There isn’t a lot of chatter about it in college and pro football circles — at least none that I’ve picked up — but big parts are moving into place that will determine the future and structure of college football. Late last month, we got a story that was pretty telling about what direction things are going, and until now, I really haven’t had a chance to give it a close look.
This week, however, I did. The lawsuits involve antitrust actions against the NCAA (three of them, in fact, that were resolved collectively). Per the story, the resolution of these lawsuits “outline how past athletes will share the $2.78 billion in damages that the NCAA has agreed to pay, sets up a new system for revenue sharing and outlines new roster limits for a long list of college sports, among other items.” Obviously, $2.78 billion is a lot of money, but that only reflects the back pay previous athletes will receive. It’s just scratching the surface of what’s ahead.
Anyway, no one seems to want to acknowledge what’s ahead and how it will change player representation, so I thought I’d try to comb through the story and draw my own conclusions. Here are a few passages and my comments.
- “Schools will be permitted for the first time to pay their athletes directly via name, image and likeness (NIL) deals under the terms of the settlement. Each school could provide up to 22% of the average revenue that power conference schools generate from media rights, ticket sales and sponsorships — a sum that is expected to be between $20 million and $22 million per school when the settlement goes into effect at the start of the 2025-26 academic year.” — OK, but this seems like another effort to keep players from getting paid as university employees, which seems completely inevitable. If it is inevitable (and I believe it is), it’s almost stupid to wade through and try to figure out how the terms of this lawsuit will change things, because someone else will sue again soon and tear this agreement down. As for the numbers, $22 million seems a little conservative given that I’ve heard that many schools’ budgets are already north of that number for football only. With the money pouring into football programs, it seems like this number could soar higher quickly. If this is the case, and nothing is done to slow portal movement, the dollars are going to make things even crazier.
- “Athletes would still be able to make money from NIL deals with third parties, but the NCAA said the settlement will allow them to install a more ‘robust and effective enforcement and oversight program’ to make sure those third-party deals are ‘legitimate NIL activity.'” — I think this is good, but I wonder if there will be real teeth in these oversight programs. More and more, the bigger agencies are signing up the top draft prospects years before they are draft-eligible just so they’ll be at the front of the line when it comes to signing an NFL contract. Sure, the top five percent are getting big national deals, but those are few and far between.
- “The NCAA plans to create a database of NIL deals to try to objectively assess whether arrangements between an athlete and a third party qualify as a legitimate endorsement deal.” — Great! But will the results be public? If not, who will have access? Schools? Agents? There’s not an NFLPA-comparable body that can regulate all this, though I presume the NCAA thinks of itself as such a body.
- “The settlement allows for the court to appoint a ‘special master’ to rule on any disputes about new rules related to player compensation. . . The two sides have not yet determined who will serve as the new enforcement entity or who will oversee the arbitration process of any future disputes.” — I don’t think this can work through civil litigation processes, which means it will have to be collectively bargained . . . which requires a union.
- “It is highly unlikely that football players — who generate the majority of revenue for most schools — will receive 50% of the money that the football team generates. Some of those benefits have to be shared equitably due to Title IX regulations. The settlement does not provide detailed instructions on how to apply Title IX to these new benefits, leaving some potentially tricky decisions up to each individual school.” — This is why this doesn’t seem tenable. Football teams will eventually not want to share revenues. If this isn’t settled promptly, and just left to the schools, it’s going to accelerate football’s pull away from this agreement.
- “As part of the settlement, the NCAA agreed to remove any limits on the number of scholarships a school can provide to athletes. Previously, NCAA rules dictated a certain number of scholarships per sport. If the settlement is approved, there will instead be a limit on how many total players each team can have on its roster and each individual school will decide how many of those players it wants to put on scholarship.” — This is probably the NCAA trying to throw the bigger schools a bone, but I doubt it works.
At the end of the day, most agents just want to know what they’ll have to deal with. A nationwide NIL contract database would be huge if contract advisors have access to it. I think most would like to know if there’s going to be some kind of certification process, as well, with most NFL agents I know welcoming that. It’s becoming less necessary, however, as more and more NIL agents pursue NFL certification. They’re a growing part of our exam prep course every year.
Anyway, I may have come across as negative during some of this, and I grant that it’s easy to deride people who are trying to do the virtually impossible, i.e., build a framework for the college game going forward. If the settlement is approved and this 10-year agreement is binding, it will bring some positives. However, it’s hard not to see the overwhelming power and potential of dollars the big football schools would be turning down to abide by this. I just feel like the major conferences will build their own league, and play by their own rules, sooner rather than later.
Succeed in Football 