With the new house settlment, universities at the D1 level are going to have to determine if they are going to opt in or opt out of the new regulations. I believe March 21st is the deadline that within the ncaa ranks, we’ll know what the decisions of every school is going to do.
Opt in means you have to follow new roster max limits (ncaa tri is 14). It’s required for all power conferences to opt in, and then every other school can decide on an individual basis. So if your school opts in, that means you potentiaally have rosters that have to be cut down. Which means if your new roster suddenly is under the “enrollment” number that your school needs/wants…ut oh suddenly “the math ain’t mathing”. From the article, said swim program had 58 on the roster, but I don’t know the breakdown of men vs women. See the new SEC swimming roster numbers- 22 for men, 30 for women.
Opt out means you don’t have to follow roster limitations. The general vibes is that many private institutions are going to opt out because enrollment essentially pays the bills, while public universities generally get more local/state/federal government funding support (but that also mean public universities have to “show the books” more than private schools, which is why you can look up pretty much any information on a public university but many private schools can “hide” information more easily).
We’ve already seen 1 private university add 30 club sports to be directly under the athletic dept that will be non-scholarship student athletic sports.
Currently there are 4 ncaa programs that have fully funded ncaa programs + funded club programs (mens’ club at min, some include women as well). Within ncaa triathlon schools, we’ve also seen several programs add men to their team rosters at club level to try and grow. Men can “practice” with women at the D1 level as long as they are ncaa eligible athletes, they just have to go through the ncaa clearinghouse but if you graduate from high school with over a 2.0 and hit the min required classes, it’s pretty much 99.99% you’ll be cleared by ncaa (even if said sport doesnt have a men’s sport like triathlon).
Fundraising is going to only become more of a requirement for each individual program on college campuses. But again, college athletics is still one of the biggest drivers of enrollment for most universities. If your not some excellent academic or know for specific majors, athletics is easily one of the biggest enrollment drivers for your school.
And guess what college sports have been “cut” from campuses for the last 100 years, that’s nothing new. College athletics will simply adapt/pivot to the “new era” of college athletics. There’s probaly 10 or so D3 schools a year now that are permanently closing their school because enrollment numbers are going down with the rise in costs for college.
The answer or “pivot” is almost assuredly going to be sports now compete at the minimum competition levels to reach sport sponsorship vs the max competitions. A sport like baseball has I believe 55 max competition limit vs I think 38 as the min. You bet your ass a bunch of schools are now going to drop 10 games a year easily.
Swimming’s min competitions I believe is 8 competitions.
Cross country is either 4 or 5 min competitions.
Which within triathlon this is where it’s a positive on a college campus. Tri has a min of 4 events and max of 7. So it’s again a cheap sport option for universities. Travel is the BIGGEST budget line for a program. And overnight stays will kill a budget because ncaa now has a rule “1 bed, 1 person” rule. 30 years ago, you’d have 4 to a room with 2 double beds.
So your going to suddenly see more air mattresses suddenly showing up on program budget lines and suddenly more “PB&J” make your own sandwich on travel trips to cut costs.
Now the downside to that is that is easily going to be a recruiting disadvantage, athletes want to compete. So if they are getting equal money, they’ll pick the team that they can compete more often. But then again there is also a bunch of schools that need to fill rosters, so there is going to likely always be an student athlete who will say yes, even for min competition sport and even if they aren’t actual “D1 athlete” capability. Filling a roster is always going to be the biggest requirement for non-revenue sports vs “winning”.
The House settlement is going to wreak havoc upon our higher education system and ability to raise up those who are underprivileged by providing opportunities to people who would not qualify or could not afford but for some athletic ability. Triathlon is not immune to that, but it’s also a small head count sport compared to say a swim team.
It’s also weird to see Cal Poly a FCS school do this, makes me think they’re just using it as an excuse.
It is an excuse, just read the comments on SwimSwam. No love for House and the fallout but this probably wasn’t actually related.
Long Island University is adding triathlon and women’s flag football for this upcoming fall season.
Next big date is April 7th with finalization of the House settlement. Lots of moving parts on programs being dropped and even D1 programs dropping to D2 level athletic programs.
Today was supposed to be the House settlement date. Judge has moved the decision to 3 weeks, and told lawyers to resolve 2 key issues:
-roster size limitations (likely grandfather in current team members who are on team)
- not including future athletes being bound to the 10 year settlement (IE they currently wouldn’t be able to sue for bad practices if they are included in the settlement).
Officially start date of settlement would be effective July 1.
Not too many surprises with this delayed ruling.
Having talked to a few people since Monday, the roster size is going to turn into a thorny issue. While everyone mostly thinks it right to revenue share, the whole point of roster caps is essentially to “limit” the costs. That’s sorta economics 101, so when all these former athletes are shocked or saddened that now student athletes are getting cut…sorta what did you think was going to happen when you sue someone to get paid?
