📡 House Settlement officially approved by Judge...

[Brandon Van de Graaff]

Been talked about for a while, and was expected, but now official....

 

[Brandon Van de Graaff]

 

[Brandon Van de Graaff]

Info and refresher on all of this for those that care to dive into it....

 

[OldPlayer]

I want reparations for all the athletes who never got NIL.

 

[TerryP]

Now we're going to see how necessary it is for programs to have good GM's. It's as close to managing an NFL roster as we've seen.

 

[rammerjammer]

Finally. I'm looking forward to seeing how baseball evens out.

 

[PurlJam]

85 scholarships a year can do 200k per player and still have 3 million left over.

 

[Brandon Van de Graaff]

Finally. I'm looking forward to seeing how baseball evens out.

Just a guess, but I don’t think it will very much. At least in the SEC. I’d they had allowed these scholarships before NIL, then it would have made a more significant difference. But that’s just a guess, we’ll see how it all plays out.

 

[TerryP]

An interesting side note/story in all of this NIL talk.

You guys probably saw Ryan make the cover of College Football ’26. They are doing something with royalties I find pretty fair.

Teams, and players, will be paid according to how often they are played. IE: IF Ohio State has more people play their team on the game they'll get the most royalties.

 

[SEC Sports]

House v. NCAA settlement quells issues in college sports? No, but be prepared for a whole new type of chaos

The landmark decision passed down on Friday opens the door for a new slew of issues across the landscape

www.cbssports.com

Judge Claudia Wilken approved the House v. NCAA settlement late Friday, ending three federal lawsuits that alleged the NCAA was illegally limiting the earning power of student-athletes in college. CBS Sports' John Talty has a nice piece on it. My favorite line is his last.

"There's never been a better time to be a lawyer with an interest in college sports."

Yeah, that's where this is headed.

What happened Friday in California is significant, no doubt. But anybody describing it as a solution to the issues ailing college athletics simply lacks an understanding of the history of NCAA sports and exactly what will and won't be allowed moving forward.

The end of chaos?

Nah.

It'll just be a different kind of chaos that leads to more legal threats and billable hours than you can wrap your mind around. Plus, high-level cheating will return. Oh, we're back baby! Illegal cash-deals are on tap.

Before I explain why, let's go over the basics.

This settlement will allow schools to start directly paying athletes -- for the first time ever -- next month with an expected salary cap of roughly $20.5 million. That's $20.5 million for all sports to be distributed however each school sees fit. Additionally, all future NIL deals between boosters/collectives and athletes will be vetted by a new entity designed to ensure they're for valid business purposes and not merely the kind of recruiting incentives that have been flying around the country in recent years.

That paragraph is littered with problems.

Let's start with the salary cap. Simply put, that won't work as intended.

As Matt Norlander and I have discussed many times on the Eye On College Basketball Podcast, the most obvious problem with a salary cap for entire athletic departments is that all athletic departments don't have football rosters to purchase. In other words, at a place like Alabama, the school is expected to devote the majority of that $20.5 million to football, leaving relatively little for other sports, most notably men's basketball. Meantime, at a place like St. John's, where there is no football, the overwhelming majority of that $20.5 million could be spent however Hall of Fame basketball coach Rick Pitino sees fit.

Now, let's be real.

Do you actually think a SEC school with millions tied up in football is going to concede a recruiting battle in basketball to a Big East program sans football because, you know, the money just isn't in the budget, according to the rules? LOL. When it comes to that, not all basketball staffs, but certainly lots, will simply do what they've always done, i.e., find a way to get the player even if it requires circumventing the rules.

Again, this weekend, cheating returned to college sports.

It's inevitable.

Every Power Four conference features a coach who has violated one recruiting rule or another. If you think they won't do it again, if required, you're silly. And now every time a player picks a school with little known-money left in the budget over a school that's reportedly offering much more, fans on the wrong end of the commitment will assume something happened in violation of the rules and scream for an investigation.

We lived that life for decades. Who really wanted that again?

And don't even get me started on the document Power Four conferences are circulating that's intended to force schools to play by the rules or face serious consequences. Among other things, schools are being asked to forfeit their right to legally challenge the new enforcement entity on any and all decisions. Reportedly, schools that refuse to sign the document could face expulsion from their conferences.

