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DULUTH — The University of Minnesota Duluth intends to opt into the NCAA v. House settlement, a move that paves the way for the school’s NCAA Division I men’s and women’s hockey programs to increase the amount of scholarships offered and potentially pay its athletes in the future.
The decision, which athletic director Forrest Karr shared with the News Tribune last week, came following conversations between the AD, UMD chancellor Charles Nies and Bulldogs coaches Scott Sandelin and Laura Schuler.
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“We had a really good discussion about the college hockey landscape,” Karr said. “We ultimately decided that opting in was the right path forward for the University of Minnesota Duluth.”
Here’s an explainer from the News Tribune about the House Settlement and what opting in could mean for UMD going forward.
The NCAA and its five biggest conferences (at the time) — The Big 10, Atlantic Coast Conference, Southeastern Conference, Big 12 and Pac-12 — were sued in U.S. District Court in 2020 over back pay for Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) and revenue sharing from broadcast agreements.
In May 2024, the NCAA voted to settle the lawsuit for $2.75 billion. The settlement includes a revenue sharing agreement, NIL back pay for former student-athletes who began competing in 2016 and roster limits for schools that opt into the settlement.
There is a hearing scheduled for April 7 to approve the settlement.
Opting into the settlement means schools can make direct NIL payments to student-athletes. That is in addition to the revenue sharing agreement, which for 2025-26 will be capped around $20 million.
Scholarship limits are also lifted, however, rosters will be capped. So for ice hockey, teams will be allowed to offer more than the equivalent of 18 full athletic scholarships, but rosters will be capped at 26 players.
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This means schools will continue to play by the current rules. Hockey programs will still be limited to 18 scholarships, but they can have over 26 players on their roster. Schools will not be able to directly make NIL payments to athletes, but they can still pay for full cost of attendance and offer Alston Awards, which are academic-based payments.
Schools that are members of the current Power 4 conferences — Big 10, Big 12, ACC and SEC — are required to opt into the settlement. That means Arizona State in the NCHC and the WCHA’s Wisconsin, Ohio State and Minnesota all must opt in. They are defendants in the lawsuit, and must also pay damages.
Schools that play in other Division I conferences — Mid-American Conference members Western Michigan and Miami, as well as the Summit League’s St. Thomas, Denver, North Dakota and Omaha — have the choice whether to opt in or opt out. These schools are also being required by the NCAA to pay damages — even though they are not named in the lawsuit — but not as much as the larger schools.
Multidivisional schools such as UMD, St. Cloud State, Bemidji State, Minnesota State and Colorado College — also have the choice whether to opt in or out, however, the decision will only impact their NCAA Division I sports. And these schools will not be required to pay damages, as they do not receive money from the NCAA like full Division I members do.
The deadline for schools to inform the NCAA of their intention to opt in was March 1, but nothing official needs to be decided until June 15, pending the approval of the settlement.
In addition to UMD, Denver has disclosed it intends to opt in. According to sources, all of the MAC — including Western and Miami — is expected to opt in, as well as St. Cloud State and most, if not all, the other multidivisional schools.
North Dakota is the only school to announce it intends to opt out for the first year. It’s unknown what St. Thomas and Omaha will do, as the Summit League is letting each school decide on its own.
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Karr said there is no financial obligation for schools to opt into the House Settlement. Just because UMD can pay its athletes doesn’t mean it will. The same goes for scholarships. Just because they can offer 26 scholarships, it doesn’t mean UMD will.
“Our hope is to keep moving our programs forward,” Karr said. “We intend to keep both programs in the position to be nationally competitive. Each decision that we make moving forward, whatever the rules end up being, each decision that we make will be informed by changes being made at other WCHA and NCHC programs. It will depend, at least in part, on donor support. We’re going to be working with donors to help support these changes.”
Karr said UMD will not only measure itself against its NCHC and WCHA rivals, but those out east. There is still a lot of uncertainty, though, even among the Big 10 schools.
