By Adam Meyer
A likely upcoming settlement in a long-running class action lawsuit against the NCAA promises not only to fundamentally reshape compensation for college athletes, but also to impose a set roster limit on all sports offered at NCAA schools. This article looks at the implications of a likely shift to a 32-athlete roster limit (16 male and 16 female skiers), with optional grandfathering for currently enrolled athletes, at some of the 26 schools that currently offer NCAA skiing.
But first, a little background.
Lawsuit and current procedural posture
House v. NCAA is a shorthand term for three class-action lawsuits filed against the National Collegiate Athletic Association within this decade on behalf of past and present NCAA student-athletes: House v. NCAA, Hubbard v. NCAA, and Carter v. NCAA.
Grant House was a swimmer at Arizona State; in 2020 he filed suit in federal district court. He was looking to gain compensation from name, image, and likeness (NIL) marketing and also to claim a share of revenue from the NCAA’s sale of broadcast rights.
Five years and a lot of docket entries later, a global settlement appears close to being approved by Claudia Wilken, a U.S. District Court Judge in California. At a hearing in early April, Wilken shared her concerns about the proposed settlement and asked the NCAA and plaintiffs to address her concerns within a week. One of her concerns was the proposed roster caps, which she asked lawyers to review. If the roster caps were kept in the settlement, Wilken suggested grandfathering in current athletes to avoid disruption, i.e., keeping spots for currently enrolled athletes and letting those spots not count against newly imposed roster limits.
On April 14th the parties filed an updated settlement that declined Wilken’s suggestion to grandfather in existing athletes. They noted the benefits of roster limits and acknowledged that it’s too late to cancel the proposed caps given that coaches have been adjusting rosters accordingly since the preliminary approval was granted in October 2024.
The court clearly meant its suggestion: On April 23, the court signaled that it did not object to the concept of roster caps per se, but, again, that it was concerned that the implementation of these caps was unfair to current scholarship athletes. “Wilken suggested phasing in the cuts to protect athletes currently on rosters,” The Athletic wrote in a summary of the court’s ruling.
May 1st was National College Decision Day. Based on a cursory glance, the only college with a nordic program that is still officially allowing kids to decide whether they want to attend is University of Alaska Anchorage, which has an application deadline of July 15, 2025, and a late application deadline a month later.
All this is to say, most incoming first-year skiers should have already made up their minds about where they’re going to college in the fall. Some have been promised roster spots, others might be in talks with the coaches at their school, and an even smaller, potentially just theoretical, group might have been promised a roster spot and then had it revoked due to the potential roster caps.
On May 7th, the settlement terms were updated to allow, but not require, schools to “keep players around who otherwise would have seen their spots eliminated in order to comply with the new caps on team roster limits,” Sports Illustrated wrote in a summary of new litigation.
This change applies to students “currently on a program’s roster who would have been cut, those previously cut this past year as a result of the new limits, and even will include incoming high school recruits who enrolled at a school but had their position eliminated as a result of the settlement.” If an athlete is cut from their current school’s team, they’re eligible to transfer to a new school where they would maintain their grandfathered status and not count against the roster limit at their new school.
The clock continues to tick toward July 1, the point at which a draft settlement and associated roster caps are slated to potentially take effect. Litigation remains active, with final approval likely coming soon.
Scholarship limits vs. roster caps
Per NCAA attorneys, the proposed global settlement of the consolidated lawsuits addresses three primary issues:
• “payment of back damages for claims relating to name, image and likeness (NIL), academic-related awards and other benefits;
• increased benefits from institutions to student-athletes going forward, including additional NIL opportunities for student-athletes directly with the institution; and
• eliminating scholarships limits in favor of roster limits.”
The first two of these are pretty understandable. But what’s the issue with scholarship limits? As outlined in a fine piece on Track & Field News on the history of the case, “NCAA leaders — with their lawyers’ input — have decided that any limits on their spending on athletes would encourage future antitrust lawsuits. Scholarship limits needed to go away.”
So what happens without scholarship limits, which have long been the limiting variable in NCAA team size?
“Enter roster caps,” the piece continues. “With no scholarship limits, would the wealthy schools be able to hoard all of the talent? A cap on the rosters of each sport would help hold that in check. For 19 of the 43 NCAA sports, the new caps will be smaller than what average roster sizes have previously been.”
Roster caps in skiing
There has not, historically, been a roster cap for NCAA skiing. Rather, each team has been limited by the number of scholarships it can provide. That limit is currently 6.3 tuitions’ worth of scholarships for each men’s ski team, and 6.7 tuitions’ worth of scholarships for each women’s ski team. Most ski teams have historically been larger than that, as not all athletes receive full scholarships. You can see ski team sizes in the tables later in this article or in this spreadsheet; nearly every team has more than 13 athletes on its roster.
