Kate Roggio Buck discusses with Law360 how the legal landscape involving college student-athlete compensation is still murky even after the recent class action settlement between athletes and the NCAA over name, image, and likeness (NIL) compensation. With some opting out of the settlement, others filing lawsuits on separate issues, and a Pennsylvania federal court case examining whether college athletes should be classified as employees, Kate said one settlement is clearly not going to resolve all issues. If anything, she says the settlement is yet another self-inflicted wound for the NCAA given that it pursued a revenue-sharing plan rather the solution originally proposed by the 2020 class action of granting all athletes (past, present, and future ones) all the NIL revenue they were entitled to.
“I think that is when settlements get even messier than usual, when you’re trying to compensate this very diverse group of athletes who have all kinds of different situations and more differences than similarities in terms of the things that are relevant to formation of the class,” Kate says. “It’s sort of a never-ending Pandora’s box of the next new problem.”