In the fall, as college leaders were mired in negotiations to settle a handful of antitrust lawsuits, one of the attorneys across the table from them delivered a message: “I kept telling them that our price will go up if you keep letting us win in court,” said Steve Berman, the managing partner at Hagens Berman law firm.

Six months later, college administrators have grown “serious” about avoiding the courtroom, said attorney Jeffrey Kessler, of the firm Winston & Strawn. “We were always serious,” he said. “The question was, when were they going to get serious?”

As the NCAA and power conferences work to adopt a historic settlement agreement by the month’s end — a deadline placed upon them — the two leading plaintiff attorneys spoke publicly two weeks after college executives began socializing to their stakeholders' potential settlement terms of the House, Hubbard and Carter cases.