Must be made available proportionally to male and female athletes.
Significant news out today from the US Dept. of Ed, which classifies future revenue distributions from a school to an athlete for his/her NIL rights as "financial assistance," which "must be made proportionately available to male and female athletes" or risk violating Title IX.— Ross Dellenger (@RossDellenger) January 16, 2025
Looks like the collectives will still be in business.
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SEC gymnasts are about to make BANK
SEC gymnasts are highly qualified.
Now they're going to be qualified and have money.
I mean UGA did decide they were tired of losing to other SEC schools and managed to get Simone Biles' coach, Cecile Landi, to leave Texas and be their co-head coach.
There will be lawsuits as the NIL doesn't come from the schools. No way for the athletic department to control the flow of private money, from a legal standpoint.
A certain amount of NIL money is about to come from the schools, to the tune of about $22M, as soon as the House lawsuit settlement is a done deal (anticipated this spring).
this isn't a surprise and would impact revenue sharing...seems obvious Title IX would apply. a new admin could change their interpretation but unless Title IX is repealed, i think goes to court regardless of who is in charge
Ed Obannon and Jay Bilas will sue, and this will be struck down.
We need to start differentiating between House Money (aka rev share), Collective Money (Booster inducements), and Endorsements (aka actual NIL).
How would that help?
Does the TV money have to be equitable, while the collective and endorsement money doesn't?
And does the TV money (or any of it) have to be equitable between all college teams? Seems that for now, it does not.
I just meant when discussing it... paying for a roster spot vs paying for an endorsement is different. Just saying we can be more precise in the language we use.
Nobody seems to really want that.
I would assume that the pay from the university is at least partially for Name, Image, and likeness so that the university is free and clear to use athletes likenesses on the marketing materials. Media guides and tickets have players on them, and I'm sure a lot more im not thinking about right now.
That doesn't mean it's o ly for NIL, because it's part of revenue sharing, but I would assume that signing a revenue sharing contract would include NIL.
IMO:
I feel like if this was a problem, there would be a lawsuit about it by now.
cow-tailing?
hahahaha ***kowtowing
I'm going to leave that as is.
bone apple tea!
My all time favorite was when Exchange would autocorrect "Pentium" to "penis" back in the day. It made for some genuinely hilarious work emails until MS added it to the dictionary. Ah, good times.
Not just from the school, but ACC and NCAA also use players to advertise upcoming events in television media and web media.
It is not difficult to differentiate between them and the money can change category each time it changes hands.
TV Money given to a school as endorsement can be given to a player as the "equitable" Title 9 required money.
That's not NIL though, that's straight up revenue sharing and would already be subject to Title IX pretty clearly.
It's tied to NIL. That's the basis of the case, that the revenue-sharing rules prevented student-athletes from collecting money related to their NIL. It's being viewed essentially as one in the same, and since it is coming out of the university's operating budget and not athletics, it winds up being a big deal both practically and legally. Internally, everyone is calling this NIL money.
The university presidents could stop all this bullshit. They are more powerful than ESPN. For instance, the president of OSU could come out and say, we won't appear on your network and their aint a fucking thing the B1G could do about it. The presidents hold the cards. Maybe in this case they will realize how fucking stupid it is to "share revenue" with an overrated hot shot recruit that leaves after one semester? At a institution of higher learning. I mean you can't dream up something more fucking illogical than this.
"At a institution of higher learning. I mean you can't dream up something more fucking illogical than this."
Having spent more time inside of The Education Industrial Complex than I care to admit, not only can I dream up more illogical things, I can give you a lot of specific ones. Some (heck, most) will get me the political down vote hammer, so I'll stick with this one:
Yale decides to have new windows installed on a building. They have those tiny little window panes in a grid of metal so the "window" is actually lots of little panes. But they want to make sure the building looks old sophisticated as if panes have broken over many decades and been replaced with panes that have different colors. So they install the new panes (all 1 color) then they have the workers throw rocks at the panes so some break in a seeming random pattern and they replace the broken ones with panes of a different color.
This is what "elite" American universities do.
This won't stand. How can a person's ability to be marketed be equal just because of gender and not be based on multiple other factors. NIL value should be based on popularity, not gender.
Beacuse...NEWSFLASH...NIL money is not really for marketing.
Ed Zachary! Can't tell the joke here, but if you've heard it...
This "NIL" money is not at all for commercials, posters, appearances at Walmart openings and such. It is straight out, unadulterated PAY FOR PLAY.
Yes, I think that is apparent. I haven't seen a team's punter in any single advertisement ever.