UPDATE:
Wed May 7th should be the day the Judge finalizes the House settlement. If it’s not settled on that day, the next step will be going to trial (no one wants that from NCAA side). Hold up has been the roster limits, and the judge wanting ncaa to grandfather in; IE not cut anyone on current teams to get to said sport roster limit.
NCAA Tri will be 14 roster limit. NCAA swim will be 30, SEC as a conference is going to 22 men, 30 women.
If anyone is on twitter- Ross Dellenger from Yahoo Sports does a good job of summaraizing and recapping it all.
May 7th Court filing update:
NCAA submitted their roster cap limits as a permit to allow grandfathering in of roster caps and not a requirement. Objectors lawyers are being allowed to review through May 13th, and NCAA lawyers getting to respond to the objectors by May 16th. That may be the final date of this? But who knows, everyone I know was saying “today” was the day. It’s a West coast judge so final verdict will be likely early evening on any date.
So, where is the decision?
asking the wrong person.
It’s being hidden from you, just like the real participant totals from Wildflower. The whole forum is in on it, along with the NCAA and the mainstream media.
(insert diabolical laughter)
Settlement is on the judge’s desk. As of about 10 days ago both sides have agreed upon the “roster size” settlement numbers that the judge demanded. From all the behind the scenes I’m hearing judge wanted a June 1st announcement timeline (so by June 2nd since June 1 is a Sunday).
There was also the agreement that the NCAA is going to allow an NIL GO program to essentially allow schools to fund NIL now. Which the dominos of that are that you are likely to start seeing more and more programs being D1 non-scholarship funded or major scholarship reductions. Especially at schools who don’t have football so if your only a basketball school if you NIL fund / scholarship fund men+women’s basketball while the rest of your programs don’t get scholarship money (or very very reduced scholarship money), you are essentially title ix covered and for ncaa tri schools those are the following:
Denver
La Salle
NKU
Queens (NC)
San Fran
(roughly 1/3rd of the D1 triathlon schools don’t have football on their campus)
NCAA House Settlement update:
Judge has pushed the decision back to June 27th.
I appreciate you keeping us informed of what’s going on!
Thanks for the updates
July 1st is the fiscal year for all universities so when this is going to the 11th hour, this certainly is going to that point.
July 1st deadline is important because that is when schools are going to move forward with direct NIL payments to it’s student athletes. D1 power schools can allot up to ~$20.5mi to it’s student athletes. Non-power D1 schools with football, much less, D1 schools with no football even less.
One of the 43 schools
Roberts Wesleyan University plans to lay off about 20 percent of its workforce due to declining enrollment trends and financial pressures.
Lots of schools are going through enrollment issues. Being a D2 school they will not be apart of the House settlement or held to roster cap numbers that D1 schools are (I think right now ncaa tri is up to I think 17 D1 schools).
They are a ncaa women’s program that is looking to add a men’s club team to boost enrollment. There is currently only 4 men’s club program’s that are “fully funded” at the varsity level in the U.S. 2 D1 schools (Queens of Charlotte, NKU) and 2 D2 schools (Wingate, Lenoir Rhyne). I guess technically you can say the service academies potentially do as well- Navy and Army “fully fund” a men’s program; Navy also is in NCAA tri. Top club programs like Cal Berkley and Colorado are all student led “clubs” / fundraised by the students, completely separate from their schools athletic dept/support.
Club men must be ncaa eligibilty certified to practice with ncaa athletes, it costs $100 that the student athlete has to pay for to be ncaa certfiied. And that is for any ncaa athlete of any sport. Even though it’s only a club they have to do that process to then be “practice memebers” with the ncaa team, if they don’t they have to practice separetly. (They have to do seperate workouts, they can’t mingle together doing an official team workout; they could practice at the same site, they just would have to do the workout apart, so the same speed men/women couldn’t workout together). If they do stuff on their own, they could, just not “official practices”.
Daughter is on the Naval AcademyClub tri team. Navy’s interesting, overall the club team is better than the NCAA team. With all the other obligations the Mids have, my daughter preferred the club team vs the NCAA. She trains the same amount of hours but has more autonomy and flexibility with club.
NCAA is definitely better funded, all expenses are paid, etc. With club:
- Race fees are funded by the school
- On your own for a bike, but, the club has serviceable loaner bikes. The NCAA team has Felts with 105 Di2. Many of the 2nd Class (juniors) will buy something nice with the interest free 30k USAA loan they get after their 2nd year.
- The Navy family truly takes care of their own, out of town races they’ll stay with alums near the race sites
- club teams have tryouts with around a 10 person roster
- School paid for flights to Nationals
The NCAA and Club workout separately.