The NCAA Division I Board of Directors approved the House settlement as an addition to the organization’s rule book last Monday, thus beginning the process of integrating the settlement into college athletics.
Now, all that remains between the settlement and all schools that opt in to it needing to enforce its terms fully is its approval by Judge Claudia Wilken of the Northern District of California.
Judge Wilken was expected to approve the settlement last Wednesday at a hearing, but did not do so due to objections to the settlement’s requiring immediate implementation of roster limits; namely, rather than capping the number of scholarships, schools will cap the roster sizes of each sport, and each person on those rosters will be able to receive a scholarship of some sort.
Roster limits were just one of the objections to the settlement raised at the hearing, but it was the only one that Judge Wilken sustained, thus resulting in her not approving the settlement.
In a five-page order, Jugde Wilken wrote that the settlement needed to be modified to address the potential negative impact of these roster limits going into effect immediately before she could approve it. She gave the parties to the settlement 14 days to revise it.
Wilken suggested in her…