I can see Title IX applying to the new revenue sharing requirement, but I don't see how collectives could be subject to the same requirements based on how NIL is structured currently.
Honestly, the only ads I can remember seeing off the top of my head are the Iowa State Football players for pork (some of these are hilarious, see link below) and the LSU gymnast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97B1tgu-Ghg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34oLYlXwj5Y
Saw some replays of Kaitlin Clark doing commercials.
I remember seeing a large wall ad (a car rental company, maybe?) featuring Caleb Williams at LAX during his senior year.
That's the only one I'd seen until your links.
Taulia Tagovailoa did commercials for the Moderna covid vaccine lmao
https://www.ispot.tv/ad/5zUa/moderna-here-to-stay-featuring-taulia-tagov...
also if you walk around a dick's sporting goods, you'll see shedeur sanders, cam ward, travis hunter everywhere on their in-store artwork
NIL has nothing to do with value, marketing- nothing. You should know this by now. Its a total farce.
Popularity is not always based on the popularity of your sport. Plenty of female athletes have millions of thirsty followers on social media.
It's very difficult to legislate selective and arbitrary "fairness".
There's a lot of money at stake, so I expect a lot of fighting over it's redistribution.
Not so fast my friend!
The new administration can still rescind this:
Also, looks like collectives could be subject to Title IX as well;0
They second part they are going to get sued over and probably lose. The school theoretically has no control over third party payments.
The key problem with this is in classifying NIL as "financial assistance", which isn't really what NIL actually is.
It may indicate a problem with how schools have manipulated the rules in order to provide payment, but it's pretty clear that would change if this rule is upheld.
Yeah that is an odd one when they mention collectives. Also the revenue sharing is just that revenue sharing. Now it might be due to the players are students which makes revenue sharing weird-ish but companies revenue share with non-employees all the time, consultants, contractors, etc can be part of revenue sharing. So not sure how financial assistance is defined but it's not this?
Well pay for play is financial assistance.
When you're employed, your pay isn't "financial assistance", it's compensation.
To me, since Dept of Ed wants to cal it " financial assistance" instead of a pay, it opens the door to the schools calling it a forgivable loan.
Ask one of the lawyers here but wouldn't that then defer the tax liability until the loan is forgiven. It would also create a de facto contract. "It's a loan if you don't stay for 4 years. It will be forgiven if you don't enter the portal."
Edit: make it understandable from speelink unt grammar viewpoint.
Everything is going to be somewhat of a clusterF with uncertainty until Congress does something about it. If I had to guess, I think Congress and President will provide a resolution to these finances/NIL and NCAA governance issues within 2 years.
any limits on anything related to college football now- any rules- will be challenged in court and the NCAA will continue to lose.
Exactly. Which is why Congress and the President will need to do something. And I get a sense that the current administration would like to leave a popular legacy with their base. "Fixing" college football would be popular.
Congress? Do something?
Read the current political environment. Republican party controls all levels of government, with a President that wants to be popular with people from the South and Midwest. Jim Jordan and Tommy Tuberville are close with Trump. Cruz is in love with Bevo. Trump gave a prerecorded halftime speech on TV during the championship game.
My guess is that a resolution will happen in 2026, just before midterm elections. And the resolution will be all over the news all fall football season through the November election.
This sounds remarkably logical and politically prescient. Do you know a guy named Carnac?
Carnac the Magnificent?
I really have no idea what Congress will do. But there will likely never be better alignment of need, political environment, and motivation than the next 2 years. And the Congressmen and Senators with the closest ties to collegiate athletics will have the greatest power of their lifetime with Trump as as President in his second term.
If it doesn't happen in the next two years, or maybe within the next four years, I don't think it will ever happen.
Yes but do they make the system more balanced or throw all the advantages to the B1G and the SEC?
Oh, I don't know.
Which way do the big moneyed donors want it resolved? Probably the way it's already going.
Good question. The powers in Congress are probably more skewed to the B1G and SEC. But I don't think they would intentionally hurt the ACC or Big12, but they probably listen to Sankey and Petitti. So, probably maintain/ensure the current imbalance stays in place.
Me, to all of college athletics, conferences, divisions, re-alignments, NIL, TV rights, post seasons, recruiting, the transfer portal, etc...

You're not wrong, but weren't there like seven sequels to that movie?
When money is involved...
depends on your definition of sequel (or prequel for that matter). I dont count the AVP abomination - I'm not sure Fox does either when you look at the conflicting dates of events that AVP outlined, and the ones Prometheus introduced... buts that's for a totally different thread.
