Long-awaited guardrails could be coming to NIL, but....

For all those within college football calling for guardrails to manage NIL, the construction crew may be on their way. But no one's home free just yet. In fact, this years-long fight to professionalize college football in a fair and equitable way might just be moving into Phase 2. 

First, according to Yahoo a "transition team" of ADs and lawyers from the Power 4 conferences have established an outline for a blue-sky version of how this whole thing might work:

"REAL" NIL:

With House payments expected to be approved in April to come online in July, there is a real effort for those payments to replace collectives and for NIL to become what it was intended to be, compensation for the use of an athlete's name, image and likeness in a public forum, instead of what it actually became, "Now It's Legal."

On that front, the London-based professional services firm Deloitte is expected to operate a clearinghouse for all NIL payments above $600. In that role, Deloitte is expected to evaluate every deal and then compare it to the "fair market value" as established by the database of existing NIL deals it has in its database. If an entity is offering too much money to a player, Deloitte can strike the deal down, with an appeals process. From Yahoo:

Deloitte is using thousands of previously struck NIL deals of college and NFL players in developing a “compensation range” to determine if deals are authentic. Deloitte is expected to approve or disapprove deals in as little as one day, and, in a plan under discussion, athletes can resubmit rejected deals at least once with alterations suggested by the clearinghouse.

For example, if Deloitte deems a submitted $100,000 deal between an athlete and third party to actually be valued at $50,000, the player can alter the deal to align with the clearinghouse’s suggested fair market value figure.

If a deal is rejected for a second time, it could then go the CEO of the clearinghouse, and then eventually to the courts. Athletes would be eligible to compete while their case was in the appeals process, but then ruled ineligible if they lose that process. Arbitration rulings are expected within 45 days, which, depending on when a given case was heard, could be up to half of the football regular season.

ENFORCEMENT:

Teams found circumventing the revenue-share cap, tampering with under-contract players, and those going above the cap through boosters and collectives are expected to face harsh penalties. Fines could come in multiples of the violating amount -- i.e., exceeding the House cap by $1 million would come with a $5 million fine.

Future "salary caps" could also be reduced, and coaches could face suspensions for violating rules. From Yahoo:

But, perhaps, there is even a stiffer penalty under discussion: The new enforcement arm may reduce the amount of transfer players that a school could add to its roster, multiple coaches and administrators confirmed to Yahoo Sports.

“We’ve been living in a world with no rules and the enforcement has been slow and inconsistent,” Kelly said. “More than anything else as coaches, we live by rules. We’re now going to get what we asked for.”

THE CATCH: 

Unruly and misery-inducing as this system is, it works for a lot of different entities out there, and none of them will take this paradigm shift lying down.

For one, multiple media outlets have spoken to personnel staffers across college football to establish a market rate for established college football players, and it's way more than the average salary Georgia and others plan to dole out via House settlements. 

"A normal, average P4 (starting quarterback) is about $900,000," a quarterbacks coach told The Athletic. "Your better ones, top five or six in the conference, will be about $1.3 to $1.4 million range. You can get average for pretty good price. We didn’t go above $750k for (our guy) but I do believe in him and what he can do."

"If you play, somebody will pay you," a Big 12 personnel staffer told On3 on offensive linemen. "Last year it was $250,000 for a good one. This year with revenue sharing and NIL, it was a minimum $400,000 up to $750,000 and $1 million for some guys."

The numbers cascade down from there, but the gist is lots of players (and agents) will take pay cuts if forced to live off their cut of the House settlement and what they can earn on the free market without help from collectives. 

Now, no one's asking anyone to feel sorry for the players and their representation who may have been earning an "artificial" living propped up by collectives, but the fact of the matter is those people and their representatives will likely have their say. "What right does the College Sports Establishment have to limit the money my client can earn?" is, thus far, an undefeated argument in court. 

Another group who will not take this change without a fight: the schools themselves.

Lawmakers in Oregon have filed an amendment to the state's NIL law that would essentially exempt its state schools from any rule, law or policy forcing the disclosure of NIL deals. In short, Oregon lawmakers want Division Street -- Oregon's collective -- to continue paying the Ducks as much as they can afford. 

Remember, it was a California state law back in 2019 that started the grass fire that engulfed the NCAA's business model. 

Now, an attempt to bring sanity to the system that California's 2019 law could be knocked down by another state law, knocking the whole process back to Phase 1.

If and when that happens, the NCAA and the schools would be in the same place they've been for years.

“Even with the new settlement, we are going to still be peppered with challenges and lawsuits,” Mississippi State president Mark Keenum told Yahoo. “When our clearinghouse tells an athlete that your fair market deal isn’t fair market and their representatives challenge that in court, you need, more than ever, a legal, congressional resolution to this.”