Nearly three years later, the checks are in the mail. Literally.
In early February of 2017, the NCAA announced that it had reached an agreement to settle a class-action lawsuit filed three years earlier by current and former FBS football players, as well current and former men’s and women’s basketball players, who played from 2009 on into the 2016-17 academic year. The NCAA, now in the early stages of yet another financial battle involving student-athletes, agreed to place a total of 208.7 million into a fund that would be disbursed to qualified individuals to cover the shortfalls in paying the full cost of attendance.
Friday, USA Today reported that "[c]hecks... have been arriving this week in the mailboxes of current and former athletes who played in the years just before schools were allowed to offer scholarships based on the full cost of attending college.” All told, more than 43,000 individuals will be on the receiving end of a check, with the average amount coming in at a little over $3,800.
Some, however, will receive substantially more. From the report:
- More than 8,100 checks are for amounts between $5,000 and $10,000.
- Nearly 1,300 are for amounts between $10,000 and $20,000.
- There are 14 for $20,000 or more, including one for a little over $36,000.
The delay from the announcement of the settlement to the payouts being sent out actually added more than $1.3 million in interest to the total. On the other end of the spectrum, the lawyers for the plaintiffs will have pulled in nearly $45 million when it’s all said and done-- $41.7 million in fees, $3.2 million in expenses.
This should serve as a stark reminder that, as will forever be the case, billable hours always, always win.
