An appeal of the NCAA's landmark antitrust settlement won't stop college teams from paying current athletes starting July 1, but it will pause the NCAA's plans to begin paying former athletes.
Several college athletes filed the appeal Wednesday, claiming the deal violates Title IX law. Now the roughly $2.8 billion in negotiated back damages will sit while the appeal works through the system.
Attorney John Clune told ESPN he filed the claim in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on behalf of several clients who also raised objections to how the back payments would be shared among athletes earlier this year.
The overwhelming majority of the $2.8 billion pot of damages -- up to 90% -- is expected go to football and men's basketball players, according to the terms of the settlement. The lawyers and sports economists who decided how to divvy up the funds argued that the money each sport generated through television contracts should be an important factor in determining which athletes deserved the biggest portion of the money.
Clune argues that because the broadcast rights money would have been flowing directly from the school to the athletes if they had been paying them fairly in the past, the schools would have to share that money equitably between men and women to comply with Title IX laws.
"We support a settlement of the case, just not an inaccurate one that violates federal law," Clune said in a statement sent to ESPN on Wednesday. "The calculation of damages is based on an error to the tune of 1.1 billion dollars. Paying out the money as proposed would be a massive error that would cause irreparable harm to women's sports."
Title IX requires schools to provide equal academic opportunities to men and women on their campuses. Playing sports has always been part of that protected academic opportunity during the law's 50-plus year history, which means colleges have been required to provide roster spots and scholarship dollars in an equitable fashion to men and women. Leaders of the Department of Education during the last few years have disagreed on whether new revenue share payments between schools and athletes should also be considered a benefit that is related to education.
Several attorneys presented arguments similar to the case made in Wednesday's appeal to Judge Claudia Wilken at a preliminary hearing for the settlement in September 2024 and again at a final approval hearing in April. Wilken decided that the application of Title IX law was outside the scope of the settlement.
"Title IX was deliberately ignored," Clune said. "The parties and court acted like it was already addressed when it clearly was not. Complying with Title IX was a problem in this settlement, so they just chose to ignore it. That can't stand."
More than a dozen groups of athletes filed objections to the settlement before Wilken approved the deal last Friday. Those groups are eligible to appeal her decision to a higher court. A complex appeals process can often take months, if not years, to complete.
The NCAA agreed to pay out the $2.8 billion to athletes over the course of the next 10 years. According to the terms of the settlement, those payments will not start until the appeals have been resolved.