The IRS is now actively denying 503(c) applications for NIL collectives.
Good! NIL which is pay for play serves what tax-exempt charitable purpose under the IRC exactly? Tired of this crap hiding behind the guise of non-profit and higher education. Start treating these collectives as for-profit sports agencies.
As much as I love college football, NIL doesn't serve any (even tangential) educational purpose.
Sure it does, all those athletes are going to learn how to deal with an irs audit
Learn to pay taxes, file tax returns and find out that you don't get to actually keep all the monies in that bag of cash.
Huh, extra compensation but does it count as eligible income for investing into a Roth?
At a guess, probably not. I haven't checked, but I suspect the IRS is going to treat NIL compensation as passive income, so it won't be eligible to contribute to a tax-advantaged account.
Even if they do consider it earned income, contributing $7k* a year to a Roth IRA is barely going to make a dent in the payments some of these kids are earning.
*Indexed for inflation when the IRS feels like it.
They'd better be teaching that in high school, as some athletes get even earlier exposure.
NIL teaches a ton. Entitlement, fake value, money laundering, unrealistic expectations, etc. Very educational.
Can you get college credit for that? /s
I mean, most schools already offer liberal arts programs.
(/s... kinda)
As the parent of two sons with Bachelor's degrees in Cinematic Arts and History, Master's degrees in Divinity and History, and two daughters pursuing degrees in Social Work and Psychology, I can still find the humor in that comment. Lighten up folks, it's a good joke. Underwater Basket Weaving may not be a degree anywhere, but the proliferation of frivolous degrees in American collegiate studies is well documented and worthy of some good-natured ribbing. All you engineers and hard science folks, take your best shots!
It might have landed better if there was a small bit added like "just ask loluva or uncheat."
(I did not down vote.)
I never claimed to stick every landing. FWIW, I meant it as good-natured ribbing rather than an actual hot take.
I chuckled. I have a degree in mechanical engineering (duh) but the smartest people in my family have liberal arts degrees. They would appreciate this joke. They can also take a joke. I realize many people can't these days. It's a real shame, actually. We, as Americans, tend to take ourselves more seriously than most of the world and I think that's a real bummer. Being able to laugh at yourself is critically important to maintaining good mental health imo. We should all lighten up a bit and not be afraid of jokes at our own expense.
I'll hop off my soap box now. Thanks for listening.
As an engineer, engineers are the dumbest smart people...
Eng: The implementation doesn't match the ICD
Me: But it works, so what do you think we should do?
Eng: change our side of the interface to mtch the ICD
me: 🤦♂️
This was revoked by the Department of Education today.
Article Here
Who could have forseen this?
Everybody.
lmfao- the ONLY pretense left is requiring enrollment in school. That will be challenged in court and the schools will lose.
It's only a matter of time.
Because they aren't going there to play school.
At the rate we are going it's only a matter of time until Title IX itself is challenged and overturned.
Yep, at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, paying male football ballers is at the top of the mission statement now. Fuck women's sports, fuck academics, fuck research, lord football reigns supreme. In America, athletes with any skill or potential are entitled to get their bag. It has even been hinted on here that academics is a secondary mission to big schools now- football is most important. Women's sports will be club sports outside of a few select schools- UCONN hoops, UNC Soccer- those women may be able to garner booster support to keep funding scholarships outside of a title 9 mandate. Whit aint paying a dime to womens sports the moment he is not forced to. This is not hyperbole. Until VT football is not the most important thing in boosters lives, this is where we are headed. Until Marine officers stop throwing away their honor and integrity to cheat for Michigan football, this is what you get. Title 9 is absolutely going away and so is requiring VT football players to be VT students. That is absolutely coming. In America, you can't restrict or have rules around a good high school football player that has done nothing in college (Gunner Givens, thousands of others) from getting the huge bag of cash they are entitled to by dominating lower level HS football. Can't do it. If you have to make VT womens softball an unfunded club sport to pay givens his cash based on what he did in HS? so be it.
"NIL dollars are separate "market driven" funds unlike university-provided financial aid."- I've never read anything fucking funnier than this in my life. Fuck Off . If this was remotely true, VT basketball and football wouldn't be the hunger games now would it? If Sean Pedulla was worth a million dollars to Cook Out, what the fuck does that have to do with Brent Pry and Ali Jennings? Such a fucking laughable joke. Your school is done as a major sports school. Hope yall are happy.
NIL was like pulling the plug on the bottom of a big pond. All of college sports started to slowly drain away, as the water level is getting lower the vortex is increasing and until it all collapses.