Will this actually happen?
[Update since this story was originally posted: apparently, this will actually happen. Judge Wilken approved the House Settlement late this evening (Friday June 6). Additionally, the power four conferences are reportedly targeting Bryan Seeley to lead the College Sports Commission, mentioned in the article below, as CEO. Seeley is a former assistant US attorney and current VP of investigations and deputy general counsel for Major League Baseball.]
We’ve been trying to keep up with the ever-changing landscape in college sports including NIL and the proposed House settlement and last checked in regarding these topics back in April . There have been some updates since then including on Wednesday with Michigan State introducing J Batt, who serves on the House Settlement Implementation Committee, as its next athletic director.
Recalling from our April article:
The House Settlement is a proposed legal agreement between the NCAA and a number of plaintiffs, including former Arizona State swimmer Grant House, who the settlement is named after. The suit was filed in 2020 and alleges that the NCAA and its major conferences unfairly restrict athletes’ ability to earn compensation based on NIL, broadcast revenue, and other commercial uses.
Judge Claudia Wilken is presiding over the case and is eventually expected to grant approval after raising some final concerns on April 7, 2025. When approved, the settlement will go into effect on July 1, 2025. A key component of the settlement involves revenue sharing with athletes going forward. Schools will be able to opt in to revenue sharing, allocating up to 22% of their annual athletic revenue to their athletes.
The settlement is also supposed to regulate NIL deals to ensure they serve a legitimate business purpose and deals made with student-athletes are done at fair market value. This is where Batt comes in. As a member of the Implementation Committee, he is tasked with guiding the structures, rules, and operating principles for collegiate athletics in the post-settlement era. This includes:
- Drafting and clarifying rules to ensure consistent compliance with the settlement.
- Developing a digital platform for reporting and measuring payments to student-athletes to ensure compliance with the set cap.
- Creating a system to ensure that third-party Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) deals are legitimate and serve a valid business purpose. Deloitte has been contracted to create a system to track and evaluate all Division I student-athletes’ third-party NIL deals valued at $600 or more. This system, sometimes referred to as “NIL Go” or the “NIL Clearinghouse,” will be used to help determine if these deals are within a reasonable range of compensation and serve a valid business purpose (link , link ).
- Forming a new entity to enforce these rules with efficient investigative procedures, timely decision-making, and appropriate penalties for violations.
Batt’s involvement with the Implementation Committee likely gives MSU a significant voice in this evolving era of NIL and other issues in college athletics.
Back in April we expressed some concern about the ability to meaningfully enforce the above provisions and there have been some developments in this area that we wanted to share here.
On May 19, Yahoo’s Ross Dellenger reported that the four power conferences (ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, and SEC) are working on a contract for those schools to “bind the group and provide stability around the enforcement of rules,” including the newly-created College Sports Commission (CSC) being able to more strictly enforce pay from boosters. This “membership agreement” reportedly has severe consequences including loss of conference membership and the ability to play other power conference programs. In other words, as Dellenger noted from one AD, “You have to sign it or we don’t play you.”
Additionally, and notably, the membership agreement also exempts the CSC from legal action by member institutions over enforcement decisions while offering a way for schools to pursue arbitration. This, however, appears to directly pit the CSC against some states, like Tennessee , that have passed laws saying NIL payments to college athletes cannot be regulated by the NCAA.
According to Tulane University sports law professor Gabe Feldman, “Arbitration itself isn’t surprising but saying that you agree not to follow your state law … that may or may not be enforceable. No matter what the sides do, they’re going to be sued. This is an effort to rein in the lawsuits. It’s just not clear how enforceable all these provisions will be.”
So again, how actual enforcement may happen appears to be up in the air.
As On3’s Andy Staples pointed out last month, “If the association threatens penalties or expulsion for ignoring the rules, it could set up a showdown between the association and a state attorney general. Because while the loyalty oath (membership agreement) the conferences are considering could ban the schools from suing the CSC, it can’t keep the states (or anyone else) from suing the entity. If the SEC tried to expel Tennessee, the first thing Tennessee’s attorney general would do is drag the SEC and CSC into federal court. Current Tennessee AG Jonathan Skrmetti sued the NCAA in 2024 when the organization tried to investigate Tennessee-attached collective Spyre Sports’ deal with then-Volunteers QB Nico Iamaleava. The result? The NCAA had to abandon essentially all its NIL rules after a judge hinted that the rules wouldn’t pass antitrust scrutiny.”
Sportico’s Michael McCann also expresses some reservations about these “contracts of adhesion”, AKA “take it or leave it deals,” and that, while courts often regard them as enforceable, in this case it may contradict the fact that schools are already in a contracted agreement with their conference.
According to John Talty and Brandon Marcello of CBS Sports , the membership agreement was a “hot topic” among Big Ten officials during their recent spring meetings. Talty and Marcello report that “very few people, even high-ranking athletics officials, have seen a full draft of what will be included in the new entity, eliciting some confusion and frustration in light of media attention around the latest draft. It prompted plenty of questions from administrators and coaches that boiled down to: What exactly are we signing up for and will it actually work?”
Illinois AD Josh Whitman made the point : “We have to decide if we want to be governed.” After all, Extra Points publisher Matt Brown notes that: “It is in the competitive interest for member schools to find ways around the proposed regulations as soon as possible, because coaches and P4 ADs don’t get extensions for exemplary compliance performance. They get it from wins, and you have a better chance at winning more if you have the best players, amateurism guidelines or settlement terms be damned.”
Back to the House Settlement. As noted above, if approved, it would go into effect on July 1. It’s now June 6 and the settlement still has not been formally approved by presiding Judge Claudia Wilken. However, it turns out the “final concerns” we mentioned in our April article were not, in fact, final. Instead, Judge Wilken has granted an extension to the settlement deadline to June 27 due to a specific procedural reason, which you can read about here if interested. This article from CBS Sports also provides some interesting context and background on Judge Wilken, who appears unbothered by the July 1 deadline hoped for by athletic administrators.
Oregon AD Rob Mullens summed it up pretty well on May 23: “We’ve been unregulated for a few years. This is all happening fast. This is supposed to go live July 1, and we don’t have the final set of rules yet.”
Will we get those rules by July 1? CBS’ Marcello posits that Wilken is taking the time to make sure the case is as appeal-proof as possible and that if she were going to deny the settlement, Wilken would have done so already. Marcello, Shehan Jeyarajah, and Richard Johnson from CBS also note that: “If (Wilken) approves the settlement, it won’t be long until there are appeals. Writing airtight legal language is critical. If she were to deny the settlement, it’s not appealable. There’s less urgency to write a detailed decision.”
So, college sports administrators will do their best to hold their collective breath a bit longer while they wait to see what a meticulous and detail-oriented US District Court Judge from the Northern District of California will do.