NIL Nuggets of the Week Thread - (6/23-6/30)
In an attempt to stay tapped into all things NIL, I've sorted through and gathered some interesting NIL-centered news items today. The title of each section will redirect you to the initial article, as I did not translate all of the columns into this page. Just the best cliff notes.
I will continue adding more news as the week unfolds! Please feel free to link any informative or interesting NIL articles in this thread!
Cheers,
PS: If you'd like to advertise with Orangebloods, Sponsoring this Column or a show on Orangbloods Live, please reach out to @Sunny Nelson
1. West Texas boom: Inside Texas Tech's bold all-in bet on NIL and the billionaire landman responsible
Cody Campbell signed some of his earliest land acquisitions on the hood of work trucks at drilling sites across the Permian Basin.
A three-year starter along the offensive line at Texas Tech from 2001-04, Campbell didn't have the backing of a major investor when he went out prospecting. It was just him and John Sellers, a former teammate at Canyon High School and Texas Tech. The pair of Canyon Eagles fittingly named their startup Double Eagle Energy. And at the beginning, the risks seemed crazy for the former real estate agents looking for a new trade after the housing market collapsed in 2008.
When the market went down, Double Eagle decided to pounce. They scoured the Permian Basin, putting every cent they had into searching for leases. As opposed to the big boys who outsource such tasks, Campbell and Sellers mined through land registers themselves to buy mineral rights. There were no guarantees that any would hit it big. Hell, they were closer to bankruptcy than billionaire status.
"We were the underdog," Campbell said. "And we had to find out a way to squeeze out some success amid titans, among huge companies."
*continued
2. What is fair-market NIL, and why is it so important to Texas A&M’s athletic future?
“If we’re all having access to $20.5 million and we all have access to the scholarships, what’s the differentiator?” Alberts pondered aloud at the media meeting Monday. “How do we leverage the largest living alumni in the SEC and how do we think through all of the fair-market value NIL?”
So, what is the difference between revenue sharing and fair-market value NIL deals? It all comes down to who the athlete is entering into a contract with.
By definition, NIL deals are business agreements made for the use of a player’s name, image and likeness, which include appearances, autograph signings, social media posts and interviews.
The new guardrails are departure from the last four years of legalized NIL compensation, where there were no restrictions on NIL deals.
“We can’t go out and raise donor money, give it to Texas Aggies United and tell them, ‘hey, go do some fair-market value NIL deals,’” suggested Alberts. “That’s not going to pass NIL Go.”
The Aggie athletic director was on the implementation committee that created the College Sports Commission.
Alberts laid out the hypothetical of a star recruit that has offers from three major programs. Each offers a scholarship and $100,000 of revenue sharing. Fair-market NIL could be the key factor in landing that blue chip recruit moving forward.
“We say – because we have best-in-class, fair-market value NIL strategy – ‘I can’t guarantee you any number, but I can say the last guy that played your position got an extra $75,000 every year of fair-market value NIL,’” he said. “We have to be better than our peers… To me now, that’s the differentiator in the game, if you will, and so that’s why we’re going to throw a lot of energy and effort on making sure that we have a good strategy there.”
The gameplan begins with A&M’s new $515 million, 15-year multimedia rights deal with Playfly Sports, announced by A&M in February. Through that partnership, the A&M athletic department will have four people whose job is to search for these NIL deals for Aggie athletes across all sports, Alberts said. The group will report to a new position within the athletic department that is held by an attorney with experience in the NIL space. Alberts declined to name the person expected to fill the job, other than he played a part in creating the Playfly Max platform, the NIL generating division of Playfly Sports.
“We’re building out a team and we have to create an elite sales team that is out finding fair-market value, valid business purpose deals,” detailed Alberts.
Texas House Bill 126, passed this legislative session, bolstered the ability for universities to work on behalf of athletes to find NIL deals.
3. Wisconsin's lawsuit against Miami is about tampering, but it could mean much more
Wisconsin’s lawsuit against Miami over the transfer of cornerback Xavier Lucas hinges on one of the most basic tenets of civil law. Tortious interference cases get filed across the country every day.
When someone accuses an entity of tortious interference, they are saying that the entity intentionally caused someone to break a valid contract. That is what Wisconsin has accused Miami of doing with Lucas. The Badgers and their collective VC Connect (Wisconsin’s co-plaintiff) believe Miami coaches tampered with then-Wisconsin player Lucas in December, causing him to break the contract he’d signed with VC Connect and future contracts he would have signed with Wisconsin to enroll at Miami and play for the Hurricanes.
