The NCAA has been caught in a growing wave of legal battles with college athletes, and Diego Pavia’s eligibility lawsuit proved to be one of the biggest turning points. After the former Vanderbilt quarterback won an injunction against the NCAA, similar challenges followed, including Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby, who was granted a temporary injunction in June restoring his eligibility while his lawsuit against the NCAA moves forward. As more athletes continue to challenge NCAA rules in court, the governing body’s legal expenses are mounting just as quickly as the lawsuits.

“They are at a pace of having spent nearly 300 million dollars in the last five years in legal fees,” Sportico’s investigative journalist, Daniel Libit, said yesterday on ESPN’s podcast with Paul Finebaum. “That’s just on attorneys. It’s not the 2.7 billion dollars that they spent to settle the House case or the hundreds of millions of dollars they spent to settle other class action lawsuits”

As per the NCAA’s FY25 report, its expenditure on outside legal representation went up 2% to $63.5 million compared to the previous year. In total, the NCAA’s actual five-year legal spending total hovers around $292.6 million.

The largest payment went to Washington-based law firm Wilkinson Stekloff, which received nearly $19.6 million in FY25 after partner Rakesh Kilaru served as lead counsel for the NCAA in the landmark House v. NCAA antitrust litigation. Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner was the second-highest-paid firm at $7.3 million, representing the NCAA in several major cases, including litigation involving DraftKings.

“Country’s top antitrust legal defense firms are doing quite well on account of college athletes,” Libit said. “I mean, we must remember that the class action lawyers representing the House plaintiffs as part of the settlement are coming away with 600 to 700 million dollars as well. So, combined, we’re looking at a handful of law firms that have scored over a billion dollars over the last 5 years. This is an enterprise that has been built over decades.”

The NCAA reached a court-approved settlement in House v. NCAA last June. Under the agreement, it committed roughly $2.8 billion in back damages, while the settlement also ushered in a new revenue-sharing model for college athletes. The settlement is being funded jointly by the NCAA and the Power conferences over a 10-year period, making it separate from the association’s own $292.6 million spending on outside legal counsel.

Beyond attorney fees, its latest tax filing also disclosed another $372.3 million in legal settlements during FY25 alone, pushing the NCAA’s total legal settlement costs to more than $3 billion over the past two fiscal cycles. On top of that, lawsuits from athletes challenging NCAA decisions continue to pile up.

The piling up of lawsuits and legal fees is pushing the NCAA to advocate for federal legislation

From 2020 to 2026, athletes have filed more than 100 lawsuits against the NCAA, primarily on antitrust grounds. The issues are wide-ranging. From eligibility to NIL compensation to roster limits, athletes are challenging nearly every aspect of the association’s rulebook. More recently, former UC Berkeley basketball player DeJuan Campbell filed a lawsuit challenging the NCAA’s newly implemented age-based eligibility rules.

Notably, the challenge arrived less than a week after the new policy was introduced, highlighting how quickly the association’s latest reforms are already facing legal scrutiny. Then there was Sutcliffe v. Northern Illinois University, filed on June 9.

Former NIU softball coach Christina Sutcliffe filed the case alleging gender discrimination and Title VII violations. Ili v. NCAA is another major lawsuit filed in June this year, alleging antitrust violations and state NIL claims against the College Sports Commission’s enforcement of revenue-sharing and NIL restrictions. In all, the cases are piling up, and that’s why the NCAA is aggressively pushing for a federal bill that would provide limited antitrust protection, particularly around player eligibility and transfer rules.

Going by the latest precedents, though, more than 40 bills have been introduced in Congress since 2020. Not one has advanced, despite each becoming a major talking point in college sports. Currently, U.S. Senators Maria Cantwell and Ted Cruz are expected to introduce another proposal, the Protect College Sports Act. It aims to address several issues in college athletics, including granting the NCAA limited protection from future antitrust lawsuits. For now, that appears to be the association’s best hope of slowing the growing legal costs that continue to mount each year.