How many more scholarships will schools offer over 18 for a sport where only 19 skaters and three goaltenders can suit up each game? How much revenue will be shared with hockey players, and how much of that will be money already being paid out, like the Alston Awards?
What about international students — which college hockey has plenty of — who right now would be violating their student visas if they got paid with NIL funds? These are all things that need to be worked out, Karr said.
“We want to make sure we fully understand what the landscape looks like. Our intent will be to keep both the programs nationally competitive,” Karr said. “It’s going to be an interesting few months, but our overall intent is to make sure that our hockey programs are strong, and we’re going to work with our donors to do that.”
Both Sandelin and Schuler said last week they are OK with the roster limit of 26.
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Since moving into Amsoil Arena during the 2010-11 season, Sandelin said the program has always had an unwritten cap because of the locker room.
“We only have 28 stalls, that’ll tell you something,” Sandelin said. “And one of them is for Hoagie.”
Sandelin’s team is at its unofficial limit this season of 27, but the program traditionally averages around 26 players, as Sandelin likes to roster 15 forwards, eight defensemen and three goaltenders. Occasionally the team has needed a fourth goalie for injury reasons, pushing the roster to 27.
The UMD women have been under the proposed roster limit of 26 for four of the past five seasons, with just 22 players the past two seasons. The Bulldogs had 26 players on the roster in 2021-22, which was an Olympic year. Two players were centralized with national teams that season.
Schuler said Olympic seasons are the only time she could see the 26-player limit potentially being an issue, but overall the possibility of offering more than 18 scholarships will be a great opportunity.
Among the many uncertainties about the House Settlement is how it could impact college hockey. Commissioners Michelle McAteer of the WCHA and Heather Weems of the NCHC said their leagues may not change as much as some fear they will.
Both pointed out that football — which is driving most of the change in college athletics — will receive the lion’s share of the dollars — as it always has — whether it be in scholarships, revenue sharing and NIL. After that, men’s and women’s basketball will get a good chunk.
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So where does men’s and women’s hockey rank? Is it above or below volleyball? What about baseball and softball? It will likely depend on the school, the commissioners said.
“There isn’t a whole lot of transparency right now for a lot of different reasons,” said McAteer, a former UMD women’s hockey captain who is in her first season as WCHA commissioner after 14 seasons as an NCAA Division III head coach at Augsburg. “For months there has been a lot of conversation and speculation imagining worst-case scenarios, imagining huge gaps between schools that have a lot of resources and smaller schools and smaller departments. There is a lot of fear and anxiety about those gaps getting bigger, but the truth is we don’t know if they will. They could get smaller, potentially, in some cases. There is still so much we don’t know.”
McAteer pointed out the WCHA has always had gaps in resources between its members, which come from a variety of different levels. And Big 10 doesn’t always mean bigger resources. Just compare the rinks of the WCHA.
The same is true of the NCHC, where it’s unlikely that North Dakota will fall behind the rest of the league because it’s opting out in 2025-26. No one is taking away Ralph Engelstad Arena and the Fighting Hawks can still hop on their chartered flights.
“The NCHC has always been about like-minded institutions who prioritize hockey on their campus and within their sports portfolio, but that has never meant that it is necessarily equal across the board,” said Weems, the former St. Cloud State athletic director who took over the NCHC in July 2022. “We’ve talked about, from an NCHC perspective, can we get to a place where we have floors as opposed to ceilings, where we would all commit to that.”
As of now, it won’t, unless something changes and multidivisional schools will be required to adhere to roster limits for their non-Division I sports. And even then, Karr said UMD would be fine as all of its sports are currently at or under the limits. The Bulldogs would not need to slash their other rosters like some schools have to do.
“We were thinking all along that even if the Division II sports were subject to those limits, that we would likely make the same decision because we wouldn’t have to limit any of our rosters,” Karr said.
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