The ink is barely dry on the $2.8 billion House v. NCAA settlement, and already the lawsuits are piling up. But this time, they’re not about pay-for-play collectives or employment classification.
They’re about equity.
Specifically, two groups of women athletes have filed legal appeals challenging the House settlement’s backpay distribution formula, which sends 90% of the compensation to football and men’s basketball, 5% to women’s basketball, and just 5% to athletes in every other sport.
It’s a distribution that’s been presented as simple math: football and men’s basketball generate the most revenue, so their athletes should get the lion’s share of compensation, right?
Not so fast.
Historical Discrimination, Baked Into a Settlement
The problem, as a standout editorial in The Washington Post makes clear, is that this logic ignores one critical detail: the NCAA’s own history of suppressing the financial potential of women’s sports.
For decades, women’s March Madness was treated as an afterthought by the NCAA. In 2011 - just a year after negotiating a $771 million/year deal with CBS and Turner for the men’s tournament - the NCAA quietly extended its ESPN deal for just $6 million a year to cover the women’s tournament and 39 other championships. Notably, that extension was made without seeking competitive bids, a clear sign of the NCAA’s low expectations for the women’s game.
It’s no surprise, then, that the men’s tournament became a revenue juggernaut while the women’s event languished in relative obscurity. The system was seemingly expected to fail from the start.
And when women’s sports were finally given visibility, the results were stunning:
💰 Ad sales for women’s March Madness rose 200% in 2025.
📺 WNBA viewership jumped 170% in 2024.
🌍 Global women’s sports revenue topped $1 billion in 2024 and could double in 2025.
The product was never the issue. The exposure and investment was.
A Legal Argument Rooted in Civil Rights
Now, as athletes seek their share of damages for years when they couldn’t profit off their name, image, and likeness (NIL), the settlement formula threatens to perpetuate the very discrimination the NCAA helped entrench.
Critics argue that House v. NCAA uses the “revenue justification” to sidestep Title IX, the federal civil rights law that mandates gender equity in education, including athletics. Judge Claudia Wilken approved the settlement, saying Title IX didn’t apply in this antitrust case, but many, including legal scholars, aren’t buying it.
“You can’t justify discrimination because it makes money,” said Title IX attorney Arthur Bryant. “That’s not allowed under the law.”
The appeals from women athletes seek to correct this logic. They argue that back damages and future revenue-sharing must be proportional to participation numbers, just as athletic scholarships are under Title IX.
Why We’re Framing This Debate All Wrong
The most frustrating part of this battle? The way it’s being framed.
This isn’t a case of women’s sports demanding an equal slice of a pie they didn’t help bake. It’s about recognizing that the oven was locked, the ingredients withheld, and the recipe guarded - all by the very organization now saying they don’t deserve a bigger slice.
The fact that women’s sports, once properly resourced, have proven to be wildly valuable exposes the fallacy in the settlement’s logic.
When historical discrimination depresses your market share, you shouldn’t then use that market share to justify ongoing inequity.
What Happens Now?
If courts side with the women filing these appeals, it could upend not just the backpay distribution but the very structure of revenue-sharing moving forward. It would force institutions to think beyond football and men’s basketball—and actually invest in a more equitable future.
Of course, in today’s college sports climate, where fear of falling behind drives nearly every decision, schools are reluctant to rock the boat unless the courts force them to.
Still, some schools may see the writing on the wall and choose to lead, rather than wait. If so, they’ll deserve real praise.
But the bigger question remains: What really matters in college sports? Is it all about propping up the pointiest end of the triangle? Or is it about preserving the opportunity-rich, broad-based system that once made American college sports the envy of the world?
We support the latter.
Because building champions isn’t just about winning football games—it’s about creating opportunities for everyone. And we’re long past the point where those opportunities should be limited by the decisions of a governing body that deliberately chose not to see the full value of half its athletes.
Let’s hope the courts do.
