College Sports Commission to adjust enforcement of NIL in relation to collectives | Sports
Two weeks after attempting to bring the hammer down on NIL collectives, the College Sports Commission is walking back guidelines it laid out in a memo earlier this month. Good news for the Blue A Collective, which has been the primary way for Utah State athletes to receive NIL for the past two years. On July 10, the College Sports Commission sent out a memo to FBS universities clarifying its criteria for approving or denying NIL contracts. NIL Go, the clearinghouse established by the House settlement, has been tasked with vetting all NIL deals for collegiate athletes in the NCAA. The purpose of NIL Go has essentially been to remove pay-for-play deals that did not meet the spirit of what an NIL has typically been in history (such as in professional sports). In its attempts to reign in pay-for-play NIL deals, NIL Go had denied a significant number of submitted deals, including a vast majority of any contracts where they payor was an NIL collective. In the memo, the CSC effectively stated that collectives did not meet one of the three criteria, that of the NIL deal having a “valid business purpose.” According to the CSC, “An entity with a
