As college sports waited for the House v. NCAA settlement to receive final judicial approval, most industry insiders expected a rubber stamp. Instead, Judge Claudia Wilken issued a warning shot: unless the NCAA and its co-defendants fix the issue of immediate roster limit implementation, she’s prepared to toss the entire settlement.
And with that, what was supposed to be a victory lap for reform has turned into a potential disaster for athletes—and a moment of reckoning for NCAA leadership.
What the Judge Actually Said
In her April 23 order, Judge Wilken called out one part of the House settlement as unacceptable: the July 1, 2025 transition from scholarship caps to roster caps. While the intention was to provide teams more flexibility—i.e., give more scholarships in exchange for smaller total rosters—it’s become clear that this move, especially without a gradual phase-in, would result in thousands of athletes losing their roster spots.
More importantly, many of those cuts are already happening.
Athletes like Utah swimmer Gannon Flynn and high school recruit Gracelyn Laudermilch testified that they were told they would lose their spots. Coaches began quietly trimming rosters in late 2024 in anticipation of the changes. According to objector filings, some spring sport athletes weren’t even able to finish their seasons before being removed. For many, it meant scrambling to find a new home—often with no eligibility left to use.
Judge Wilken’s position is clear: the harm being done now, before the agreement is even finalized, cannot be ignored. The NCAA’s argument that it’s “too late” to fix things because schools have already acted didn’t sway her. As she wrote, “Any disruption that may occur is a problem of Defendants’ and NCAA members schools’ own making.”
In other words: fix it or lose the deal.
Grandfathering—and Then Some
So what does “fixing it” look like? It starts with grandfathering in current athletes—ensuring they don’t lose roster spots due to future rules. But Wilken seems to want more than that. She’s signaling that schools may need to reverse cuts made in anticipation of the settlement. That includes athletes who already transferred, lost access to facilities, or saw their seasons—and in some cases, their careers—cut short.
The legal implications are staggering. Would schools have to reinstate athletes who left months ago? Will they be forced to restore eligibility for athletes like Holly McLean, the former Oklahoma golfer who transferred to USF but was blocked from competing due to having participated in a non-championship fall event? The NCAA’s notorious inconsistency on eligibility waivers makes any clear path uncertain—but lawsuits are inevitable.
And Judge Wilken’s patience appears to be wearing thin.
This Is What Happens Without Planning
These issues could have been avoided with proactive leadership. But rather than listen to months of athlete objections about the dangers of immediate implementation, the NCAA and conference leaders plowed forward. Coaches began making decisions not based on certainty, but on fear of what was coming. That fear, rooted in poor communication and zero structural flexibility, has now upended the lives of countless athletes.
Kennesaw State baseball player Corey Berry II’s story is a case in point: told in April he’d be cut, removed from the team, denied access to meals and trainers, and left in limbo. The damage is real. And now the NCAA is being told to clean it up.
But how?
Reinstating athletes isn’t just a logistical nightmare—it’s a legal one. Scholarship caps, eligibility rules, and transfer policies aren’t built for backpedaling. Wilken’s demands, however, make it clear: the burden is on the institutions that created this mess to find a way out of it.
The Bigger Problem: Athlete Voices Still Missing
All of this brings us back to a fundamental flaw in the way the NCAA has handled the House settlement: despite months of feedback, the framework still ignores key athlete concerns. There is still no clarification on how international athletes will be treated under revenue-sharing. There is no explanation for how or why roster limits are being implemented this way. And there is certainly no plan to build a collective bargaining structure that would allow athletes to have meaningful, formal input into decisions affecting their futures.
The consequences of that omission are now playing out in real time. The cuts, the lawsuits, the eligibility battles—these aren’t bugs in the system. They’re features of a process that continues to prioritize administrative ease and legal expediency over athlete experience.
And Judge Wilken isn’t having it.
The NCAA is now at a crossroads: comply with a court-mandated cleanup of its rushed policies, or risk blowing up the most significant settlement in college sports history. Either way, it’s a mess of their own making—and the longer they delay real athlete inclusion in the process, the more damage they’ll have to undo.
