NCAA’s House settlement great for ex-players, but everyone has to pay football’s tab

As soon as Friday, the settlement in what’s known as the House lawsuit against the NCAA will be finalized and presented to a judge for approval, outlining how billions of dollars will be distributed from NCAA schools to athletes who played for them in the past.

It will be a watershed moment in the history of college athletics, a direct transfer of $2 billion (plus another $800,000 or so in legal fees) from schools to (ex-)players from 2016-23, another unqualified defeat of the amateur model the NCAA spent decades defending, a massive victory for the athletes who bought all those boats and beach houses for coaches and athletic directors.

And, because this is the NCAA and the upside-down world of college athletes, even something as progressive and groundbreaking as this settlement is, of course, a travesty.

The money will go primarily to former big-time football and basketball players. And where will it come from? Not primarily big-time football and basketball schools. In an act of Olympic-level financial judo, the settlement will largely be borne by the NCAA at large, including many schools whose former athletes won’t see a dime.

The big college football money is completely protected, because it lives under the auspices of the College Football Playoff. The NCAA is footing the bill, and conferences are seeing their distributions reduced by a formula that takes into account, in part, basketball tournament success and shifts the burden of the payments across the membership at large.

The big football schools ran up a huge tab. Everyone else has to pay for it.

“We’ve all been part of this association,” ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said. “This idea that it’s football only and should be driven by the football (schools), I do not agree with that.”

And because basketball tournament units are part of the formula, schools like Gonzaga and Butler that have had success in March and don’t play big-time football are getting the raw end of the deal. Conferences that don’t even offer football will see former Big Ten and SEC football players paid with their money.

The Big East and Big Sky have squawked, notably, and Houston Christian even sued to stop the settlement and lost, but the membership at large approved the settlement so there’s not much they can do but grimace and bear it. Why’d they vote for it? Because if they raised too much of a fuss, the Power Four conferences might split off from the NCAA entirely, spelling the end of March Madness as we know it — and the annual paycheck that comes from it.

Power wears out those who don’t have it, and once again everyone but the elite football schools are getting worn out — not to mention the ACC, which is going to have to pay out more than its share based on its basketball success.

“We all voted on the rules and that created liability for all of us,” North Carolina athletic director Bubba Cunningham said. “We all share in it. It made sense to me to hear others say, ‘My proportion wasn’t right’ but there wasn’t a great answer for it. Some conferences don’t have as many units as the ACC. This will have a significant impact on our budget and our league, and the impact it has on me versus Texas and Ohio State is significantly different.”

Meanwhile, football skates entirely, although maybe not be for long. After all, there’s nothing that says the CFP can’t be sued as well. (Any enterprising lawyers who bring that suit can feel free to send a chunk of their 30 percent this way as a finder’s fee.)

Still, it’s important to look at the big picture, and the bottom line is that a group of players will finally share in the revenue they generated, for the first time in the history of college sports, even if this lawsuit is still couched in terms of NIL opportunities. Outright compensation for services rendered isn’t far off.

“This is a reset in college sports,” Phillips said. “It doesn’t mean that college sports still can’t be great and still be as interesting and all the rest of it. But it’s a reset in the structure of it.”

Even those footing the bill for someone else can recognize the virtue in that.

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