The NIL Wild West: How College Sports Became a Legal and Political Battleground — Part One
In the first of a two-part series on the cost of college sports, MSR sports columnist Charles Hallman traces the legal history from Ed O'Bannon's historic NCAA lawsuit to the current NIL era, examining the two proposed congressional bills and executive order attempting to limit player compensation and the $2.8 billion House v. NCAA settlement that created the College Sports Commission.
First of two parts – The NIL wild west
We strongly suggest that every Division I college athlete from now on send a thank-you card to Ed O’Bannon. If the former UCLA star hadn’t seen his likeness on a college basketball video game without his permission and successfully sued the NCAA, a ruling the U.S. Supreme Court eventually confirmed, today’s NIL (name, image and likeness) era might not exist.
However, neither O’Bannon nor anyone else for that matter imagined what’s going on in today’s college sports landscape.
Law professor Michael McCann last September said in Sportico that “college sports has morphed into a unique and still evolving creature for legal study” because of O’Bannon’s historic win over the NCAA.
Several legal defeats later, the big bad NCAA is now looking to the White House and Congress for help. Instead of working on bills that help eliminate income and health disparities in this country, we have a president and lawmakers worried more about players finally getting paid, even though they will never make as much as the coaches and the schools they play for.
There are currently two proposed bills in Congress, plus an executive order, all intended to put the brakes on the so-called NIL runaway train: the Protect College Sports Act, known as the SAFE Act, and the SCORE Act.
U.S. Sen. Cory Booker calls the SCORE Act “harmful,” even after a group of HBCU commissioners from the CIAA, MEAC, SIAC and SWAC sent a letter to the Congressional Black Caucus in May urging the Black legislators to push for it, because they see it as “best suited to address our core concerns … [a] currently unsustainable state of collegiate sports.”
On the other hand, the SAFE Act, according to bill co-sponsor Sen. Maria Cantwell, would “help smaller schools compete” and give every school “a fair shake.”
I’m not a Matlock or Perry Mason, although I once took a mandatory journalism law class in college, nor am I a politician, but I do know what a holy mess looks like.
“College sports are worth fighting for. It’s probably going to take Congress … if Congress can somehow get involved so that the NCAA can make rules without the constant threat of litigation, that would go a long way,” stated soon-to-retire Big East Commissioner Val Ackerman a couple of months ago to reporters, including the MSR.
Sadly, there are people, including the president, members of Congress, fans and million-dollar-making coaches, who are against college players getting their fair share, hoping to roll back any gains they have received from the House v. NCAA $2.8 billion settlement, which created the College Sports Commission (CSC) in 2025.
The CSC was created by the then-Power Five conferences, Big Ten, Big 12, ACC, SEC and the former Pac-12 to oversee and enforce compliance with the institutional revenue-sharing model with student-athletes, who can be paid up to $20.5 million per participating school in the 2025-26 academic year. This amount is scheduled to increase each year and is expected to reach nearly $33 million by 2035.
The group is also charged with overseeing NIL compliance through NIL Go, which would require all third-party NIL deals exceeding $600 to be submitted for review, and oversee institutional compliance with new sport-specific roster limits.
So, the players are finally getting paid, right?
As they say in Ghostbusters, who you gonna call? Seemingly, it isn’t that simple in the wild, wild west, eh, NIL.
Charles Hallman welcomes reader responses at challman@spokesman-recorder.com.
Copyright © Charles Hallman