Latest news with #collegesports
New York Times
17 hours ago
- Business
- New York Times
College Sports Commission, House attorneys end standoff over policing collectives: Sources
By Ralph D. Russo, Stewart Mandel and Justin Williams The newly formed College Sports Commission and the plaintiffs' lawyers in the House v. NCAA settlement have reached a preliminary agreement to classify name, image and likeness collectives the same as other 'valid' businesses by the NIL Go clearinghouse, three people informed of the negotiations told The Athletic on Tuesday. Advertisement The deal settles a standoff that began on July 10, when the CSC issued a memo stating that 'an entity with a business purpose of providing payments or benefits to student-athletes or institutions, rather than providing goods or services to the general public for profit,' does not satisfy the new model's 'valid business purpose requirement.' The language came as a warning shot to collectives that they should expect their NIL deals with athletes to be denied by the newly established clearinghouse, even if the athletes are being paid to promote merchandise or attend a for-profit event. Jeffrey Kessler, the lead plaintiffs' attorney in the House settlement, sent a letter to CSC, the power conferences that oversee the new enforcement organization and the NCAA the next day, demanding the guidance be retracted, saying it violated the terms of the settlement. If not, he said, they would seek relief from the court-appointed magistrate overseeing the settlement. Kessler declined comment when reached by The Athletic. 'Conversations with class counsel remain ongoing,' a spokesperson for the CSC told The Athletic. 'A formal statement will be issued when the issue has been resolved.' The deal reached Tuesday avoids that step. Instead, a clarification of the guidance is expected to be handed down by the CSC that clarifies collectives can offer goods and services for profit in the form of NIL payments, and they can send those deals through the clearinghouse for approval. 'We're looking for more clarity on what's going to be allowed there, and until we get some of that clarity, it's going to be a little bit hard to move forward,' Ohio State coach Ryan Day said at Big Ten media days. 'We're going to make sure we're competitive with everybody else, but we have to make sure we're doing what's right.' Advertisement The change could be seen as a blow to conferences and schools, which have been banking on the CSC model to prevent members from going above the $20.5 million revenue-sharing cap to attract athletes. Allowing collectives to continue operating as they have in the past now opens the door to a 'soft cap' in the form of third-party deals with athletes. The collectives' deals, as with all third-party businesses, will still be subject to a 'range of compensation' limit that will be evaluated through a service run by the accounting firm Deloitte.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump Executive Order on College Sports Unlikely to Move the Needle
President Donald Trump is weighing an executive order that would attempt to stabilize the business and law of college sports but might instead kindle new legal challenges. A draft of the order, obtained by Yahoo, adopts the viewpoint that big-time college sports has morphed into an unworkable, volatile and overly litigious framework. The order negatively references unlimited transfers, the prospect of college athletes gaining employment recognition and a 'chaotic race to the bottom' with states opportunistically using NIL laws to supply 'competitive advantages' to their universities. More from Sporticast 468: 'Pay Us What You Owe Us' Nevada WR Catches Court Win as NCAA Eligibility Cases Split NBA Seeks Supreme Court Review of 'Bork Bill' Case After Split Rulings Dubbed 'Saving College Sports,' the order directs several federal officials and agencies— including the U.S. Attorney General, the Federal Trade Commission, the U.S. Secretary of Education, the U.S. Secretary of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board—to pursue policies that would allegedly ensure the 'long-term availability' of college sports opportunities. Another aspiration is 'greater uniformity, predictability, and cooperation with respect to Federal and State laws and enforcement practices concerning college athletics.' The order provides several specific requests. They include agency actions within 60 or 120 days and a directive that 15 U.S.C. 7802—the Sports Agent Responsibility and Trust Act, a law that Sportico revealed has not been enforced—be enforced. For the most part, however, the order is aspirational and refrains from enunciating policy positions. Notably absent are declarations that the NCAA and its members ought to be exempt from antitrust scrutiny or that college athletes aren't employees. The absence of many specifics is important for several reasons. For starters, agencies that would be directed by Trump are already capable of issuing regulations and other administrative actions to exert control over college sports. To that point, in the last week of Joe Biden's presidency, federal agencies entered the college sports legal debate without an accompanying executive order. The Department of Education issued a fact sheet expressing that colleges paying athletes for their NIL counts as athletic financial assistance under Title IX. A month later, Trump's Department of Education rescinded that fact sheet. Biden's Department of Justice also filed a statement of interest in the House litigation. The statement expressed that a revenue share cap of $20.5 million, while better than not sharing any revenue, is still an antitrust problem, because it's a cap that hasn't been collectively bargained. The