HCU criticizes NCAA settlement, says it will take $3M from students

NCAA, press conferences and attorneys for athletes represented in House, Driver AND Hubbard antitrust litigants are closing in on a filing for approval of their multibillion-dollar settlement. But the small Texas DI college is fighting to avoid paying $3 million for a settlement it says it never approved.

Last Friday, attorneys for Houston Christian University, the roughly 2,300-student school formerly known as Houston Baptist University, filed a response to the motion to intervene. Sporty In detail, HCU filed a motion to intervene in June, but both the plaintiff and the defendants objected.

HCU says it is not a named defendant in the lawsuit and never agreed to settle. Among other features, the settlement would require the 27 non-powerhouse conferences and their member schools — such as the Southland Conference and HCU — to absorb about $990 million in withheld funds over a 10-year period. The money would pay athletes so-called “back pay” for denied NILs and denied broadcast and video game revenue that was never realized. HCU argues that making those payments would violate school officials’ fiduciary duties and divert money away from the university’s academic, spiritual and professional mission, especially since students would receive academic scholarships from the money.

In its new brief, HCU emphasizes that it is not a “class member” and therefore “will not receive notice” of the settlement if Wilken approves it. For that reason, the school maintains that it did not file too early, as the NCAA, Power’s conferences and the players claim. The school adds that while it will have to pay $3 million in NIL-related damages, there is “no evidence that HCU deprived anyone of their name, image or likeness rights.”

HCU also maintains that the plaintiffs and defendants are logically inconsistent because they “allege that HCU is not only too early, but also too late.”

HCU is denying the parties’ claims that the university should have filed its objections years ago, since the House lawsuit was filed in 2020. Although HCU is a member of the NCAA, HCU considers this argument specious because the school was not and is not a defendant. “Certainly,” HCU writes, “the filing of this lawsuit did not provide HCU with any warning that the parties sought to negatively impact HCU…Plaintiffs were careful in selecting defendants: they chose to sue only the NCAA and the Power 5 conferences.”

As a further argument for intervention, HCU rejects the NCAA’s suggestion that it represents the school’s interests. HCU notes that when the players filed suit, they apparently did not consider the NCAA to include the five strongest conferences (now four), because the players separately listed those conferences as defendants. HCU finds it absurd that “when faced with a member of the Southland Conference — not one of the strongest conferences — the NCAA magically represents HCU.” HCU argues that “none of the defendants” represent HCU or “even pretend to do so.”

HCU further claims that “nearly all of the back injuries were caused by Power 5 conferences and inflicted on Power 5 athletes,” yet they would only have to pay “a relatively small percentage of those injuries.” (The Power Five are expected to pay about $664 million.)

If Wilken grants HCU’s motion to intervene, HCU would become a party to the dispute. The move could encourage other schools concerned about the settlement to seek interventions of their own. Many non-leading conference schools are worried about the financial implications of the settlement, especially as the “enrollment cliff,” where the U.S. college-age population will decline for about a decade, is expected to hit next year.