The new court filing argues the solution proposed by the NCAA and plaintiffs “fails in numerous respects” to protect walk-on and other athletes.
In a recent court filing concerning the multibillion-dollar college sports lawsuit, it is argued that the suggested solution for the roster-limit rule doesn’t adequately safeguard walk-on and other athletes who lost their positions when schools began reducing players ahead of the settlement’s potential approval.
Lawyers for Michigan walk-on football player John Weidenbach and Yale rower Grace Menke submitted a brief last week addressing the proposal that athletes losing their spots due to the roster-limit rule should not be counted against the cap once it is implemented next school year.
It is the constraints of the roster caps that have stalled U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken from approving the $2.78 billion settlement. This settlement is intended to permit schools to start paying players directly later this year.
Wilken suggested any athlete already on a roster be “grandfathered in” for the rest of their college career, so as not to count against the new roster limits. The limits, while expanding scholarship opportunities across all sports, are expected to cost thousands of athletes — most of them walk-ons or on partial scholarships — their spots on rosters.
Wilken is accepting objectors’ filings through Tuesday, then giving the NCAA and plaintiffs through Friday to rebut those arguments.
The court filing on behalf of Menke and Weidenbach argues the solution proposed by the NCAA and plaintiffs “fails in numerous respects” to protect those athletes.
Among its arguments is that the proposed remedy makes restoring players to roster spots completely optional for the schools that cut the players. It also says the directive for schools to make a list of players it cut because of roster limits — the list would then be used to determine which players should not count against the new caps — leaves room for the teams to make up other reasons for cutting the players.
“It provides student-athletes with no opportunity to challenge those decisions or prove that roster caps, rather than something else, caused them to be cut,” the filing said.
The NCAA and plaintiffs argue that since none of these roster spots was ever guaranteed, a provision allowing players back on their old teams to compete for their spot leaves them in no worse a situation than before they got cut.
But the filing argues the damage has already been done by schools that cut players with the expectation that Wilken would approve the settlement — an assumption the judge said was incorrect.
“Counsel continues to hear from many athletes and their families whose lives are being turned upside down as a result of the implementation of roster caps,” the filing said. “Defendants’ indifference, when simple fixes were offered to address a problem of their making, is stunning.”
Among the objectors’ proposed fixes was for schools to automatically restore players to their old roster spots, while giving them “discretion to cut athletes for legitimate reasons unrelated to the roster cap, such as conduct violations and poor athletic or academic performance.”
Under the latest proposal, the players would be able to either go back to their old schools or find a new one, but either way, they would not count against that school’s roster limit.
Copyright 2025 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
