That’s by design. Their ultimate goal is to ensure that athletes are never classified as employees, even though a school directly paying an athlete to compete on its behalf strongly resembles—if not outright constitutes—an employer-employee relationship, or at least a contract labor agreement.

Many observers believe the House settlement brings college athletics one step closer to formalizing this relationship, aligning the dynamics between athletes and universities with those that have long existed between schools and their highly paid coaches.

Athletes must retain the freedom to transfer between schools and earn from their NIL without arbitrary limitations. To do otherwise is to double down on an exploitative structure that has benefited schools and coaches at the expense of the players who have generated the product for the last century.

Coaches sign multi-million dollar contracts with guaranteed pay, leverage job changes without restriction and enjoy all the protections of employment. Athletes? Most are locked into one-year renewable agreements, offering no security and minimal leverage in a system where billions are made from their labor.

Let’s be clear: the fear that fair pay and open player movement would bankrupt college athletics is a MYTH. Revenues from media rights have soared. Conference realignment, driven purely by television dollars, is thriving.

NIL is not killing college sports—greed and control are the true culprits (if you subscribe to the popular theory among the people that run the sport that they're dying in the first place).

I, for one, don’t believe it for one second.

And if the CSC or Deloitte begin enforcing rules that restrict athlete earnings—especially if those rules are not collectively bargained—you can expect a fresh avalanche of litigation. The NCAA has lost nearly every courtroom battle of the last decade, and nothing in this new arrangement suggests a change in that trend. Courts have repeatedly affirmed the rights of athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness, and to move freely between schools to bolster their earning power.

That's how things work in a free market—your value is determined by the amount someone is willing to pay for your services, and negotiation determines the parameters by which you enter into, or dissolve, a contract between parties.

If schools truly want structure and competitive balance, the answer is not more regulation or opaque oversight bodies. The answer is to allow athletes to unionize and create a true collective bargaining process. That would bring legitimacy to salary caps, transfer policies and enforceable agreements—just as it has in the NFL, NBA, MLB, and beyond. Without this, the legal standing of the NCAA’s restrictions will remain on shaky ground.

Judge Wilken’s ruling offers a powerful moment of change. But it’s only the beginning. If universities and coaches seek to impose rules that limit athletes without also offering them the status and protection of employment, then they are once again placing themselves on the wrong side of history.

The next phase of this transformation must be rooted in transparency, shared governance and respect for the athletes who make the entire machine run. Without those pillars, no amount of commissions, clearances or settlements will fix what’s broken in college sports.