Weekly Column: College Sports Commission seeks to tame NIL Wild West

California Sports Lawyer® CEO, Founder, and Managing Attorney Jeremy M. Evans column about the House settlement's creation of the 'College Sports Commission' and its mission to tame the Wild West of name, image, and likeness (NIL) in college athletics.

You can read the full column below. (Past columns can be found, here).

With the House settlement, the College Sports Commission will become more powerful than the Power Four conferences and the NCAA. Congress has the purse strings, and the College Sports Commission will act much like that as a national approval body for name, image, and likeness (NIL) deals and approving all funding flowing from the colleges to the student-athletes. The NCAA will cede such power to the new College Sports Commission.

The College Sports Commission (CSC) is also similar to the College Football Playoff in that it distributes cash to schools, but the difference is that the CSC will be approving payments going to athletes that come from private brands and businesses. It would also seem likely that future negotiations and changes to the House settlement would run through the CSC as colleges and the NCAA defer to the CSC. The NCAA simply does not want the responsibility or liability with a focus on education, while the individual conferences and universities within those conferences need the other conferences to survive and succeed and would need an independent or at-least non-conference entity to help make decisions and push a united agenda.

The CSC is somewhat of a surprise to many as it seemed like there were three options and yet a fourth was chosen. The first option would have been federal legislation around NIL, which was always unlikely and potentially unconstitutional from a commandeering the states (e.g., states rights) standpoint. The second option would have been to have the NCAA enforce news rules and regulations over its member institutions. The third option would have been simply to rely on the House settlement, but suffer issues dealing with Title IX, employment law classification, and labor unions disputes and litigation.

The fourth option through the CSC is subject to the House settlement, which is relying on the CSC to enforce and maintain a fairer college system, but will still have to contend with Title IX, employment law classification, and labor unions issues. One easy solution for the CSC would be to outlaw the university paying athletes directly beyond equal payments to all athletes and any money paid above the $20-22 million per college through television and other shared revenue, while monitoring closely and approving with precision the private NIL payments. The equal payments to student-athletes will help to prevent Title IX claims. While lawsuits cannot be stopped, it would be hard to imagine college athletes getting paid a majority of their payments via private NIL deals suing to disrupt the system that benefits them. The CSC will also maintain a neutral arbitration and appeal process for athletes seeking to challenge decisions, which could be ripe for litigation.

There is the argument that not all student-athletes should be paid the same. Each student-athlete provides different skills, notoriety, and viewership. However, the college athletics system is subject to complying with Title IX or losing federal financial help is a difficult step to take for many universities. The CSC will set the stage for a new era in college athletics.

About Jeremy M. Evans:

Jeremy M. Evans is the Chief Entrepreneur Officer, Founder & Managing Attorney at California Sports Lawyer®, representing entertainment, media, and sports clients in contractual, intellectual property, and dealmaking matters. Evans is an award-winning attorney and industry leader based in Los Angeles and Newport Beach, California. He can be reached at Jeremy@CSLlegal.com. www.CSLlegal.com.