An attorney in the $2.8 billion legal case reshaping college sports said Monday he thinks “the agreement we will reach with the NCAA will solve the judge’s concerns” over roster limits that have delayed final approval.
Steve Berman, co-lead counsel for the defendants, told The Associated Press that all is on track to file paperwork by Wednesday, which is U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken’s deadline for addressing concerns to the deal last month.
Berman said he created a chart listing the several dozen athletes who lodged objections to the agreement based on roster limits. He said he thinks almost every one will be offered a solution.
“We’re still negotiating, and I’m confident that everyone who lost a roster spot will have a chance to get a spot back,” he said.
He did not go into detail about whether those spots would be on their previous teams or new ones.
NCAA vice president of external affairs Tim Buckley said the NCAA would not comment on the litigation while negotiations are ongoing.
Wilken looked favorably on other — namely, the up to $20.5 million some schools can pay their athletes for name, image likeness (NIL) deals and the nearly $2.8 billion in back pay that will go to players who said the NCAA and five biggest conferences wrongly kept them from earning NIL money.
But she asked lawyers to rework the part of the deal that will replace scholarship limits with roster limits. It’s a proposal that could make more overall scholarship money available but could cost thousands of athletes their spots on rosters in moves that began shortly after Wilken gave preliminary approval to the deal last fall.
The NCAA’s first response to Wilken’s request — which included the idea of “grandfathering in” current players to their roster spots — was to change nothing, arguing that undoing roster moves already in play would create more turmoil in an already chaotic process.
Wilken wasn’t moved, saying in her April 24 order that “any disruption that may occur is a problem of Defendants’ and NCAA members schools’ own making.”
Berman acknowledged that the objectors likely wouldn’t approve of the new deal being worked on.
“But I don’t think it’s going to be a big deal,” he said, because it is designed to find roster spots for virtually all the individual athletes who objected.
Attorney: Saban should stay on the sideline
Berman also criticized Nick Saban after reports emerged that the retired Alabama football coach was urging President Donald Trump to undo damage he says has been caused by all the money flowing into college sports.
The Wall Street Journal reported Trump is considering an executive order that would call for some sort of structure behind NIL compensation now going toward players who are now able to move more freely between schools.
Berman said he believes an executive order would be subject to lawsuits “like there are against so many of his other orders.”
“But here, the question is, ‘Why does the president need to get involved?’” Berman said, while outlining the financial gains players have made in the NIL era. “Just because Nick Saban thinks he knows better and resents change? This is a coach who made more money off college football than any other coach, did absolutely nothing to make it right for these student-athletes. Why should he drive the president’s thinking?”
Saban, who made more than $11 million in his last year at Alabama and who some have said should become the commissioner of college football — a position that doesn’t exist — has said he isn’t completely against players making money.
But he has argued for rules and laws to keep things from looking like the “pay for play” model that the NCAA hopes to avoid but that is often what NIL payments look like.
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