A recent legal brief in the expansive college sports lawsuit presents concerns that the proposed solution regarding the roster-limit rule does not adequately protect walk-on athletes and others who lost their team positions when universities began trimming their rosters in anticipation of a settlement approval.
Last week, legal representatives for Michigan walk-on football player John Weidenbach and Yale rower Grace Menke submitted a response to the suggestion that athletes ousted due to the roster-limit rule should not count against the cap when it is implemented next academic year.
These roster caps have been a hurdle for U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken in sanctioning the $2.78 billion settlement. This settlement aims to permit universities to compensate athletes directly, starting later this year.
Judge Wilken proposed that athletes already on a team roster should be “grandfathered in” throughout their college careers, thereby exempting them from the upcoming roster limits. While these limits aim to broaden scholarship offerings across different sports, they are also predicted to displace thousands of athletes, mostly walk-ons or those on partial scholarships, from their sport rosters.
Wilken is taking objections until Tuesday and has set a deadline through Friday for the NCAA and plaintiffs to respond to these challenges.
The filing on behalf of Menke and Weidenbach claims that the resolution suggested by the NCAA and plaintiffs “falls short in numerous ways” in safeguarding these athletes.
A key point in this argument is that the proposed solution leaves the decision to restore players to their previous positions entirely up to the discretion of the schools that originally cut them. Moreover, it critiques the directive that schools compile a list of players cut because of roster limits. This suggestion opens possibilities for schools to fabricate other reasons to justify player cuts.
“It deprives student-athletes of the chance to contest these decisions or prove that roster caps, rather than other factors, led to their removal,” according to the brief.
On the contrary, the NCAA and plaintiffs maintain that since no roster spots were ever guaranteed, offering players a chance to return to their former teams to compete for their positions places them in a situation no different from their initial circumstances.
However, the filing contends that the impact had been evident long before, with schools preemptively cutting athletes based on the assumption that Wilken would approve the settlement—a presumption the judge stated was flawed.
“Many athletes and their families are experiencing upheaval due to the enforcement of roster caps,” the document indicated. “Defendants’ indifference, despite simple proposals to correct an issue of their creation, is remarkable.”
Among the objectors’ recommendations was an automatic reinstatement of athletes to their previous team slots, while granting schools the authority to remove athletes for valid reasons independent of the roster cap, such as conduct infringements or poor athletic or academic standards.
According to the most recent suggestion, athletes could either return to their former institutions or transfer to new ones, with their placements not being counted against the respective schools’ roster caps.