The “services,” in this case, could be promotion of the school as outlined in the NIL agreement Lucas signed. Name, image and likeness contracts essentially are endorsement deals. But the “services” also could be Lucas’ ability as a football player. Even though anyone with a functioning brain knows these particular payments are actually for playing football, schools continue to ban “pay-for-play” out of fear that specifically paying athletes to play their sports might cause the courts to deem those athletes employees of their schools.
To a court, the service rendered might be playing football. In fact, Wisconsin’s complaint specifically refers to that.
After a clause about the loss of a “student-athlete with valuable NIL rights” — which makes sense in the context of losing the paid endorser Wisconsin is purporting Lucas to be — plaintiffs’ attorneys wrote this: “Further harms include the loss of financial benefits UW-Madison stood to receive from Student-Athlete A’s continued participation in its football program.” If Wisconsin wasn’t paying Lucas to play football, then why would that matter in the context of the case?
But, depending on the language in the contract, Wisconsin may have a legal avenue to seek money from Lucas for breaking the agreement. Earlier this year, Arkansas athletic director Hunter Yurachek announced his support for collective Arkansas Edge to collect on liquidated damages clauses from broken NIL deals. This came a day after quarterback Madden Iamaleava left Arkansas for UCLA.
That Arkansas-Iamaleava case and the one brought by Wisconsin against Miami have the power to shape the future of player movement in college sports. If there are real financial penalties for moving, it likely would make players think hard before they decide to change schools. If there is a threat of a school having to pay damages if a coach was found to be tampering, then tampering likely would decline dramatically.
That last part hinges on a few important details. How will a court view football deals that masquerade as endorsement deals? Could this be a garden variety tortious interference case, or is it something more complex? Is Wisconsin willing to push the case far enough to produce a resolution?
Everyone in college sports is eager to learn the answers.
4. DI Board of Directors formally adopts changes to roster limits
If ultimately adopted in August, the Division I governance structure will comprise:
The working group supported seats designated for certain subdivisions in Division I being populated by representatives from schools or conference offices.
5. Colleges Are Raising Student Fees to Pay for Athlete Revenue-Sharing
As the revenue-sharing era begins in college sports this year, the already complicated landscape around athletics fees charged to students is set to get even murkier.
Last week, South Carolina announced a new annual $300 athletics auxiliary fee that is similar to one implemented by in-state rival Clemson last year, and one charged by several other schools in the SEC. Separately, earlier this month, the Florida board of governors green-lit the use of up to $22.5 million in auxiliary funding toward athletics.
“If you’re a student, of course, you’re probably not loving it,” said Austin Elrod, founder of NIL (name, image, and likeness) solutions company TheLinkU. “If you are a student who loves sports and is very in touch with what’s going on, maybe you don’t mind. If you’re an athletic department that’s drowning for revenue and getting hit with all these added expenses, it makes sense.”
One problem, according to former Minnesota regent Michael D. H. Hsu, is that many students “don’t necessarily even understand student fees.” So, should more schools add similar athletics fees, it will be important to assess exactly where that money is going, Hsu said.
It’s important to note that the new $20.5 million “salary cap”—which will increase annually—is tied to athletic departments’ income. Jim Cavale, founder of the advocacy group Athletes.org and the former CEO of NIL app INFLCR, believes that needs to change.
“Student fees and tuition have long been overlooked as a revenue outcome that comes from great players playing well in the field or court,” Cavale said, citing football powerhouses like Alabama that have seen huge increases in enrollment coincide with their success on the gridiron.
6. Pac-12 Announces CBS As ‘Anchor’ in New Media-Rights Deal
On Monday, the Pac-12 announced it extended its media-rights agreement with CBS Sports for the lifespan of a five-year deal running until the end of the 2030–31 season. The media-rights deal will give CBS Sports and Paramount+ access to marquee football and basketball games, as part of a package that will ultimately include multiple networks.
The news is yet another major step for the Pac-12, which has been in the process of an unprecedented rebuild since the league fell apart two summers ago. “Our goal with this process was to find transformational partnerships for the new Pac-12, and throughout our discussions and time together it became more and more clear that a partnership with CBS Sports would be just that,” Pac-12 commissioner Teresa Gould said in a statement.
