The NCAA has been spending enormous amounts of money on lawyers for years. And a new report finally puts a number on it.

Sportico investigative journalist Daniel Libit appeared on the Paul Finebaum Show on ESPN on June 30 and broke it down.

"They are at a pace of having spent nearly $300 million in the last five years in legal fees," Libit said on the Paul Finebaum Show. "That's just on attorneys. It's not the $2.7 billion that they spent to settle the House case or the hundreds of millions of dollars they spent to settle other class action lawsuits."

The five-year total on outside lawyers came out to $292.6 million. The biggest chunk of that, nearly $19.6 million in fiscal year 2025 alone, went to Washington-based firm Wilkinson Stekloff, which handled the House v. NCAA antitrust case for them.

It's not just the NCAA paying either.

"The class action lawyers representing the House plaintiffs as part of the settlement are coming away with $600 to $700 million as well," Libit said on the Paul Finebaum show. "Combined, we're looking at a handful of law firms that have scored over a billion dollars over the last five years."

When you add the House settlement and other class actions on top of the attorney fees, the NCAA has spent more than $3 billion in total legal settlement costs over the past five years.

Libit didn't let the current leadership off the hook either. NCAA President Charlie Baker earns $3.5 million a year, and his main job right now is lobbying Congress for a fix.

None of this is new either. The NCAA has been dodging antitrust laws and Title IX obligations for a long time. Warning signs were there 10 to 15 years ago, and the people running things chose to ignore them.

The Cruz-Cantwell bill is the NCAA’s best shot at stopping the lawsuit cycle

Ted Cruz and Maria Cantwell put together the Protect College Sports Act in 2026. It is a bipartisan bill that would hand the NCAA limited antitrust protection, per CBS Sports.

The timing is not great, though. Congress heads into recess at the end of summer. Midterms are four months out. And the bill already has people pushing back hard.

Texas A&M and Texas both came out against its core provisions. A senior senator from the state where the SEC is headquartered has said he is against it too.

Over 40 bills have been introduced in college sports since 2020. Not one has made it through.

Without something changing at the federal level, the NCAA just keeps doing what it has been doing since the Ed O'Bannon case. Spending hundreds of millions fighting lawsuits in a system that keeps ruling against them.

Do you think this bill will finally fix college sports? Let us know in the comments.

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Written by

Farheen Fathima

Edited by

Shubhi Rathore