NIL as it is now allows the boosters to deal over the table rather than under the table. All a booster has to do as things are now is to pay the athlete for NIL without the athlete having to do much of anything in return. The settlement allows boosters to make NIL deals with athletes only if there is a valid business purpose for the deal rather than it simply being a recruitment inducement. That puts the boosters back under the table. That's not going to prevent boosters from doing improper things, but it at least makes it harder.
NIL, what's the best course of action to remedy this?
- Thread starter Rutgers NJ
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We're one of 34 schools where it should be easier to find the budget for paying players vs others like Cuse, WVU, Pitt etc..others and some others in the ACC/B12. That's more reason to feel good not bad. I don't get the woe is me attitude rather than actually seeing what's happening on the landscape and how improved it is compared to the past.
Is it even harder?
It's just back to the way it was 5 years ago when everyone complained about $EC schools and O$U paying for players.
Complaining about and "regulating" NIL is rearranging the chairs on the Titanic.
Exactly, But at least the settlement gets us back to the "good old days" before NIL existed.
Even if it goes under the table somewhat the gap is still narrower imo.
Say school A was paying 1M NIL before schools could pay players. School B pays 10M NIL before schools could pay players.
Say both schools pay 15M to football of that 20.5M cap for all sports.
School A now has a 16M budget and school B a 25M budget.
It's the same 9M dollar difference but imo that gap is quite a bit narrower in practice with the floor coming up for schools on the lower end.
Paywall but an excerpt
The Big Ten enjoys the most lucrative media rights deal in college sports history, pulling in around $1 billion annually through the 2029-30 sports season. The income generated from those contracts with Fox, CBS and NBC provides 16 of the 18 schools (Oregon and Washington have half shares through 2029) with about $75.2 million from the conference office during the current fiscal year. That’s a $14 million jump from fiscal year 2024. That revenue increase will help the league’s 18 schools pay their athletes directly, once the House v. NCAA settlement becomes permanent in April. The projected revenue sharing cap for the 2026 fiscal year, which begins July 1, is around $20.5 million per school. Most Big Ten schools plan to meet or approach that cap, but banter among the lower-income departments has officials hedging most of their answers with “hope to” or “we have to find a way” by mixing external fund raising with internal cost control.
The current NIL model has helped Big Ten schools compete above board for portal targets and, perhaps just as important, retain athletes with eligibility who had NFL options.
The Big Ten enjoys the most lucrative media rights deal in college sports history, pulling in around $1 billion annually through the 2029-30 sports season. The income generated from those contracts with Fox, CBS and NBC provides 16 of the 18 schools (Oregon and Washington have half shares through 2029) with about $75.2 million from the conference office during the current fiscal year. That’s a $14 million jump from fiscal year 2024. That revenue increase will help the league’s 18 schools pay their athletes directly, once the House v. NCAA settlement becomes permanent in April. The projected revenue sharing cap for the 2026 fiscal year, which begins July 1, is around $20.5 million per school. Most Big Ten schools plan to meet or approach that cap, but banter among the lower-income departments has officials hedging most of their answers with “hope to” or “we have to find a way” by mixing external fund raising with internal cost control.
The current NIL model has helped Big Ten schools compete above board for portal targets and, perhaps just as important, retain athletes with eligibility who had NFL options.
Title IX could affect how NIL distribution goes to athletes.
Paywall but for the comments
Paywall but for the comments
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As I've said in another thread, I think we can expect this guidance document from DOE to be killed (or at least drastically changed) when the Trump Administration takes power at noon on Monday.
That anon quote sums it up very nicely, "We’re gonna get sued either way. Better to get sued with a winning football program than a losing one."
There's something else to think about here. Title IX can only be enforced by the Federal government through a lawsuit or administrative complaint. It's not as though a women athlete can sue. So if the Federal government chooses not to enforce it, that's probably that.
*But* someone could sue on the grounds that the school was violating the prohibition against sex discrimination in employment contained in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. . Are athletes employees within the meaning of that Act? Even if they are, is paying, for instance, male basketball players more than female athletes a violation? What does one do with football, a sport played only by men? One thing that is clear: Title VII does not require proportionality; if a workforce is 40% female, the employer doesn't have to make sure that women get 40% of the payroll. It is necessary only that men and women get paid the same for the same job and that women are not discriminated against in hiring.