The NCAA is hoping to move from scholarship limits towards roster limits. This would feature up to 16 male skiers and 16 female skiers per school, with each school deciding if they want to offer scholarships to all 32 athletes or just some fraction of this total.
If a college has both a Nordic program and an Alpine program, as is the case for any program that hopes to accrue enough points to be able to win an NCAA championship, it has to figure out how it wants to meet the cap. It can fill its roster with eight Nordic men, eight Alpine men, eight Nordic women, and eight Alpine women, or some uneven split. Colleges like Alaska Fairbanks or Northern Michigan that only have a Nordic program get the same allotment of up to 16 female and 16 male skiers. For perspective, UAF had a total of 14 nordic skiers on its roster last season; NMU had nine.
To further complicate matters, some schools are instituting caps below this limit. For example, the University of Denver is considering limits of 13 male skiers and ≥13 female skiers.
The terms of the House settlement will only directly apply to D-I skiing programs. The settlement does not directly impose roster caps on D-II or D-III ski teams, though there could be conference-driven knock-on effects.
Impacts on D-I skiing
The direct impact of the House settlement is limited to the D-I colleges in the five Defendant Conferences (ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, and SEC), as well as the D-I colleges that opt into the settlement. The five Defendant conferences cover 69 D-I colleges. Only three of those schools — the University of Utah, University of Colorado Boulder, and Boston College — have a ski team. Boston College has just an alpine team; the other two schools have both alpine and nordic athletes.
There are eight additional D-I schools with a Nordic program that are not in one of the Defendant Conferences. The table below shows the opt-in status of all eleven D-I colleges with a Nordic program. It also shows the 2025/26 rising sophomore/junior/senior roster size for each school by gender, assuming that all current 2024/25 seniors, fifth-years, and graduate students graduate.
Please note the roster sizes shown below do not include incoming 2025/26 first years, only rising sophomores/juniors/seniors. The status of incoming 2025/26 first-year skiers is in many instances not yet confirmed nor readily available. Some high school seniors who are hoping to ski in college have not yet been offered a roster spot.
Table 1:
Division I: 2025/26 rising sophomores/juniors/seniors (assuming 2024/25 seniors, fifth-years, and grad students all graduate)
| Conference | House Settlement: Opt-ins | Status Unknown | House Settlement: Opt-outs |
| CCSA | Due to league decision: • Green Bay (8F, 6M) | ||
| EISA | In a Defendant Conference: • Boston (9F, 8M) | New Hampshire (16F, 9M) | Confirmed: • Vermont (10F, 9M) Due to league decision: • Harvard (9F, 8M) • Dartmouth (18F, 12M) |
| RMISA | In a Defendant Conference: • Colorado (8F, 9M) • Utah (10F, 9M) Affirmatively opted in: • Denver (9F, 8M) • Montana State (10F, 6M) • Nevada (5F, 5M) |
As shown above, most schools are well under the proposed caps of 16 women and 16 men. Being under the proposed caps ensures a school will have plenty of room to recruit and to accept the 2025/26 first years who have already committed.
The two notable exceptions in the above table are the University of New Hampshire and Dartmouth:
• If UNH opts into the House settlement and roster caps are approved, UNH, which has 16 rising sophomore/junior/senior women, will either have to choose to grandfather its existing female skiers or cut a few this summer before it can offer roster spots to any incoming first-year female skiers, because it is already at the limit of 16 women. If UNH opts out of the settlement, it can recruit as usual.
• Dartmouth has 18 females who will be sophomores/juniors/seniors in 2025/26. This is two athletes more than the proposed caps. However, Dartmouth has opted out of the settlement and can therefore recruit as usual. It also has ample space to recruit additional men; there are only nine continuing athletes there.
Impacts on D-II and D-III skiing
It’s possible that nothing will change for D-II and D-III ski programs. The House settlement will, by its terms, only directly affect D-I colleges in the five Defendant Conferences, plus those schools that opt in.
But skiing is more complicated than other sports. Skiing is one of eleven sports where schools from multiple divisions attend competitions. NCAA Championships for skiing are more precisely an interdivisional championship.
The 2025 National Collegiate Skiing Championship saw eight D-I colleges, five D-II colleges, and six D-III colleges score Nordic points. D-I schools on that results list are Utah, Colorado, Dartmouth, Denver, Vermont, Montana State, New Hampshire, and Harvard. The D-II schools are Alaska Anchorage, Alaska Fairbanks, St. Michael’s, Michigan Tech, and Northern Michigan. And the D-III schools are Middlebury, Colby, Bowdoin, St. Lawrence, Williams, and St. Scholastica. Notably, some D-III schools such as Middlebury outperform D-I schools such as Harvard.
