Field Level Media - Professional sports content solutions | FLM

Former college athletes are due for a payday after the NCAA Board of Governors voted to agree to settle House v. NCAA and other antitrust cases related to it, ESPN reported Wednesday.

With the NCAA’s board agreeing to the terms of the settlement, former college athletes are one step closer to getting over $2.7 billion in back damages over the next decade because of previous restrictions on Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) deals.

Future athletes would also benefit, as the Big 12, Atlantic Coast Conference and Big Ten — three of the defendants in the case — are hoping to put a system in place that would give schools the power to pay them about $20 million per year in permissive revenue sharing.

Such payments wouldn’t start until fall of 2025.

The ACC and Big 12 had already accepted the terms of the settlement, doing so on Tuesday. The Big Ten joined in on Wednesday, and now the Southeastern Conference and Pac-12 just need to submit their approval.

Both the SEC and Pac-12 are expected to approve the terms later this week, per ESPN’s report.

It is expected that a settlement will officially be reached, and if that were the case, the schools and the NCAA would avoid going to court, where they could have had to pay over $4 billion in damages if they lost.

Per ESPN’s report, the plaintiffs in the case could also dismiss two other antitrust cases against the NCAA that are currently pending and could possibly add billions of dollars in damages to the association’s plate.

–Field Level Media