The Law & Business of College Sports

Under the Protect College Sports Act, female athletes get a floor built on a year beset with inequality, that’s set to expire, tied to rules nobody enforces, and being overseen by a commission they weren’t invited to be a part of. And they’re told the bill protects them. Senator Cantwell and the other senators are gaslighting women and female athletes.

On July 31, 2026, a Colorado federal judge certified the Class of 2022 and enjoined the NCAA's Five-Year Eligibility Rule, clearing the way for a fifth season. Judge Sweeney's 50-page ruling reads like a lesson the NCAA still refuses to learn: it's a commercial enterprise bound by antitrust law—and its arguments are getting weaker by the case.

One IG post. One accusation. In some NIL contracts, that's all it takes for a brand to tear up your deal and demand back money you already earned. It's called a morality clause.

The plan for fund distributed under the House settlement is for female athletes to receive a fraction of what the male athletes will receive, unless Title IX steps in an provides relief.

NIL Go's pricing model reviews NIL deals using one formula for all deals and determines if athletes are being paid within an acceptable range, which is likely to be attacked under antitrust law.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association died in a federal courthouse in Oakland on June 6, 2025, at the age of 119. A man named Sherman was seen wielding the murder weapon. What follows is its obituary—what it dragged into the grave, and what still stands over it.

On July 9, a Hamilton County judge granted a preliminary injunction against the NCAA, freeing 24 basketball players from the high school class of 2022 to compete for a fifth season. Judge Christopher Wagner called the NCAA's eligibility rules "arbitrary and capricious"—and called the NCAA a professional sports league in all but name. Here's what the ruling says, and why the breach-of-contract theory behind it matters.

POTUS gives a yearly State of the Union. This is the State of NIL. One year in, NIL Go and the College Sports Commission are clearing 95% of deals—and reporting those numbers in a way that makes it impossible to tell whether the clearinghouse is changing how money moves into college sports, or just changing how that money gets reported. A look at what the data shows, what it hides, and the antitrust fight coming for the whole model.

The NCAA just overhauled its eligibility system. Redshirts are gone. Medical hardship waivers are gone. Seasons of competition are gone. What replaced all of it is a single, continuous five-year clock that starts running the moment you enroll full-time in college — or the fall after you turn 19, whichever comes first. For most athletes, that's a straightforward improvement. For athletes who take gap years, get seriously injured, or come through JUCO, it's a problem that no wa

When the House settlement was approved in June 2025, Talanoa Ili lost a multi-year NIL deal he'd negotiated to play for USC. Seventeen states have laws that explicitly prohibit the NCAA from restricting athlete NIL compensation — but the NCAA enforced the settlement's caps in all 50 states anyway. Now Ili and Stanford QB Charlie Mirer are suing, and the NCAA's own commissioners may have already made their case for them.

The NCAA Division I Cabinet changed the eligibility rules for Division I sports, replacing the five years to play four rule with a five years to play five rule with the goal to reduce litigation, but the new rule will bring on new and different litigation.

Wisconsin's Xavier Lucas withdrew from classes and enrolled at Miami without touching the transfer portal. That one move exposed a gap in NCAA rules — and now the Division I Cabinet is voting on emergency legislation to close it, with penalties so steep that programs may think twice before ever signing a blind transfer athlete. Here's what the legislation actually says, why it's going to get challenged in court, and what the NCAA should be doing instead.

The Federal Trade Commission formally demanded that 20 Division I universities explain how they're handling sports agent compliance — and the response deadline just passed. College athletes navigating the transfer portal and NIL deals need to understand what federal scrutiny of agents under SPARTA actually means, and what questions to ask before they sign anything.

AJ Dybantsa scored 35 points against Texas — the second time in tournament history a freshman hit 30 or more in a single game — and BYU still lost. Within hours, the internet had a verdict on his $7 million NIL package. They were asking the wrong question. The right one is what happens when a program builds its entire season around one player, and the injury report comes out the week before the tournament.

The SCORE Act — Congress's most recent attempt at comprehensive college sports legislation — was pulled from the House floor in December 2025 without ever receiving a vote. For college athletes, the absence of federal NIL law doesn't mean the absence of rules. It means 50 different state laws, a patchwork of NCAA bylaws, an unsettled legal agreement, and a compliance body still figuring out its own authority, and the athletes who don't know that are the ones who end up in bad

True NIL is real marketing money paid for a valid business purpose, not just money tied to playing a sport. Here is how student-athletes can understand the difference between NIL and rev-share after the House settlement.

Just because a contract says NIL does not mean it is really NIL. The Transfer Test is a simple way to evaluate whether athlete compensation is true NIL marketing money or rev-share tied to staying at a particular school.

Mississippi lawmakers are pushing HB 4014, a bill that would exempt certain college athlete NIL and revenue-sharing compensation from Mississippi state income tax. The bill is about more than taxes. It is about recruiting, retention, and how far a state is willing to go to make itself more competitive in the modern college sports marketplace.

In the NIL era, agent fees have become the Wild West. While pro contract norms sit around 3% in the NFL and 5% in the NBA, some college athlete representatives are charging 20–30% for “NIL deals”—often without clearly separating NIL money from Rev-Share money. That distinction matters. Before anyone can talk about what a “fair” percentage looks like, athletes need to ask one foundational question: what is the agent actually being paid on?

In today’s college sports market, deals get labeled “NIL” even when the fine print ties an athlete to a school. The simplest test is transferability: if you can transfer without breaking the deal, it’s true NIL; if you can’t, it functions as Rev-Share. That distinction matters for agent pricing—because marketing-style commissions make sense for true NIL, but salary-like Rev-Share contracts should be charged in the 3–5% range, not 10–20%.