The NCAA is establishing the College Sports Commission to oversee NIL stuff, and any payments of $600 or more that athletes receive outside of the school payments must be reported to the commission and have to be legitimately business-related. This seems good to me on the one hand, since it will prevent random rich boosters from offering millions of dollars to get players.
On the other hand, those donors will now just go back to donating to the schools, who then can make those payments if they want. Or I guess they will just say "I'm paying this kid $5 million to appear in some ads for my company." Unclear if something like that will pass the smell test with this commission or even if there will be any real penalties for things that don't.
Since schools are limited to $20.5 million a year, I think this could level the playing field at least a little bit, especially as it relates to basketball from our perspective. The kids who will be getting big $$ payouts from P5 schools are not kids we could recruit anyway. And those schools have to pay football players, so the P5 basketball guys who are fringe starters there might actually be able to get more $$ from a school like UR that is prioritizing them.
College conference commissioners are bullish on their ability to enforce NIL rules in a new system days after a multibillion-dollar legal settlement changed college athletics by allowing schools to directly pay their athletes.
www.espn.com