We're in for a wild ride and we don't know where we would end up.
One reason for this is the court decision granting a player an injunction against the rule counting junior college play against four years of eligibility.
Eventuallly there will have to be a CBA with representatatuon for the players and the schools. I don’t know that the settlement can be used as some sort of de facto CBA which the schools seems to interpret as or at least want to use as such.
The DOJ position is likely to change after Trump becomes President at noon on Monday. At that point, DOJ's leadership will change and so will DOJ's policies. The DOJ could bring an action of its own against the NCAA, but I doubt that will happen.
For the time being, Judge Claudia Wilken, the judge in the House case, is pretty much the commissioner of college sports.She is the one with the power to approve the out-of-court settlement or to force changes. She has already forced it to be changed to be more permissive of NIL agreements between athletes and third parties (persons other than the schools). Once it's approved, all changes will have to go through her. That will continue to be the case unless Congress acts or unless the athletes are allowed to unionize and to negotiate a collective barganing agreement.
Judge Wilken graduated my law school a year before I did, but I do not remember ever meeting her.
For the time being, Judge Claudia Wilken, the judge in the House case, is pretty much the commissioner of college sports.She is the one with the power to approve the out-of-court settlement or to force changes. She has already forced it to be changed to be more permissive of NIL agreements between athletes and third parties (persons other than the schools). Once it's approved, all changes will have to go through her. That will continue to be the case unless Congress acts or unless the athletes are allowed to unionize and to negotiate a collective barganing agreement.
Judge Wilken graduated my law school a year before I did, but I do not remember ever meeting her.
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Yea but this is an untenable position because then you’re at the mercy from one admin to the next. There’s no certainty. CBA is really the only answer that can give structure and stop all the lawsuits and challenges.
Even the transfer portal windows will be challenged now. Ironically at the coaches convention, the coaches voted (doesn’t have any real weight) to have just one window. Now we have a player trying to leave outside of the 2 windows available.
You're not entirely at the administration's mercy. The DOJ cannot itself torpedo the settlement. What it can do is to bring a lawsuit of its own against the NCAA. That's a huge headache, but there's no guarantee that the DOJ would win or that the court would impose a solution much different than the House settlement. I also must say I regard the DOJ statement as cheap talk, much like the Department of Education's insistence on proportionate pay. It's easy to take positions like that when you're about to leave office and when (frankly) you can say anything you like without consequences. Keep in mind that *neither* department took its current position when it actually could have done something to bring it about.
The transfer portal is sure to be challenged as an antitrust violation. My guess is that the NCAA will keep retreating.
I'm all for a CBA. But here's the problem. The states each control whether and how their public employees can unionize. The federal National Labor Relations Board can force Northwestern to recognize an athletes' union, but the NLRB has no power to, say , make Ohio State do that. That makes a national solution very hard to develop.
At some point, Congress is going to have to step in. But there is no way of knowing what it would do, when it would do it, or whether its solution would make the slightest sense.
like the 28th amendment declaration, there is no reason why colleges cannot just ignore this
she is a liberal activist judge from everything I have read and that is not a good thing in this case
Let's put it this way -she went to Berkeley. She's already made the parties revise the settlement to have fewer limits on third-party NIL agreements. So probably she's forced all the revisions she wants.
That's true -- assuming (as I think is almost certain) that the incoming administration tells them they can ignore it.
yep to me its really reckless for an outgoing admin to start throwing alot of bs declarations out there to push their agenda and this recommendation is one of them not evening into the bs from yesterday which for some reason isnt being fact checked by the usual suspects on the board
It's reckless, but harmless. It's a way for the Biden Administration to satisfy the left-wing without there being any consequences. To take the example you've given, Biden's declaration that the ERA has been ratified doesn't have the slightest legal effect; even he didn't try to make it have legal effect. Everyone knows the Trump administration isn't going to take Biden's position. Declarations like this are just a way to satisfy the left.
New claim in the House settlement. Walkons want a piece of the action. Are waterboya next to stake a claim?
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