Since being ripped apart in 2023—ironically, because of a less-than-ideal media-rights offering—the Pac-12 has reinvented itself. In the fall of 2023, Washington State and Oregon State, the two lone members, sued to keep the assets and intellectual property of the league. They finalized a scheduling agreement with the Mountain West for football and an affiliate agreement with the West Coast Conference for other sports, as well as a modest media deal with The CW and Fox, to keep the league afloat while it searched for more members. They also hired new commissioner Teresa Gould, who has guided the conference since the spring of 2024.
Then, last fall, the Pac-12 announced the addition of five Mountain West schools: Boise State, Colorado State, Utah State, Fresno State, and San Diego State. (The league is still embroiled in litigation with the Mountain West over poaching fees, but the two are currently engaging in mediation.) The Pac-12 has also since added Gonzaga.
Going forward, the Pac-12 is still searching for at least one more FBS football-playing member, as the NCAA allows for a two-year grace period for a conference to find eight football-playing members to maintain its FBS status. Texas State has been rumored as a potential option. The Pac-12 may announce expansion before finalizing another deal, or finalize the media package first, a Pac-12 source told FOS.
The media-rights deal with CBS, meanwhile, is written with the assumption that another full FBS football-playing member will join by 2026.
7. Florida's Ben Chase named NIL Director of the Year
The award recognizes “the NIL director who went above and beyond on behalf on their student-athletes in collaboration with the NIL Store,” which Chase and UF partnered with last May.
The NIL store also posted a video from UF softball player Keagan Rothrock congratulating Chase on the award.
“On behalf of the student-athletes at Florida, we really appreciate everything that you do for us,” Rothrock said to Chase. “And the constant communication that you have and just you constantly going out and looking for new deals for us depending on what our likes and interests are. And I know that we all appreciate you and everything that you do for us so, so much.”
In an attempt to stay tapped into all things NIL, I've sorted through and gathered some interesting NIL-centered news items today. The title of each section will redirect you to the initial article, as I did not translate all of the columns into this page. Just the best cliff notes.
I will continue adding more news as the week unfolds! Please feel free to link any informative or interesting NIL articles in this thread!
Cheers,
PS: If you'd like to advertise with Orangebloods, Sponsoring this Column or a show on Orangbloods Live, please reach out to @Sunny Nelson
1. West Texas boom: Inside Texas Tech's bold all-in bet on NIL and the billionaire landman responsible
Cody Campbell signed some of his earliest land acquisitions on the hood of work trucks at drilling sites across the Permian Basin.
A three-year starter along the offensive line at Texas Tech from 2001-04, Campbell didn't have the backing of a major investor when he went out prospecting. It was just him and John Sellers, a former teammate at Canyon High School and Texas Tech. The pair of Canyon Eagles fittingly named their startup Double Eagle Energy. And at the beginning, the risks seemed crazy for the former real estate agents looking for a new trade after the housing market collapsed in 2008.
When the market went down, Double Eagle decided to pounce. They scoured the Permian Basin, putting every cent they had into searching for leases. As opposed to the big boys who outsource such tasks, Campbell and Sellers mined through land registers themselves to buy mineral rights. There were no guarantees that any would hit it big. Hell, they were closer to bankruptcy than billionaire status.
"We were the underdog," Campbell said. "And we had to find out a way to squeeze out some success amid titans, among huge companies."
*continued
2. What is fair-market NIL, and why is it so important to Texas A&M’s athletic future?
“If we’re all having access to $20.5 million and we all have access to the scholarships, what’s the differentiator?” Alberts pondered aloud at the media meeting Monday. “How do we leverage the largest living alumni in the SEC and how do we think through all of the fair-market value NIL?”
So, what is the difference between revenue sharing and fair-market value NIL deals? It all comes down to who the athlete is entering into a contract with.
By definition, NIL deals are business agreements made for the use of a player’s name, image and likeness, which include appearances, autograph signings, social media posts and interviews.
The new guardrails are departure from the last four years of legalized NIL compensation, where there were no restrictions on NIL deals.
“We can’t go out and raise donor money, give it to Texas Aggies United and tell them, ‘hey, go do some fair-market value NIL deals,’” suggested Alberts. “That’s not going to pass NIL Go.”
The Aggie athletic director was on the implementation committee that created the College Sports Commission.
Alberts laid out the hypothetical of a star recruit that has offers from three major programs. Each offers a scholarship and $100,000 of revenue sharing. Fair-market NIL could be the key factor in landing that blue chip recruit moving forward.
