S
SEC Sports
College Sports Commission CEO says system struggling with volume of âmanufacturedâ NIL deals
Some CFB deals guaranteed millions of dollars without having yet received approval through NIL Go, the clearinghouse used by the CSC.
www.nytimes.com
RemovePaywall | Free online paywall remover
Remove Paywall, free online paywall remover. Get access to articles without having to pay or login. Works on Bloomberg and hundreds more.
www.removepaywall.com
The CEO of the College Sports Commission, the new body charged with approving athletesâ outside name, image and likeness (NIL) deals, said Tuesday the organization is running into unexpected challenges due to a surge of school-affiliated deals it believes do not comply with the rules the schools themselves established.
Bryan Seeley, a former Major League Baseball executive hired to oversee compliance with last yearâs House settlement, said the system was not designed to handle so many deals in the recent football portal window that were made by âassociated entitiesâ like schoolsâ NIL collectives, multimedia partners and apparel providers. Some of those deals guaranteed players millions of dollars without having yet received approval through NIL Go, the clearinghouse used by the CSC.
âThe massive increase in associated deal volume of this kind of manufactured NIL is leading to some increased review times in NIL Go,â Seely said during a call with reporters on Tuesday. âI donât think the system was designed with this amount of associated deals in mind.â
The CSC was established to enforce the new college sports revenue sharing model under the House settlement. Under the terms of the settlement, college athletes are required to submit any NIL deals from third-party entities â those outside of a schoolâs direct revenue sharing cap â that are over $600 through the NIL Go platform for review. Those deals do not count toward a schoolâs annual revenue sharing cap, which is roughly $20.5 million for the 2025-26 academic season.
0:00 / 1:
CSCâs latest data published Tuesday, including deals submitted in January and February, showed an increase in the amount of submitted deals, which Seely said coincides with the college football transfer portal window. Seely added thatâs an encouraging sign because it suggests athletes are reporting deals and utilizing the system as intended. But he also noted an increase in third-party deals from associated entities, which the CSC considers âsubject to increased scrutinyâ regarding approval. That increase has caused longer reviews for many of those deals and made CSC guidelines more difficult to enforce.
A person working in the NIL space told The Athletic those deals are taking at least several weeks to process and even then often get sent back seeking more information.
CSC reported that through the end of February, NIL Go has cleared more than 21,000 deals worth a combined $166.5 million and has not cleared 711 deals worth a combined $29.3 million. Through January and February 2026, more than 3,700 deals worth a combined $39.29 million were cleared, while 187 deals worth a combined $14.36 million were not cleared.
Since the NIL Go platform launched last June, 50 percent of submitted deals have been resolved (either cleared or not cleared) within 24 hours, and 70 percent reached resolution within a week of all required information being submitted, according to the report. But the report also stated that the number of third-party deals specifically from associated entities submitted by power-conference athletes over the past two months has increased by 65 percent.
According to Seely, the CSC defines an associated entity as, essentially, âan entity thatâs either controlled by a donor or is working on behalf of the school to help retain and recruit student athletes.â Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chamblissâ national AT&T commercial or Arch Manningâs Warby Parker ad donât involve associated entities, but a deal from a booster-led NIL collective does. Many third-party NIL deals also originate from multimedia rights (MMR) partners such as Learfield or Playfly that manage a schoolâs sponsorships, or apparel partners (such as Nike or Adidas), and the CSC treats those as associated entities as well. Hence the increase in review times and accompanying challenges.
âWhat Iâve been told is that there was a belief among many that perhaps up to 90 percent of deals flowing through the system would do so automatically, that would not need any kind of human review,â said Seely. âSo the bottom line is, there are changes we need to make in the system that we are working on making that I think will improve things.â
Third-party NIL deals, which provide over-the-cap dollars, have become crucial to the ongoing financial arms race in college sports, particularly football and basketball, with top programs efforting to spend above their revenue sharing allotment. There are those in the industry claiming that some football programs will spend north of $40 million on their rosters for the 2026 season, which is more than double the full revenue share pool for every sport in the entire athletic department, meaning a lot of that money â a majority, for some schools â would be earmarked from third-party, over-the-cap deals.
If a star quarterback or top player is reportedly earning $4 million this season, thereâs a high likelihood that some or most of it is budgeted outside of revenue sharing. And a lot of it is reportedly coming in the form of front-end guarantees through MMR and apparel agreements, big-money deals that Seely says run counter to House settlement rules.
âThereâs no question that during the portal, agents were demanding guaranteed NIL for student athletes and schools felt pressure to guarantee those things, even though such guarantees are not within the rules,â said Seely. âI think any athletic director would tell you that.â
Challenges with NIL Go and third-party deals are just some of the persistent obstacles the CSC has faced since the settlement went into effect last summer. Another is the participant agreement, which would require participating schools to cooperate with investigations and enforcement decisions made by the CSC and prevent them from filing lawsuits that challenge those rules, but has not yet been signed. The CSCâs enforcement arm has quietly made investigative inquiries into various programs, but there have yet to be any known violations or penalties handed down, which has sparked some criticism within the industry.
âUntil we build a structure to enforce the rules that are in place, we are constantly just putting bandages over issues,â Ohio State football coach Ryan Day said Tuesday. âMy concern, more than anything, is that we are raising a young group of college coaches that see it that way, itâs becoming their normal. ⌠Once we get that addressed, we can deal with everything else, but until then we are going to have a situation where people will try to get around the rules.â
Seely acknowledged Tuesday that the pushback from certain factions against signing the participant agreement has contributed to the lack of enforcement.
âThe participant (agreement) is a key tool to giving the CSC the enforcement powers and needs,â Seely said. âThat doesnât mean without the participant agreement, itâs impossible, but I donât think youâre going to see enforcement at the speed with which the schools want it.â
He added that there are currently 15 people on staff with the CSC, but that a lack of staff is ânot a large contributing factorâ to the enforcement challenges.
âI would say a lot of this is problems with the system just not being designed to handle this,â Seely said.
As the CSC aims to adapt and improve its operations, the tests will continue. Both the menâs and womenâs college basketball portal windows open in early April, less than a month away.