DOJ under Trump didn't pursue the issue as U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken weighed the granting of final approval to the settlement. To be sure, a Trump executive order would elevate the importance and urgency for those agencies to tackle college sports issues. But it's not an essential ingredient. Agencies could act on their own just as they did in January. Also consider how agencies would implement Trump's order. The more agencies look under the hood of college sports, the more likely they'll see potential drawbacks and limitations of weighing in. The federal government doesn't control the universe of college sports issues, some of which extend well beyond government control. Take employment. A federal declaration that college athletes aren't employees would presumably mean they're not—at least as the Trump administration sees it—employees under the two most relevant federal laws, the National Labor Relations Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act. That type of declaration would be challenged in court, since it is a debatable interpretation of federal statutes. Put another way, whether college athletes are employees under the NLRA or FLSA is ultimately a question for the courts, not an agency or even the president. That is particularly true given the U.S. Supreme Court's decision last year in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. Judges are no longer expected to defer to agency interpretation when a statute is ambiguous, meaning judicial deference to agencies, including those in the Trump administration, has been reduced. Even assuming an agency declaration that college athletes aren't employees withstood judicial review, it wouldn't foreclose the possibility of athletes being recognized as employees under states' laws. There are labor and employment laws in all 50 states, and they vary. There's also the chance that a college or conference voluntarily recognizes athletes as employees, a move that has not happened at least in part because it would violate NCAA rules. But such a move is not implausible—especially since collective bargaining with college athletes would put an end to antitrust lawsuits over those athletes' rights. Even if an agency declaration says that any, and all, conflicting state employment laws are preempted by federal action, that wouldn't automatically make preemption happen. Preemption is a highly litigated topic that intersects with powers enunciated by the U.S. Constitution and would surely be litigated in this context. Antitrust is another relevant subject for Trump's possible executive order. The draft states that though the settlement resolving the House, Carter and Hubbard antitrust litigations will provide back pay and revenue sharing, it 'provides little assurance that it will not soon be upended by new litigation seeking more compensation with fewer rules, further reducing in the number of student-athletes.' Trump might want the NCAA, conferences and colleges to be exempt from antitrust scrutiny or to receive deferential treatment. On the surface, a Trump or agency-announced antitrust exemption or deferential standard would make it more difficult for athletes to sue regarding topics like compensation and eligibility. But the president and his agencies can't change the language of the Sherman Act, which has applied to college sports for decades and which the U.S. Supreme Court in NCAA v. Alston (2021) said not only governs NCAA rules but does so without deference. It's also noteworthy that conservative judges, including those whom Trump nominated, have been among the most critical of college sports amateurism from an antitrust perspective. And there are state antitrust laws, too, that fall outside of federal authority and thus outside any executive order. Trump might want the Department of Justice to take a permissive approach to antitrust issues in college sports. One could say the DOJ under both Republican and Democratic presidents has already done that: Save for the DOJ joining Ohio v. NCAA (2024), which concerned transfer rules, and suing the NCAA in 1998 under the Americans with Disabilities Act over treatment of college athletes with learning disabilities, the DOJ has largely been on the sidelines. Meanwhile, a long list of athletes, from Ed O'Bannon to Shawne Alston, sued the NCAA on antitrust grounds. That highlights a key point: Private individuals and businesses can bring antitrust lawsuits. The government isn't needed since federal antitrust law provides for a private right of action. No matter how the DOJ and other agencies oversee college sports, athletes will continue to be able to bring antitrust claims. There are still other legal complications from a potential executive order on college sports. Any order that leads to college athletes being denied the same rights and opportunities as their classmates would invite an Equal Protection lawsuit. Restricting athletes' expressions, including through limiting NIL opportunities, could trigger First Amendment and right of publicity litigation. Trump might not need an executive order to influence college sports. If the SCORE Act passes Congress—a big 'if' given that college sports bills in Congress in recent years have all flamed out—Trump would have the chance to sign a college sports act into law. Of course, the SCORE Act could be challenged in court, including on grounds mentioned above. But given that it would be federal law, it would stand a stronger chance of sticking than an executive order. Best of College Athletes as Employees: Answering 25 Key Questions
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Every Division I School's Revenue-Sharing Decision for 2025-26
