Unsettled times

What a still-in-flux House settlement could mean for next week's transfer portal, at Nebraska and beyond.

Courtesy Nebraska Athletics

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilkin was expected to approve the proposed settlement between the NCAA and a group of attorneys representing college athletes, past, present and future. Instead, Wilkin had questions and a request for lawyers on both sides, asking them to reconsider immediately implementing proposed roster limits.

For FBS football, the number is 105, which you can’t avoid hearing in almost any head coach’s press conference this spring. It’s a big change and schools have been preparing now to make sure they’re under the limit by fall. The door is at least open now that 105 won’t be the number with Wilkin taking particular issue with the roster cuts it would require.

“My idea there is to grandfather in a group of rostered people,” Wilkin said at Monday’s hearing. “There are not that many. It's not that expensive. It would generate a lot of goodwill.”

Lawyers have until Monday to respond, but weeks may have been added to the approval process, which is still expected, meaning football coaches won’t know for a while longer how many players they can carry and if any measures they’ve already taken were simply false starts.

Oh, and the spring transfer window opens next week (April 15).

Sound messy? It is messy, but here’s an attempt to get up to speed on everything through a Nebraska football lens.