WICHITA, Kan. (KWCH) – College sports as we know them will likely soon look quite different.
An impending settlement between the U.S. House of Representatives and the NCAA would change the way athletes are paid, and it could impose roster limits, essentially wiping out walk-ons or non-scholarship players from your favorite college teams.
“Off the field I think the industry of college athletics is a disaster, Kansas State football coach Chris Klieman said. “It just is.”
If you asked any other coach in college sports, that coach may tell you the same thing. The landmark settlement could see schools pay players rather than Name, Image and Likeness collectives.
But it comes with an asterisk. A controversial one that has delayed a final ruling would see teams no longer bound by scholarship limits — but instead, roster limits. It’s a decision that would essentially weed out walk-on athletes from Division I sports.
“We’ve got to remove a lot of kids from the program. And it sucks, I’ll be honest with you,” Klieman said. “There’s a lot of kids that want to be here, want to stay here, that we can’t have in the program. Kids that are paying their way. Kids that have put a lot of blood, sweat and tears in this place. Kids that are invested academically.”
Football Bowl Subdivision programs like K-State face tough decisions. If the settlement is reached, teams will have to decrease their roster size from 125 players to 105.
Players such as Cheney alum Jackson Voth, who won’t make that final 105-player roster. He and many others have to face the choice of staying at their school and potentially being a part of NCAA cuts, thus not allowing them to play in the upcoming season, or enter the transfer portal.
“It’s pretty stressful, it really is,” Voth said. “One second you have a secure spot and the next you don’t.”
The difficult part while the settlement sits in limbo? The NCAA football transfer portal closed this past Friday. The result was a slew of walk-ons from all over the country, like Voth, forced into the portal before a final decision is made.
“Talking to some of them after they said some of the guys we had to cut, that’s what we built K-State on,” Wildcats defensive coordinator Joe Klanderman said. “That was the K-State foundation was these walk-ons that gave everything they had. The NCAA is starting to take that away from them. It sucks.”
With walk-ons in the portal and off rosters, and a final ruling still not passed as the 2025 season inches closer, there are still the same questions heading into May as were raised into April.
“Is there an injured reserve? Have you guys found that out? I don’t know,” Klieman said. “Is there a practice squad? I don’t know. I don’t think any of those things have been talked about and if they have we don’t know about it as coaches because we’re not in those meetings.”
And there are players, like Voth, who have been forced to potentially give up on their major-conference dreams.
“I mean obviously it sucks,” Voth said. It’s not what you want to hear at the end of the day. But at the end of the day I was a small town Kansas kid that got to play on the big stage at Kansas State. That’s all I could’ve asked for.”
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