Competition team sizes
There are already rules regarding competition team sizes. The Skiing National Championship only allows three athletes per gender per ski discipline, while conferences have their own team-size rules for regular-season competition. CCSA (Central Collegiate Ski Association) and RMISA (Rocky Mountain Intercollegiate Ski Association) allow unlimited roster sizes, while EISA (Eastern Intercollegiate Ski Association) has a competition cap of “6 men and 6 women each in alpine and cross country.”
Roster caps
If roster caps were to be imposed on D-II and D-III schools, it would likely be a result of decisions by the skiing associations themselves (CCSA, EISA, and RMISA), as opposed to either top-down legislation by the NCAA or outside requirements such as the terms of the House settlement. There might be an inter-conference rule alignment body at the NCAA, but this reporter couldn’t find it.
RMISA might adopt roster caps while EISA and CCSA, which historically carry large rosters, might continue their current practice of allowing unlimited roster sizes. Also missing from this discussion is Alaska Pacific University Nordic Ski Center, a prominent American club team that has multiple college-age athletes on its roster. Alaska Pacific University has no NCAA affiliation; while its athletes often participate in interval-start RMISA races held in Alaska, they do not score points in NCAA competitions and are not currently eligible to race at NCAA Championships. USSS has not yet decided on a recent proposal from APU to change this.
To see the potential impact of roster caps on all D-II and D-III schools, we’ve repeated the above table and included all D-II and D-III schools with ski programs.
Please note the roster sizes shown below do not include incoming 2025/26 first years, only rising sophomores/juniors/seniors. The status of incoming 2025/26 first-year skiers is in many instances not yet confirmed nor readily available. Some high school seniors who are hoping to ski in college have not yet been offered a roster spot.
We’ve included alpine-only schools in the table below primarily to highlight Boston College. Boston College has opted into the House settlement while fellow EISA schools Harvard and Dartmouth have opted out, leading to the potential for conflict in EISA. EISA might consider adopting Alpine-only roster caps, but Boston College won’t care whether EISA adopts Nordic-specific roster caps. That said, Boston College is under the cap, so it may not ask EISA to adopt Alpine-specific roster caps.
Table 2:
All divisions: 2025/26 rising sophomores/juniors/seniors (assuming 2024/25 seniors, fifth-years, and grad students all graduate)
| Conference | House Settlement: Opt-ins | Status Unknown | House Settlement: Opt-outs |
| CCSA | Due to league decision: • Green Bay (8F, 6M) | D-II Schools: • Michigan Tech (7F, 4M) • Northern Michigan (5F, 4M) D-III Schools: • St. Olaf (21F, 17M) • St. Scholastica (15F, 18M) | |
| EISA | In a Defendant Conference: • Boston (9F, 8M) | D-I School: • New Hampshire (16F, 9M) D-II School: • St. Michael’s (17F, 20M) D-III Schools: • Bates (16F, 15M) • Middlebury (11F, 11M) • Colby (12F, 18M) • Bowdoin (8F, 9M) • St. Lawrence (19F, 22M) • Plymouth State (6F, 3M) • Williams (15F, 12M) | Confirmed: • Vermont (10F, 9M) Due to league decision: • Harvard (9F, 8M) • Dartmouth (18F, 12M) |
| RMISA | In a Defendant Conference: • Colorado (8F, 9M) • Utah (10F, 9M) Affirmatively opted in: • Denver (9F, 8M) • Montana State (10F, 6M) • Nevada (5F, 5M) | D-II Schools: • Alaska Anchorage (9F, 12M) • Alaska Fairbanks (5F, 9M) • Westminster (2F, 3M) |
Overall Impacts
If the proposed roster caps of 16 female and 16 male skiers per team and the associated grandfathering were approved tomorrow, only female skiers at UNH would be at risk of getting cut if the school opts against grandfathering. But, there is currently ambiguity about whether schools at/above the cap will have to cut athletes before they can recruit incoming first-years. According to Sports Illustrated, “incoming high school recruits who enrolled at a school but had their position eliminated as a result of the settlement” are protected under grandfathering, but the settlement’s impact is unclear on incoming first-year athletes who haven’t been formally promised a roster spot.
What comes next
There is no timetable for Judge Wilken’s next ruling, though it has been “expected in the next few weeks” for the past several weeks now, and motion practice continues apace. That said, the draft settlement is slated to take effect on July 1, and looming deadlines often incentivize parties toward last-minute cooperation to avoid the expense and uncertainty of additional litigation.
Data
For the spreadsheet enthusiasts, here is the table I built for this article.
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About the author: Adam loves spreadsheets, coaching, and his home state, Maine. His remote climate change–focused day job has allowed him to spend his winter evenings coaching in Vermont, Crested Butte, and, currently, Jackson Hole.
You’re reading this on Nordic Insights, one man’s labor of love dedicated to publicizing American skiing. We started with nothing and now we’re going to the Olympics. You can read more about our first three years here, and donate to the Olympics fund here. Thank you for consideration, and, especially, for reading.
