Overview
- The plaintiffs filed the proposed settlement Tuesday in federal court, revealing the NCAA would drop its rule that barred recruits from keeping full prize money earned before college.
- North Carolina tennis player Reese Brantmeier brought the 2024 antitrust case, later joined by former Texas player Maya Joint, after a judge certified classes for Division I tennis in July 2025.
- If approved, the agreement would apply to every sport and would block the NCAA from bringing back the old pre-enrollment prize-money rules.
- The NCAA agreed to pay $2.02 million in damages, including $10,000 service awards to Brantmeier and Joint, plus $1.875 million in attorneys’ fees, $425,000 in costs, and up to $250,000 for settlement administration.
- Under the prior policy, tennis recruits could keep no more than $10,000 per year from outside events like the U.S. Open, a cap that forced Brantmeier to forfeit most of about $49,000 in 2021 and led Joint to give up much of about $147,000, reflecting a broader retreat from strict amateurism after NIL in 2021 and revenue sharing in 2025.