Dylan Widger-Imagn Images
There was always something strange, if not shady, about the NCAA limiting the number of assistant coaches college baseball teams were allowed to employ. By most people involved in the sport’s estimation, the cap on paid assistant coaches was far too low and it had been that way since the rules were implemented in 1992. This meant that, for years, colleges were forced to “hire” a slew of unpaid assistant coaches in order to meet their needs.
That all changed after a class action lawsuit was filed by a group of former volunteer (i.e. unpaid) college baseball coaches in 2022. In what surely was no coincidence, the NCAA dropped its “voluntary coach” designation and increased the number of paid coaches schools were allowed to have in baseball, as well as in several other sports including softball, men’s and women’s basketball, and ice hockey. The organization said it made the change in an effort to “modernize” a number of rules.
While that was certainly a positive move, it didn’t do anything to help the volunteer baseball coaches who had gone unpaid for years. So, now the NCAA will pay $49.25 million. $32.8 million of that money will go to pay approximately 1,000 volunteer coaches who worked from November 29, 2018 through July 1, 2023. That means each one of the coaches will be eligible to receive, on average, approximately $36,000. That number can go up or down depending on how long they worked for free and for which schools they worked. The rest of the money will go towards attorneys’ fees, the settlement administrator, an economist, and a $100,000 contingency fund.
“The actual payouts will be school-specific using the salary data provided by schools, and many class members who coached multiple years at larger schools will receive six figures,” the men who brought forth the lawsuit, Taylor Smart and Michael Hacker, wrote, according to Courthouse News Service. “Simply put, the settlement results in an outstanding and impressive recovery for the class.”
Of course, despite capitulating and settling the case, the NCAA denies that it engaged in illegal wage fixing, as the lawsuit alleged. “The Association denies allegations that the volunteer coach bylaw was an antitrust violation and contends that the bylaw created opportunities for many coaches,” a spokesperson for the NCAA said in a statement to Front Office Sports.