How a college tennis lawsuit will change NCAA prize-money rules

Reese Brantmeier won the NCAA women's singles title after suing the organization. Jamie Schwaberow / NCAA via Getty Images Share full articleWhen Reese Brantmeier, the college tennis champion in women’s singles from the University of North Carolina, decided two years ago to lead a class action lawsuit against the NCAA, her focus was on helping her fellow players keep the professional prize money they might earn before and during their college careers. A settlement is likely later this month, according to court documents and a source briefed on the case, who is not authorized to speak publicly about it before its conclusion. With it, Brantmeier and her co-plaintiff, Maya Joint, appear to have pushed the NCAA to change its rules across all sports in its most prestigious division. On Wednesday, the Division I Cabinet, which governs the top tier of college sports, received a report on a series of rule changes. They include one that would allow prospects to accept all prize money earned in their respective sports before they enroll in college. Currently, prospects can accept prize money only up to actual and necessary expenses, except in tennis, which permits up to $10,000 in prize money. Pre-enrollment, any prize money above $10,000 must be used as expenses on the tournament in which it was earned; post-enrollment, prize money is attributed to annual expenses. According to the person briefed on the case, the settlement will end prohibitions on pre-enrollment income and create a $2 million fund for athletes who have been affected by the existing rule in recent years, if they can prove they qualify for reimbursement. “These proposed changes reflect ongoing work by Division I members to modernize our rules to align with the current era of college sports,” Josh Whitman, chair of the Division I Cabinet and the athletic director at the University of Illinois, said in a statement Wednesday. “As Division I members proceed with reviewing all eligibility rules in the months ahead, our focus will be establishing rules that have objective criteria that can be consistently applied for both prospects and current student-athletes.” That rule change is a central tenet of the pending settlement in Brantmeier and Joint’s lawsuit, which Brantmeier filed in a U.S. District Court of North Carolina in 2024. Joint, who represents Australia as a professional but grew up in Michigan and attended the University of Texas, joined as a named plaintiff last year. They will receive a $10,000 payment as part of the settlement, and the NCAA will pay $1.85 million in legal fees and $425,000 in expenses. The rule that prohibits athletes from accepting prize money while they are in college will not change. Brantmeier, who originally sued after forgoing most of the $50,000 in prize money she earned at the 2021 U.S. Open, wanted that rule changed as well. Joint joined the lawsuit after forgoing most of the $140,000 that she earned at the 2024 U.S. Open, ahead of her enrollment. She has since left college to turn professional. According to the source briefed on the case, Brantmeier, Joint and their lawyers could revisit that rule in the future, possibly in another legal venue. Critics of the prize-money rules have argued that they are hypocritical in an era when college athletes, especially football or basketball players, receive multi-million-dollar deals to compete for college teams, as well as for commercial sponsorships. As they stand, a prized college quarterback can receive millions for playing on a college football team and for showing up at a local car dealership to sign autographs, but college tennis players can’t accept more than their expenses if they are good enough to play Wimbledon, one of the four Grand Slams. An exception is if college tennis players earn professional prize money in their final year of eligibility, since the process of calculating their expenses then happens once they have left college. At this year’s Australian Open, Michael Zheng, a Columbia senior, qualified and advanced to the second round, earning about $150,000. Zheng, a two-time NCAA singles champion who plans to graduate and turn professional this spring, was allowed to keep his prize money under that exception. The rule change regarding pre-enrollment earnings is part of a package that includes a new rule requiring prospects to withdraw from professional league drafts, including the NBA, if they have previously opted in. The package would also allow prospects to sign with agents to handle contractual negotiations, whereas under current rules, they are only permitted to do so for name, image and likeness purposes. There are narrow exceptions, which allow baseball and men’s hockey prospects to enter into agreements with agents if they are drafted by the MLB or NHL. The Division I Cabinet is expected to vote on the changes in mid-April. Since Brantmeier’s lawsuit was filed, college athletics have entered a new era of athlete compensation. The NCAA and major conferences, including the ACC, where North Carolina competes, entered into a $2.8 billion antitrust lawsuit settlement last year. Most notable among the terms of the settlement: Schools are now permitted to directly pay athletes. This, combined with the NCAA lifting a ban on athletes being paid for endorsements and sponsorship deals in 2021, has led to many college athletes — especially those in high-profile sports such as football and basketball — earning hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. College sports are more like professional sports than ever before. But there are still some old and antiquated rules on the books. As the NCAA and conferences try to reform rules related to athlete compensation and eligibility, they have faced constant legal attacks and been forced to defend myriad lawsuits. That has put the NCAA into a bit of a bind. Changing parts of the rule book while defending other parts in court can undermine legal arguments and tip dominoes that could lead to still more lawsuits. The NCAA has proceeded with caution, but with terms of the settlement being implemented, the member-run organization does now seem to be more aggressively taking steps toward modernizing amateurism rules that it once staunchly defended. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms