An appeal of the requirement of NCAA antimonopoopoolio agreement will not prevent university teams from paying current athletes from July 1, but will stop the NCAA's plans to start paying the old athletes.
Several university athletes presented the appeal on Wednesday, claiming that the agreement violates the law of Title IX. Now, the approximately $ 2.8 billion in negotiated damage will sit while the appeal works through the system.
The lawyer John Clune told ESPN that he filed the claim in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on behalf of several clients who also raised objections to how later payments would be shared among the athletes earlier this year.
The overwhelming majority of the damage of $ 2.8 billion damages, up to 90%, will go to male soccer and basketball players, according to the terms of the agreement. The lawyers and sports economists who decided how to divide the funds argued that the money that each sport generated through television contracts should be an important factor in determining which athletes deserved most of the money.
Clune argues that because the money on transmission rights would have been flowing directly from school to athletes if they had been paying fairly in the past, schools would have to share that money equitably between men and women to comply with the laws of title IX.
“We support an agreement of the case, but not an inaccurate that violates federal law,” Clune said in a statement sent to ESPN on Wednesday. “The calculation of damage is based on an error for a sum of 1.1 billion dollars. Paying money as it was proposed would be a massive mistake that would cause irreparable damage to women's sports.”
Title IX requires that schools provide equal academic opportunities for men and women on their campus. Providing sports has always been part of that protected academic opportunity during the more than 50 years of history history, which means that universities have been forced to provide list points and scholarship dollars equally for men and women. The leaders of the Department of Education in recent years do not agree on whether the new income participation payments between schools and athletes should also be considered a benefit related to education.
Several lawyers presented arguments similar to the case in the appeal on Wednesday to Judge Claudia Wilken at a preliminary hearing for the agreement in September 2024 and again at a final approval hearing in April. Wilken decided that the application of Title IX law was beyond the agreement of the agreement.
“Title IX was deliberately ignored,” said Clune. “The parties and the court acted as if it were already addressed when it was not clearly.
More than a dozen athlete groups presented objections to the agreement before Wilken approved the agreement last Friday. These groups are eligible to appeal their decision to a superior court. A complex appeal process can often take months, if not years, complete.
The NCAA agreed to pay the $ 2.8 billion to athletes during the next 10 years. According to the terms of the agreement, these payments will not begin until the appeals have been resolved.
