JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:

The NCAA men's basketball tournament will wrap up tonight, but there is arguably a more important showdown happening in college sports today. This one is in federal court, and it's a landmark case that could reshape college athletics as we know it. NPR's Becky Sullivan has been following the case, and she's here to explain. Hi, Becky.

BECKY SULLIVAN, BYLINE: Hey there.

SUMMERS: So Becky, tell us about this case.

SULLIVAN: Yeah. I think it's impossible to overstate just how big the changes are that it is set to bring to college sports. The case is called House vs. NCAA, or even just the House settlement - basically, a few different federal antitrust lawsuits against the NCAA and its biggest conferences, like the SEC, the Big Ten, all rolled into one massive landmark class action settlement now that has been in the works for a long time. And so the big thing it would do, the key thing, is it would put into place a revenue-sharing scheme where colleges and universities, basically, could take some of that money that they earn from TV deals for football and basketball, and they could use that to pay players, which would be a first in the history of the NCAA. So obviously, that's a huge change for college sports, which were traditionally based around this idea of amateurism.

SUMMERS: So, OK, tell us about what happened at today's hearing.

SULLIVAN: So today was the final approval hearing for this proposed settlement - basically, the last chance for people to speak up before the judge - Federal Judge Claudia Wilken - makes her decision to approve or reject it. Some really compelling objections were raised today, especially about roster sizes. So basically, traditionally, the NCAA didn't have any limits on how big any one team could be. Instead, it was - the limit was how many scholarships a school could hand out for any given sport.

So you had, like, 13 scholarships for men's basketball, 14 scholarships for women's swimming, but no limit on how big the teams could be. So you'd have a lot of kids on, like, partial scholarships or you'd have walk-ons who would play on the team with no scholarship at all. That is set to go away right now, as the proposed settlement would call for it. Instead of having scholarship limits, you'd have roster limits. So men's basketball could have 15 spots. Women's swim team could have 30 spots, which might sound like an improvement, but actually many teams were already larger than that.

And so there's an expectation that hundreds or even thousands of roster spots could disappear over the coming years if the settlement is approved. I talked with Noah Henderson about this. He directs the sports management program at Loyola University of Chicago. He said that it really could put current student athletes in a bind. They might have to choose between transferring to a different university or just give up their sport altogether.

NOAH HENDERSON: All the sudden, their opportunities are stripped from them. Perhaps they're put in a really challenging spot to either abandon friendships, relationships, academic status they've made or lose a huge part of their identity. It's a really challenging position.

SUMMERS: Becky, how did the judge react to those concerns?

SULLIVAN: Yeah, you know, the judge really seemed to be paying attention to this stuff, especially during the testimony of a young woman, a high school senior, who spoke in court. She said she's set to be an incoming freshman this fall. She's a runner. She was recruited by a handful of Division I track programs, she said, but when she went to commit to one of them, the next day the coach called her to say, our school is opting into this settlement and so our team is going to be smaller, and we won't have a spot for you. And so, you know, the judge was listening to this, and she was asking lawyers about the possibility of maybe some kind of grandfather clause or some sort of phase-in approach. So it's possible we'll see some modifications to this settlement or, if not, we might end up seeing a whole other lawsuit from kids like this high school senior.

SUMMERS: Last thing, Becky. Is this settlement going to be approved?

SULLIVAN: I think almost surely yes, you know, maybe with some of these modifications we were talking about. But if so, it might be likely to go into effect as soon as this summer and fall. Schools are already preparing for it. And it does bring just a whole new set of questions that schools will have to deal with - who to pay, which sports are we talking about here, how much do we pay players.

And then just a couple weeks ago, a Division I school called Saint Francis, that had just sent it's men's basketball team to March Madness, announced that in 2026, it's going to drop down to Division III in part because of these types of big changes. So we could also just see more of that - schools basically deciding this is too much to deal with altogether.

SUMMERS: That is NPR sports correspondent Becky Sullivan. Becky, thanks.

SULLIVAN: You're welcome.