“We say – because we have best-in-class, fair-market value NIL strategy – ‘I can’t guarantee you any number, but I can say the last guy that played your position got an extra $75,000 every year of fair-market value NIL,’” he said. “We have to be better than our peers… To me now, that’s the differentiator in the game, if you will, and so that’s why we’re going to throw a lot of energy and effort on making sure that we have a good strategy there.”
The gameplan begins with A&M’s new $515 million, 15-year multimedia rights deal with Playfly Sports, announced by A&M in February. Through that partnership, the A&M athletic department will have four people whose job is to search for these NIL deals for Aggie athletes across all sports, Alberts said. The group will report to a new position within the athletic department that is held by an attorney with experience in the NIL space. Alberts declined to name the person expected to fill the job, other than he played a part in creating the Playfly Max platform, the NIL generating division of Playfly Sports.
“We’re building out a team and we have to create an elite sales team that is out finding fair-market value, valid business purpose deals,” detailed Alberts.
Texas House Bill 126, passed this legislative session, bolstered the ability for universities to work on behalf of athletes to find NIL deals.
3. Wisconsin's lawsuit against Miami is about tampering, but it could mean much more
Wisconsin’s lawsuit against Miami over the transfer of cornerback Xavier Lucas hinges on one of the most basic tenets of civil law. Tortious interference cases get filed across the country every day.
When someone accuses an entity of tortious interference, they are saying that the entity intentionally caused someone to break a valid contract. That is what Wisconsin has accused Miami of doing with Lucas. The Badgers and their collective VC Connect (Wisconsin’s co-plaintiff) believe Miami coaches tampered with then-Wisconsin player Lucas in December, causing him to break the contract he’d signed with VC Connect and future contracts he would have signed with Wisconsin to enroll at Miami and play for the Hurricanes.
The “services,” in this case, could be promotion of the school as outlined in the NIL agreement Lucas signed. Name, image and likeness contracts essentially are endorsement deals. But the “services” also could be Lucas’ ability as a football player. Even though anyone with a functioning brain knows these particular payments are actually for playing football, schools continue to ban “pay-for-play” out of fear that specifically paying athletes to play their sports might cause the courts to deem those athletes employees of their schools.
To a court, the service rendered might be playing football. In fact, Wisconsin’s complaint specifically refers to that.
After a clause about the loss of a “student-athlete with valuable NIL rights” — which makes sense in the context of losing the paid endorser Wisconsin is purporting Lucas to be — plaintiffs’ attorneys wrote this: “Further harms include the loss of financial benefits UW-Madison stood to receive from Student-Athlete A’s continued participation in its football program.” If Wisconsin wasn’t paying Lucas to play football, then why would that matter in the context of the case?
But, depending on the language in the contract, Wisconsin may have a legal avenue to seek money from Lucas for breaking the agreement. Earlier this year, Arkansas athletic director Hunter Yurachek announced his support for collective Arkansas Edge to collect on liquidated damages clauses from broken NIL deals. This came a day after quarterback Madden Iamaleava left Arkansas for UCLA.
That Arkansas-Iamaleava case and the one brought by Wisconsin against Miami have the power to shape the future of player movement in college sports. If there are real financial penalties for moving, it likely would make players think hard before they decide to change schools. If there is a threat of a school having to pay damages if a coach was found to be tampering, then tampering likely would decline dramatically.
That last part hinges on a few important details. How will a court view football deals that masquerade as endorsement deals? Could this be a garden variety tortious interference case, or is it something more complex? Is Wisconsin willing to push the case far enough to produce a resolution?
Everyone in college sports is eager to learn the answers.
4. DI Board of Directors formally adopts changes to roster limits
If ultimately adopted in August, the Division I governance structure will comprise:
- The Division I Board of Directors, which will maintain oversight over the division's finances, litigation and the NCAA infractions process (for violations or rules unrelated to the settlement terms).
- The Administrative Committee, which will report to the board and will have legislative oversight for rules not included in the settlement.
- The Academics and Eligibility Committee, which will report to the Administrative Committee and which — via two subcommittees — will have oversight over minimum standards for academics and athletics eligibility requirements.
- The Membership Committee, which will report to the Administrative Committee and will have oversight over minimum national standards for NCAA and conference membership requirements.
- The Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, which will report directly to the Division I Board of Directors.
