NCAA ponders payment of antitrust lawsuit settlement

''The NCAA is healthy and continues to be solvent and will get through this,'' Graham Spanier, chair of the NCAA Division I board of directors, said yesterday.

''But there is no question that the legal fees and the potential settlement cost of this lawsuit poses a significant challenge for all of us.''

A U.S. District Court jury in Kansas City, Kan., last May awarded $67 million in damages to about 1,900 entry-level ''restricted earnings coaches'' in an antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA.

The court ruled the NCAA acted unlawfully in capping salaries of entry-level coaches at $16,000 annually.

Once the plaintiffs' lawyers' fees were calculated, the NCAA's financial obligation in the lawsuit amounted to around $80 million.

Even as the NCAA tries to have the damage amount reduced in an appellate court, it is continuing to negotiate an out-of-court settlement with lawyers for the coaches, said association general counsel Elsa Cole.

The last publicly reported settlement offer by the NCAA was $44 million in October, which Cole called a ''very good offer.'' The coaches said they wanted $58.5 million.

How the ultimate award will be paid has been a source of controversy among NCAA member colleges and was a subject of discussion during a session at the association's annual convention yesterday.

Small schools want big schools to shoulder most of the burden, but big schools say the payment should be shared equally because the restricted earnings rule was agreed upon by nearly all 300 Division I schools.

A Division I budget subcommittee has been formed to make recommendations on payment methods.

''The range of settlement numbers that we are talking about is significant,'' said Lane Rawlins, chair of the subcommittee. ''We need to really budget this. We need to approach this in a budgetary way.''

In another matter, NCAA delegates were updated on safety concerns about metal baseball bats. One worry is the speed of the ball when hit by such a bat.

Because of disagreements among the NCAA divisions on which bat restrictions to establish and when to implement them, the NCAA executive committee is expected to take up the matter again today.

01-12-99