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The NCAA board of governors and several power conferences have scheduled meetings for next week to vote on a proposed settlement of antitrust lawsuits that would reset the framework for the business of major college sports.

While sources indicate broad support for moving forward with the industry-shifting settlement, athletic department and university administrators are also worried about how effective the negotiated terms will be in creating a stable system. With formal decisions just days away, the chief concern of an industry on the precipice of a historic step is a simple one: Will these settlements actually settle the college sports landscape?

To settle the looming House v. NCAA lawsuit as well as at least two other major federal antitrust claims, multiple sources say the NCAA would pay more than $2.7 billion in damages to past athletes over the next decade. Power conferences would agree to a future system for schools directly sharing revenue with athletes, a permissive choice that’s projected to be in the neighborhood of $20 million per year for each school.

The settlement looms as a quintessential conflicted college sports moment — a bold step with an undercurrent of uncertainty and the new backbone of a multibillion-dollar industry that will forge ahead without key details determined.

Sources told ESPN it would take a minimum of six months, and likely longer, to hash out the unsettled details. Revenue sharing with players is not expected to begin until fall 2025 at the earliest.

“It’s not uncommon that in order to get something across the finish line, you have to agree to leave a whole lot of things unresolved,” an industry source said. “I think the settlement is a good thing, but there are implementation issues that are really significant.”

The list of lingering uncertainties is a long one, including Title IX ambiguity, lack of direction on revenue sharing, the future role of booster collectives and the potential for rosters to be radically reshaped.

At the top of the list of those significant question marks is a concern that the terms of the settlement won’t be sufficient to fend off future legal claims that the NCAA and its schools are violating the law by placing any caps on the way schools can compensate players.

Steve Berman, co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs in the House case, said he believes he has devised a mechanism to solve this issue. Berman has proposed that future athletes — not part of the current class-action lawsuit — would be added to the class on an annual basis. They’d receive an opportunity to opt out of the class or object to the terms of the settlement.

This plan would not give the NCAA legal protection from future antitrust lawsuits, but it would make it much harder to create a large class of athletes suing the NCAA or its schools in the future. The potential financial damages for a case with one or few athletes as plaintiffs would be much smaller, and it would be much less appealing for a future lawyer to dedicate the time and resources to fighting a case that could take years to reach a conclusion.

“What plaintiff lawyer would take that case on behalf of one student?” Berman told ESPN. “It’s unlikely [a future student would sue] because these students are going to get a lot of money, and that lawyer would have to challenge an approved settlement agreement.”

Administrators are right to be cautious about Berman’s proposal, says Marc Edelman, a sports antitrust expert and law professor at Baruch College’s Zicklin School of Business.

Both Edelman and Berman compared the proposed solution to how the NFL handled a labor dispute in the early 1990s in a case called White v. NFL. Edelman, however, said a key difference in that case is that the NFL players agreed to recertify a previously existing players’ union as part of the settlement. Negotiating revenue-share terms with a players’ union — which does not currently exist in college sports — provided the NFL with protection from antitrust claims.

Edelman said it’s possible a judge would not approve a settlement that intentionally creates high barriers for future athletes to file lawsuits.

“If I were a judge, there are aspects of this settlement the way that it’s been reported that would be very concerning,” Edelman said. “…It may make a judge feel that this case moving forward does little if anything to obviate concerns about collusive behavior.”

Berman disagreed, saying the terms are fair to athletes because they can opt out of the settlement.

In addition to lawsuits brought by plaintiff attorneys, the NCAA is also currently being sued by multiple state-elected attorneys general. Settling the House case would not eliminate those threats, which are less dependent on providing lawyers with a financial incentive to pursue action against the NCAA.

Some college sports leaders say they are hoping a settlement that includes significant revenue-sharing money in the future will be enough of a show of good faith that Congress will provide them with an extra layer of antitrust protection to preserve parts of the college sports system. The NCAA and its conferences have been lobbying on Capitol Hill for a bill that would eliminate the threat of future lawsuits — including those that come from state attorneys general — for several years without making much progress.

Multiple sources — in the House and Senate and on either side of the political aisle — have told ESPN in the past week that a settlement this year is unlikely to spur any immediate action from Congress.

“We have to see what those details are,” said Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.), who has introduced multiple bills related to college sports in the past two years. “I’m skeptical, particularly in an election year; it’s just not the highest priority right now.”

Trahan — a former college volleyball player — said she is also skeptical of the motives of college sports officials who have told her they want an antitrust exemption to protect opportunities for women’s sports. She said after receiving those visits, she and her staff often check to see whether the school is currently compliant with Title IX laws that require equal opportunities in sports for men and women. She said she finds they are not complying with the law “a lot, more than I care to admit.”

College sports leaders are also uncertain about how Title IX rules could apply to the future revenue-sharing dollars. The terms of the House settlement do not include any detail about how schools would be required to divide that money, according to multiple sources. The NCAA and its leaders will not have clear answers on their Title IX obligations before voting on the proposed terms of a settlement next week.

And even once the settlement is approved, it appears to set up a landscape that remains unsettled.

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Giants sell 10% stake to private equity firm

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Giants sell 10% stake to private equity firm

The San Francisco Giants have sold a reported 10% stake in the team to private equity firm Sixth Street.

The team confirmed the deal Tuesday but not the amount of the investment, which was first reported Monday by the New York Times.

Sportico places the value of the franchise and its team-related holdings at $4.2 billion.