- Sport-specific oversight committees, which will report to the Administrative Committee when needed and will have authority over playing and practice seasons, recruiting rules, Division I playing rules and championship administration. Sport oversight committees already exist in football (Football Bowl Subdivision and Football Championship Subdivision) and men's and women's basketball.
The working group supported seats designated for certain subdivisions in Division I being populated by representatives from schools or conference offices.
5. Colleges Are Raising Student Fees to Pay for Athlete Revenue-Sharing
As the revenue-sharing era begins in college sports this year, the already complicated landscape around athletics fees charged to students is set to get even murkier.
Last week, South Carolina announced a new annual $300 athletics auxiliary fee that is similar to one implemented by in-state rival Clemson last year, and one charged by several other schools in the SEC. Separately, earlier this month, the Florida board of governors green-lit the use of up to $22.5 million in auxiliary funding toward athletics.
“If you’re a student, of course, you’re probably not loving it,” said Austin Elrod, founder of NIL (name, image, and likeness) solutions company TheLinkU. “If you are a student who loves sports and is very in touch with what’s going on, maybe you don’t mind. If you’re an athletic department that’s drowning for revenue and getting hit with all these added expenses, it makes sense.”
One problem, according to former Minnesota regent Michael D. H. Hsu, is that many students “don’t necessarily even understand student fees.” So, should more schools add similar athletics fees, it will be important to assess exactly where that money is going, Hsu said.
It’s important to note that the new $20.5 million “salary cap”—which will increase annually—is tied to athletic departments’ income. Jim Cavale, founder of the advocacy group Athletes.org and the former CEO of NIL app INFLCR, believes that needs to change.
“Student fees and tuition have long been overlooked as a revenue outcome that comes from great players playing well in the field or court,” Cavale said, citing football powerhouses like Alabama that have seen huge increases in enrollment coincide with their success on the gridiron.
6. Pac-12 Announces CBS As ‘Anchor’ in New Media-Rights Deal
On Monday, the Pac-12 announced it extended its media-rights agreement with CBS Sports for the lifespan of a five-year deal running until the end of the 2030–31 season. The media-rights deal will give CBS Sports and Paramount+ access to marquee football and basketball games, as part of a package that will ultimately include multiple networks.
The news is yet another major step for the Pac-12, which has been in the process of an unprecedented rebuild since the league fell apart two summers ago. “Our goal with this process was to find transformational partnerships for the new Pac-12, and throughout our discussions and time together it became more and more clear that a partnership with CBS Sports would be just that,” Pac-12 commissioner Teresa Gould said in a statement.
Since being ripped apart in 2023—ironically, because of a less-than-ideal media-rights offering—the Pac-12 has reinvented itself. In the fall of 2023, Washington State and Oregon State, the two lone members, sued to keep the assets and intellectual property of the league. They finalized a scheduling agreement with the Mountain West for football and an affiliate agreement with the West Coast Conference for other sports, as well as a modest media deal with The CW and Fox, to keep the league afloat while it searched for more members. They also hired new commissioner Teresa Gould, who has guided the conference since the spring of 2024.
Then, last fall, the Pac-12 announced the addition of five Mountain West schools: Boise State, Colorado State, Utah State, Fresno State, and San Diego State. (The league is still embroiled in litigation with the Mountain West over poaching fees, but the two are currently engaging in mediation.) The Pac-12 has also since added Gonzaga.
Going forward, the Pac-12 is still searching for at least one more FBS football-playing member, as the NCAA allows for a two-year grace period for a conference to find eight football-playing members to maintain its FBS status. Texas State has been rumored as a potential option. The Pac-12 may announce expansion before finalizing another deal, or finalize the media package first, a Pac-12 source told FOS.
The media-rights deal with CBS, meanwhile, is written with the assumption that another full FBS football-playing member will join by 2026.
7. Florida's Ben Chase named NIL Director of the Year
The award recognizes “the NIL director who went above and beyond on behalf on their student-athletes in collaboration with the NIL Store,” which Chase and UF partnered with last May.
The NIL store also posted a video from UF softball player Keagan Rothrock congratulating Chase on the award.
“On behalf of the student-athletes at Florida, we really appreciate everything that you do for us,” Rothrock said to Chase. “And the constant communication that you have and just you constantly going out and looking for new deals for us depending on what our likes and interests are. And I know that we all appreciate you and everything that you do for us so, so much.”
