Big Ten officials “spent three days discussing a future” in which the Big Ten “governs revenue-sharing deals itself, setting its own rules built on the foundation of a legally defensible framework,” according to Brandon Marcello of CBSSPORTS.com. The idea will “grow legs” if the College Sports Commission’s “slowly evolving enforcement arm needs a jolt and the federal help they have sought in Congress falls through in the near future.” Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti “did not discount the idea of the conference looking inward to police itself,” but added that a fundamental change in enforcement is not “contingent on what happens in Congress.” One concept is to “scrap the House settlement’s cap structure, built on the average revenue of all 68 power-conference athletic departments, and instead let each league build its cap based solely on its own conference’s average revenue.” Schools are currently allowed to distribute up to 22% of the average revenue among Power Five schools, which amounted to $20.5M for the 2025-26 academic year. Such a change would “almost certainly hand the SEC and Big Ten higher caps than the ACC and Big 12.” More than 75% of the value of third-party deals submitted to the CSC this year has come from the Big Ten and the SEC. The other power leagues are “unlikely to sign off, at least immediately,” and any changes would “likely require unanimous agreement among the five conferences named in the House settlement” (CBSSPORTS.com, 5/19).
UNDER REVIEW: YAHOO SPORTS’ Ross Dellenger cited sources as saying that the 68 power league schools “submitted more than” $250M worth of deals to the CSC since Jan. 1, and the SEC and Big Ten “accounted for more than 75% of those submitted deals.” And while “many of those have been cleared through the system since January” -- $115M, according to the CSC’s own released data -- roughly $125M or more “remain under review or have been rejected.” Attorneys Jeffrey Kessler and Steve Berman are “challenging the CSC’s strict enforcement,” arguing that “publicly traded companies should not be under the same scrutiny as boosters.” A hearing on that motion is “scheduled for June 10.” Dellenger wrote the hearing has individual schools and conferences “at a crossroads.” Many administrators -- even those outside the Big Ten and SEC -- are “actively hoping plaintiff attorneys win so that millions of third-party NIL dollars that they guaranteed to athletes can pass through the system.” In the meantime, college sports execs are “discussing ideas on reforming or rewriting NCAA rules under which the College Sports Commission operates, including granting amnesty to all or a portion of NIL deals currently in the system, increasing the cap, adding a luxury tax or some other version of a financial” (YAHOO SPORTS, 5/18).
NOT SO FUN NOW: USA TODAY’s John Leuzzi noted Iowa State AD Jamie Pollard’s idea is for the Big Ten and SEC “to ‘break away’ from the Big 12, the ACC, and other NCAA-member conferences in every sport, and ‘see how fun’ it is for those conferences to compete only against themselves in an NIL era without the College Sports Commission.” Pollard’s point -- and frustration -- “stem from the same place: the Big Ten and SEC not wanting to ‘adhere’ to the College Sports Commission,” the NIL oversight system that Power Four commissioners invested heavily in creating last June. Pollard: “The four commissioners spent a lot of money creating the CSC. Then to have two of the conferences not want to adhere to it is perplexing to me, because then, why did we spend the money? If you didn’t want rules, then why did you create this entity?” Pollard added, “Let them go, but they have to go in all their sports and see how fun it is to play baseball and softball and track when it’s just the 20 of you” (USA TODAY, 5/19).