Please.

All it will take for this goofy idea to fail is one powerful school -- like, say, Texas or Ohio State -- declining to sign it, at which point other schools will say, "If they're not signing it, we're not signing it."

Then what?

Do you really think the SEC is going to expel Texas? Do you really think the Big Ten is going to expel Ohio State? Do you really think the television networks paying billions to those conferences would allow it?

Please.

Now, to NIL.

According to the settlement, a new thing called the NIL Go clearinghouse will be charged with approving future NIL deals to ensure they are within a "reasonable range of compensation based on multiple factors."

I look forward to the word "reasonable" appearing in court.

Don't ever forget how we got here -- specifically by the NCAA being sued repeatedly for illegally limiting the earning power of student-athletes. So what do you think is going to happen when a school with serious softball ambitions like Texas Tech offers a NIL deal worth more than a million dollars to the next NiJaree Canaday? Let me tell you what. NIL Go will likely deem the deal "unreasonable" for obvious reasons and void it. Then everybody will be back in court based on the idea that, once again, a student-athlete's earning power is being illegally limited.

Rinse and repeat.

Last month, NIL Go officials told ACC administrators that more than 70% of current NIL deals with booster collectives would have been denied according to the new rules. That suggests NIL Go will frequently be in the business of telling student-athletes they cannot take what somebody is willing to give them, and not every student-athlete will accept that decision without pursuing legal action.

The end of chaos?

Hahaha. No way!

Trust me when I tell you, this is only the beginning. Because when a solution to a problem just creates more problems, you're not really fixing anything as much as you're simply trading in one set of issues for a new set of issues that will have to be addressed again, sooner or later. Like Talty wrote, congrats to the attorneys. They're the real winners here, as always.

 

[Brandon Van de Graaff]

And here’s (one of many examples) where it trickles down to the fans…

 

[RTB X Bot]

 

[Brandon Van de Graaff]

Lemme save folks some reading.... If it isn't approved, it'll be handled under the the table (by most), like it used to be.

 

[TerryP]

Lemme save folks some reading.... If it isn't approved, it'll be handled under the the table (by most), like it used to be.

Prognostication.

We're seeing, going to see, college athletics mimic the MLB. IE: Payroll for the Yankees and Dodgers compared to the payroll UCONN will spend on basketball versus football. Is Wake going to use more revenue money for basketball or football? St. Johns?

 

[TerryP]

Prognostication.

We're seeing, going to see, college athletics mimic the MLB. IE: Payroll for the Yankees and Dodgers compared to the payroll UCONN will spend on basketball versus football. Is Wake going to use more revenue money for basketball or football? St. Johns?

Georgia announced that its pay distribution model will see 75% of its revenue sharing go toward football (13.5M). From there, 15% will go to men’s basketball ($2.7M), 5% will go to women's basketball ($900K) and the remaining 5% will be spread out amongst the rest of its sports.

 

[TerryP]

BTW, I've yet to look this up.

I understand the NCAA is granting subpoena power within the vetting process of deals. That's a "twist."

 

[c5vetman]

so could this be the end of the NCAA as many have been predicting? This applies to NCAA only, right? So if the SEC/BIG10 decided to create their own rules, then bye-bye NCAA?

 

[OldPlayer]

House Settlement Will Force Schools To Make Tough Decisions, Could Turn Into An NIL 'Sh-t Show Moving Forward'

Good article explaining what happens now and next.

 

[Brandon Van de Graaff]

so could this be the end of the NCAA as many have been predicting? This applies to NCAA only, right? So if the SEC/BIG10 decided to create their own rules, then bye-bye NCAA?

Just the next step, at least in terms of the big 2 conferences. They aren't going to stick with the NCAA long term barring some sort of crazy turn of events... it's just in evolution (or revolution?) mode right now..

 

[Brandon Van de Graaff]

Prognostication.

We're seeing, going to see, college athletics mimic the MLB. IE: Payroll for the Yankees and Dodgers compared to the payroll UCONN will spend on basketball versus football. Is Wake going to use more revenue money for basketball or football? St. Johns?

We talked about this a while back, but yeah... St. John's could field one hell of a basketball team if they go all in on that alone.