The College Sports Commission has rejected nearly $15 million in name, image and likeness agreements since it started evaluating them over the summer, representing more than 10% of the value of all the deals it has analyzed and closed.
The CSC released its latest statistics Monday, saying it did not clear 524 deals worth $14.94 million, while clearing 17,321 worth $127.21 million. All the data was current as of Jan. 1.
Rejected 3% of deals but about 10.6% of total value.
This part was surprising to me. I thought it would be much higher.
56% of the 10,848 athletes who have at least one cleared deal play football or men's basketball.
I also wonder how many $599.99 NIL deals are out there so they dont go to the clearing house. Company A agrees to 365 one day $599.99 deals with Player Z.
Comments
Do we really think there have been $127M worth of "true" NIL opportunities for college players in the last ~half a year? Seems unlikely to me, but maybe I'm wrong.
I also thought the reject rate would be higher. My interpretation here is that the Commission is hesitant to reject deals and that NIL will continue to function mostly as straightforward pay-for-play (rather than limiting NIL to "true" endorsement deals). Good news for athletes and programs/donor bases with deep pockets, but bad for parity.
I thought implementing the rev share pseudo salary cap + limiting NIL to true or real deals sounded like a good way to start to tame the Wild West... but that assumes the clearinghouse would actually be effective.
What makes you not believe the $127M worth of NIL deals this past year? Just the top 10 deals in football alone are around $40M. Heck, anOSU had $20M on their team last year alone. One team, one sport.
Texas and Texas Tech were higher than Ohio St too.
Not that I don't believe the money is real. Moreso, I'm skeptical that there's that much money available in true NIL/endorsement deals out there for college athletes. My understanding was that prior to last summer, a billionaire donor could cut a fat check to their Alma mater's collective and the collective could basically just pay that to a player in exchange for them playing on the team under the guise of NIL (but in name only). Under the latest rules, NIL money is supposed to be tied to legitimate, market-rate endorsement opportunities.
Then again, maybe I'm wrong. I've seen the Trinidad Chambliss AT&T commercial a few times now.
If people truly had to do something real using their NIL to get paid for it, I'd guess well over 90% of the deals would be rejected. Can only recall 2 actual people or groups having ads run using them. I'm sure there are more as I don't watch a lot of TV, but still.
caitlin clark hard 10s of millions of real NIL from national brands in college
Oh yes, that is right. Now I am up to 3 people or groups that have had a real NIL ad that I have seen. Had forgotten her. I'm sure there are more, but it is a tiny fraction of the pay-to-pay people getting paid for their NIL.
Oh, and have to ask, was that before or after she went pro? Guessing it started before. But if it started after, then it should not count and we are back to 2. I just cannot remember when I saw the ad with her in it.
She had national deals while in college and she is one of the handfuls of athletes that should have had national deals just like Tebow and Vick and a number of those but maybe like 3-ish players a year kind of thing.
Clark was estimated to have about $7.5M in NIL deals at Iowa mostly from national brands. It was about $3.1M her final season which is honestly why I thought she would stay another year. Her WNBA salary as a rookie was like $76K. She signed a bunch of endorsement deals but still think she could have made more at Iowa that next year.
Others that earned quasi-legit NIL (mostly from established social media platforms rather than talent per se)
1) Arch Manning
2) Angel Reese
3) Bronny James
4) Cavinder Twins
5) Livvy Dunne
6) Shedeur Sanders
7) Travis Hunter
8) Paige Bueckers
9) AJ Dybantsa
10) Diego Pavia (as much as I hate it)
11) Bryce Young
12) Sunisa Lee (gymnast)
13) Dillon Gabriel
14) Hailey Van Lith
15) Hannah Hildago
16) JuJu Watkins
Livvy Dunne and all the people on the Iowa Pork Producers videos were the only ones I could remember off the top of my head. Clark I had forgotten. Maybe saw Reese, but not sure if it was before or after school. Don't think I've seen any of the others.
More of their NIL deals involve social media posts than television adds. Livvy Dunne is the notable exception. She had at least a dozen TV adds
Depends what is defined as 'true' NIL deal... if 10 boosters are willing to pay you $100k for an autographed jersey, is that 'true' NIL?
What if the player agrees to never sign another jersey as long as he's at the school (aka lowering demand, presumably making the jerseys more valuable) - is it then 'true' NIL?
I don't think they're endorsement deals anymore, at least the ones from the University. Instead, it's more along the lines:
"Your NIL value is $X. In exchange for your NIL rights for year 2026, University will pay you $X. University retains the right to use your name, image, and likeness in the year 2026."
Essentially, the University is paying the player for their rights to their "fair share" of the media and ticket sales that are valued for playing for the University.
Ah interesting, thanks. Are these deals subject to the $20.5M per school rev share cap? Or in addition to it?
I'm sort of surprised that the average cost of the rejected deals is 28.5k, I would have thought it would be much higher. Presumably, there are several big number outliers in these deals which means the median is probably well under that 28.5k mark. I also wonder how many players those 524 deals are spread across. I bet the collectives and donors have tried to sign players to dozens of 5k deals to better fly under the radar.
Without any knowledge but based on pure speculation, I'm guessing the majority of the rejected deals are from smaller Universities and lesser sports. P4 football has the money to hire the right people to get it done correctly.
To expand on your speculation, I am thinking (hoping, maybe) the rejected deals had more to do with the terms of said deals rather than the outright ethics of NIL vs pay-to-play. Rejection for deals that contain language that isn't enforceable, is too restrictive, grants rights to the collective outside the scope of N/I/L, etc. Not so much that XYZ school is trying to outbid all other schools just to get the athlete to play there, and hence why the overall number seems pretty low. But I could be wrong...
Anything over $600 has to be approved by the clearing house.
And fwiw, the average deal across all NIL deals was something like $850 i believe. And the median was something like $2500. It was in a thread earlier in the season, or maybe even prior to Sept.
Speaking of the CSC,
Looks like Sands is involved in trying to push for enforcement.
Not the episode I mentioned above, but great one on the qb transfer market. They talk about the similarities between the qb carousel and the coaching carousel, how colleges fund this via MMRs, the impact on the nfl, etc. great listen
https://open.spotify.com/episode/5musaepCvGckSZxB6MWzVD?si=x86EZGEFTe6Wl...