New Language

There are a lot of new key terms in college sports. Let's go through them.

A photo of a bottle cap — shout out Fitz’s soda! — because there will be discussion of a salary cap in the post below.

New Language

College sports has a whole new economic model. Schools are paying athletes directly, over the table and not with cash in McDonald’s bags — and not just through salaries disguised as third-party marketing deals. And that means college sports also has a whole new set of key terms, which are already part of everyday conversation in the industry.

Below is an incomplete glossary of said terms, which I threw together because understanding them should help you better understand what I write about in this newsletter. Here goes …

the settlement: Technically, this refers to the legal agreement that recently settled three major antitrust lawsuits against the NCAA and power conferences: House, Carter and Hubbard. But practically, the settlement is functioning as a quasi collective bargaining agreement for most of Division I sports, even if it was crafted by lawyers without any collective bargaining between the labor (athletes) and management (coaches, athletic directions, school presidents, conference commissioners). Per the settlement terms, each school is allowed, though not required, to pay athletes up to $20.5 million across sports in 2025-26. The terms also created a lot of new rules (more on that below). The settlement is a sprawling document that sets the course for the next 10 years, at a minimum, but parts of it could — and likely will — be challenged in future lawsuits. Notably, it is already facing seven appeals.

Used in a sentence: Man, the settlement sure is confusing, but thanks to Jesse’s newsletter I at least know it permits a school like Georgia to pay a lot of money to its football and men’s basketball players (and a much smaller sum of money to athletes in other sports).

revenue sharing: Schools will pay athletes with money generated through ticket sales, apparel sales, multimedia rights deals, etc. This is commonly referred to as revenue sharing. Get used to hearing those two words.

While Oil Baron Booster University used to flat-out dominate the conference, it seems that revenue sharing has leveled the playing field a bit.

clearinghouse: The settlement established a clearinghouse for any third-party name, image and likeness (NIL) deal that exceeds $600. The NCAA and power conferences are hoping this will help limit — or even eliminate — a particular type of booster spending that has has fueled the NIL economy for the past few years, particularly in football and men’s basketball. For instance, athletes have often received four-, five-, six-figure payments to do not much more than play their sport, even if the deal technically calls for some social media promotion of a product. But the clearinghouse will judge whether a deal has a “valid business purpose.” Skeptics think this is more illegal price fixing, a clear violation of antitrust law, and will just invite more legal challenges. We will see.

According to Yahoo’s Ross Dellenger, of the 1,200-plus deals that have been submitted to the clearinghouse so far, roughly 80 have been denied. Once a deal is denied, an athlete can resubmit it, ditch it or go through an appeal process with neutral arbiters. One of the plaintiffs’ lawyers for the settlement told Ross that no deal has made it to the appeal stage yet. As for deals still in limbo, one reason is that the plaintiffs’ lawyers keep negotiating with the power conferences over rules and potential punishments for schools trying to circumvent the new salary cap.

A car salesman would love to pay a left tackle $50,000 for a few appearances at his dealership, but it’s unclear if the NIL deal would pass through the clearinghouse.

salary cap (or revenue sharing cap): I recently broke this down for The Washington Post. You’ll have to click these words for more.

Somehow, some way, I heard The Washington Post just published a smart, insightful, super interesting article about the new salary cap in college sports. How cool.

College Sports Commission (CSC): Launched by the power conferences in June, the CSC is the organization that will oversee the implementation of The Settlement and all its new rules. In a break from college sports tradition, the CSC will also levy punishments for schools and athletes that violate those rules, making it function like a new-age NCAA. To be clear, the NCAA still exists. But moving forward, the CSC will oversee the NIL clearinghouse and monitor how each school is sharing revenue (though it has contracted Deloitte to run the clearinghouse day-to-day). The CSC’s first CEO is Bryan Seeley, who had been one of Major League Baseball’s top executives.

With a goal of regulating the NIL market while avoiding another flood of lawsuits, the CSC has a big, big task ahead of it.

NIL Go: If you hear NIL Go in the wild, you’re dealing with a true sicko for college sports governance. But just in case, NIL Go is the platform college athletes are using to report third-party NIL deals to the clearinghouse/CSC.

Overheard in a dorm room somewhere in Texas: “I can’t get NIL Go to load.”

roster limits: The settlement replaced previous caps on scholarship spending with new roster limits. For example, a D-I football team used to have 85 full scholarships to offer but could carry as many players as it wanted. Now, it has a maximum of 105 roster spots but can give unlimited scholarship money to those players. These changes have happened across sports.

With the settlement’s new roster limits, there will likely be fewer walk-ons around the country.

Designated Student-Athlete (DSA): The acronym for designated student-athlete. If an athlete lost their spot because of the roster limits, their schools were supposed to make them a DSA, meaning they will not count toward a roster limit — with their current program or a new one — for the rest of their college careers. This was intended to grandfather active athletes into the post-settlement world (rather than completely kicking them to the curb). Still, even with the DSA provision, many, many athletes have had their lives upended. I recently wrote about two of them, twin brothers who were D-I divers and then suddenly weren’t anymore.

Despite being listed as DSAs, Nick and Noah Wanzer — the subjects of that story — will not dive next year because they didn’t want to change schools.