The House settlement approved in June will transform college sports immediately. Starting in 2025-26, schools will be permitted to directly pay athletes up to $20.5 million annually in revenue-sharing. Not all schools, however, are jumping into the new landscape. On Tuesday, the College Sports Commission released a list of schools that opted in to sharing revenue with athletes. Division I schools had to decide by June 30, and although 310 athletic departments opted in, 54 chose not to. More from Ex-Penn State Trustee, Who Sued to See Elevate Deal, Still Has 'Concerns' NCAA Scores Major Antitrust Win as Eligibility Rules Upheld Fanatics Accused of Conspiring With Leagues, Unions on High Card Prices To no surprise, all schools in power conferences—the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC—are participating. Other leagues with complete participation: the American, Atlantic 10, Big East, C-USA, CAA, Horizon, MAC, Missouri Valley, Southwestern, Sun Belt, WAC and West Coast conferences. Every FBS school opted in aside from the service academies—Army, Navy and Air Force—which are prevented from compensating athletes due to military regulations. On the other end of the spectrum, the Ivy League, which currently permits athletes to receive NIL deals but not athletic scholarships, stated in January that its eight schools would not participate in revenue-sharing. The Patriot League was the only other conference with zero members opting in. Several recent March Madness Cinderellas opted out, including UMBC and Fairleigh Dickinson, the only two men's No. 16 seeds to ever defeat a No. 1 seed; they accomplished the feat in 2018 and 2023, respectively. Saint Peter's, which made an unprecedented run to the Elite Eight as a No. 15 seed in 2022, was also among the opt-outs. Some schools zigged where their peers zagged, such as Long Island University, which was the only Northeast Conference program to opt in. On the flip side, North Carolina Central was the only MEAC team to opt out. The University of Nebraska Omaha was the only member of the Summit League to not participate. In an online statement, the school explained that its operational and financial plans were already in place for the 2025-26, so opting into revenue-sharing 'would simply introduce new and unresolved variables at a time when clarity is critical.' The athletic department plans to opt in some time in the future. In addition to the direct financial cost of sharing revenue with athletes, another concern for participating schools is adhering to certain roster size limitations. Football teams, for instance, are capped at 105 players. University of Central Arkansas athletic director Matt Whiting said in an interview on Wednesday that potential loss of tuition money influenced the school's decision to opt out. 'Opting in would require us to reduce by a significant amount [the number] of student-athletes in our program,' Whiting said. 'That's obviously lost revenue for the university during a time where enrollment across the country is declining.' With a full-time undergraduate enrollment of 6,474, Central Arkansas is actually bigger than the majority of schools forgoing revenue-sharing. The average non-FBS opt-out has just shy of 6,000 students, whereas the average FCS or non-football D-I school that opted in has more than 7,800. Six of the 10 D-I schools with the smallest student populations chose to opt out, including Presbyterian College and Chicago State University, which had just 856 and 981 full-time undergrads last year, respectively, according to data from the U.S. Department of Education. Another factor: Revenue-sharing will likely face Title IX lawsuits, given that participating schools are expected to share much more revenue with male athletes than female athletes. Schools declining to opt in avoid having to address these legal concerns. Still, most D-I schools decided that the pros outweigh the cons. Florida Gulf Coast's athletic director, for instance, cited the fact that it would lose only nine roster spots but gain flexibility for the program and opportunities for athletes. Nine Division III schools that participate in Division I in one or two sports also opted in. Johns Hopkins, which has 29 Final Four appearances in D-I men's lacrosse since 1970, will participate, along with Dallas Baptist (baseball) and Augusta (golf). The other six programs all boast D-I men's ice hockey teams: Minnesota State, Minnesota Duluth, St. Cloud State, Lake Superior State, Michigan Tech, and Colorado College. Best of Tennis Prize Money Tracker: Which Player Has Earned the Most in 2025? Browns Officially Get Public Money for New Stadium in Ohio Budget WNBA Franchise Valuations Ranking List: From Golden State to Atlanta
Wall Street Journal
a day ago
- Sport
- Wall Street Journal
The Billion-Dollar Question Looming Over College Sports
College football is still weeks away, but the sport is already gripped by a bruising confrontation that could have huge repercussions for the season ahead. This one doesn't involve quarterbacks or head coaches, but another character who has been central to college sports for more than a century.
Washington Post
2 days ago
- Politics
- Washington Post
USOPC asks for tweak of college sports bill to set minimum spending limits for Olympic programs
U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee leaders are pushing lawmakers for tweaks to legislation that would regulate college sports by adding guarantees that schools will spend the same percentage on Olympic programs in the future as they do now. USOPC CEO Sarah Hirshland told The Associated Press on Monday that a letter she and chair Gene Sykes sent to members of Congress last week was intended to restart a conversation about the SCORE Act , which currently calls for schools to sponsor at least 16 teams.