Sixth Street’s investment, reportedly approved by Major League Baseball on Monday, will go toward upgrades to Oracle Park and the Giants’ training facilities in Scottsdale, Arizona, as well as Mission Rock, the team’s real estate development project located across McCovey Cove from the ballpark.

Giants president and CEO Larry Baer called it the “first significant investment in three decades” and said the money would not be spent on players.

“This is not about a stockpile for the next Aaron Judge,” Baer told the New York Times. “This is about improvements to the ballpark, making big bets on San Francisco and the community around us, and having the firepower to take us into the next generation.”

Sixth Street is the primary owner of National Women’s Soccer League franchise Bay FC. It also has investments in the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs and Spanish soccer powers Real Madrid and FC Barcelona.

“We believe in the future of San Francisco, and our sports franchises like the Giants are critical ambassadors for our city of innovation, showcasing to the world what’s only made possible here,” Sixth Street co-founder and CEO Alan Waxman said in the news release. “We believe in Larry and the leadership team’s vision for this exciting new era, and we’re proud to be partnering with them as they execute the next chapter of San Francisco Giants success.”

Founded in 2009 and based in San Francisco, Sixth Street has assets totaling $75 billion, according to Front Office Sports.

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Ohtani ‘nervous’ in Tokyo but gets 2 hits, runs

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Ohtani 'nervous' in Tokyo but gets 2 hits, runs

TOKYO — Shohei Ohtani seems impervious to a variety of conditions that afflict most humans — nerves, anxiety, distraction — but it took playing a regular-season big-league game in his home country to change all of that.

After the Los Angeles Dodgers‘ Opening Day 4-1 win over the Chicago Cubs in the Tokyo Dome, Ohtani made a surprising admission. “It’s been a while since I felt this nervous playing a game,” he said. “It took me four or five innings.”

Ohtani had two hits and scored twice, and one of his outs was a hard liner that left his bat at more than 96 mph, so the nerves weren’t obvious from the outside. But clearly the moment, and its weeklong buildup, altered his usually stoic demeanor.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen Shohei nervous,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “But one thing I did notice was how emotional he got during the Japanese national anthem. I thought that was telling.”

As the Dodgers began the defense of last year’s World Series win, it became a night to showcase the five Japanese players on the two teams. For the first time in league history, two Japanese pitchers — the Dodgers’ Yoshinobu Yamamoto and the Cubs’ Shota Imanaga — faced each other on Opening Day. Both pitched well, with Imanaga throwing four hitless innings before being removed after 69 pitches.

“Seventy was kind of the number we had for Shota,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said. “It was the right time to take him out.”

The Dodgers agreed, scoring three in the fifth inning off reliever Ben Brown. Imanaga kept the Dodgers off balance, but his career-high four walks created two stressful innings that ran up his pitch count.

Yamamoto rode the adrenaline of pitching in his home country, routinely hitting 98 with his fastball and vexing the Cubs with a diving splitter over the course of five three-hit innings. He threw with a kind of abandon, finding a freedom that often eluded him last year in his first year in America.

“I think last year to this year, the confidence and conviction he has throwing the fastball in the strike zone is night and day,” Roberts said. “If he can continue to do that, I see no reason he won’t be in the Cy Young conversation this season.”

Cubs right fielder Seiya Suzuki went hitless in four at bats — the Cubs had only three hits, none in the final four innings against four relievers out of the Dodgers’ loaded bullpen — and rookie Roki Sasaki will make his first start of his Dodger career in the second and final game of the series Wednesday.

“I don’t think there was a Japanese baseball player in this country who wasn’t watching tonight,” Roberts said.

The Dodgers were without Mookie Betts, who left Japan on Monday after it was decided his illness would not allow him to play in this series. And less than an hour before game time, first baseman Freddie Freeman was scratched with what the team termed “left rib discomfort,” a recurrence of an injury he first sustained during last year’s playoffs.

The night started with a pregame celebration that felt like an Olympic opening ceremony in a lesser key. There were Pikachus on the field and a vaguely threatening video depicting the Dodgers and Cubs as Monster vs. Monster. World home-run king Saduharu Oh was on the field before the game, and Roberts called meeting Oh “a dream come true.”

For the most part, the crowd was subdued, as if it couldn’t decide who or what to root for, other than Ohtani. It was admittedly confounding: throughout the first five innings, if fans rooted for the Dodgers they were rooting against Imanaga, but rooting for the Cubs meant rooting against Yamamoto. Ohtani, whose every movement is treated with a rare sense of wonder, presented no such conflict.

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Cardinals shortstop Winn out with wrist soreness

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Cardinals shortstop Winn out with wrist soreness

JUPITER, Fla. — St. Louis Cardinals shortstop Masyn Winn was scratched from the lineup for their exhibition game on Tuesday because of soreness in his right wrist.

Winn was replaced by Jose Barrero in the Grapefruit League matchup with the Miami Marlins, with the regular-season opener nine days away. Winn, who was a 2020 second-round draft pick by the Cardinals, emerged as a productive everyday player during his rookie year in 2024. He batted .267 with 15 home runs, 11 stolen bases and 57 RBIs in 150 games and was named as one of three finalists for the National League Gold Glove Award that went to Ezequiel Tovar of the Colorado Rockies.

Winn had minor surgery after the season to remove a cyst from his hand. In 14 spring training games, he’s batting .098 (4 for 41) with 12 strikeouts.

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