Sports
NCAA replaces natl. letter of intent for recruits
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Eli Lederman, ESPN Staff Writer
The NCAA Division I Council has approved the immediate elimination of the national letter of intent program, the NCAA announced Wednesday, marking a historic shift to the recruiting landscape.
Established in 1964, the NLI program has existed as the formal, binding agreement between prospective athletes and college programs for the past 60 years. The NLI will be replaced by a new financial aid agreement that will provide many of the same core functions as the NLI and will likely be tied to a contract related to an impending revenue-sharing model across college athletics.
Under the new rules, transfer athletes will be allowed to sign with a new school after they’ve formally entered the portal. Per the NCAA, once a prospect has signed a written offer of athletic aid, other schools will be “prohibited from recruiting communications.”
The Division I Council’s move to nix the NLI program comes as the NCAA and college athletics prepare for sweeping change via the impending House settlement, which is set to grant roughly $2.8 billion in damages to former and current college athletes and pave the way for college programs to begin paying their athletes more than $20 million annually as soon as next fall.
A final hearing to approve the settlement is scheduled for April 7, 2025.
The elimination of the NLI program arrives little more than a year after the Collegiate Commissioners Association, which oversees the NLI program, approved policy changes that allowed athletes to pull out of NLI agreements without penalty under certain circumstances. Those changes — related to coaching changes and requests for release — went into effect for the 2023-24 signing periods for athletes who enrolled during the 2024-25 academic year.
Following the NLI decision, change could come next for the NCAA recruiting calendar with a specific focus on football.
College commissioners opted against a formal vote over the addition of a June high school signing period earlier this year. The early signing period for the 2025 cycle starts Dec. 4, 2024, followed by the traditional signing period beginning Feb. 5, 2025.