Each week during the college football season, USA TODAY Sports' insiders will talk with coaches, athletics administrators, agents and more to bring you the behind-the-scenes news. They are granted anonymity to speak candidly. Here's what we're hearing this week:
So the College Sports Commission is investigating multiple programs.
Cool.
What does it mean?
That, that depends upon whom you ask.
There’s two prevailing sentiments: No one WANTS to be probed by the CSC, college athletics’ – read: football, basketball, some ala carte additional entities – Wizard of Oz in the NIL/rev-share era. But … what can the CSC actually do if it is investigating your program and finds discrepancies?
That’s where the opinion differs.
“Heard whispers early on that they
were setting up interviews with players, staff about ‘potential improprieties’ and work not matching payout amounts,” a general manager at a power conference school with past experience working with staffs at multiple programs told USA TODAY Sports on condition of anonymity to speak freely about the environment. “It’s just kind of interesting, because I wonder if anything comes from it and if it does, how that is (legislated)?
“How do they find it? Did the school … I have to imagine it’s not like a school signed off on the deals in question. So, how did they find them?”
Indeed, general managers from three of college athletics’ four power conferences told USA TODAY Sports that these CSC investigations – ongoing since at least early summer – were focused far more on individuals and individual deals than any grand, widespread team- or university-wide probe.
“The buckets of money collected; that’s the key,” said a general manager from a program with multiple College Football Playoff appearances. “It’s all about the ‘closely associated entities.’ The (corporate-sponsor) thing, the way I understand it is simple, not in any deep lawyeristic way.
“That restaurant company’s ability to sign players to marketing deals, if they want to sign players to $20 million in excess of the rev-share, he can do that.”
And, yet, not every team being probed … is still being probed.
Three different individuals, one with direct knowledge via the school’s staff, told USA TODAY Sports that within the past two months an ACC program had the CSC on its campus – and got green-flagged as the investigators left.
Meanwhile, the general managers, coaches and agents who spoke to USA TODAY Sports said that the CSC is looking into programs – important to note here, both football and men’s basketball – in multiple of the Power Four conferences.
“The biggest thing with all this is two parts in my mind: MMR (multimedia rights), the Learfield, Playfly situation as we call it,” the person, directly involved with a Power Four program, said. “No. 2, how do they handle the entities associated with the programs. Those are the two biggest.
“Right now, all the money is getting through the MMRs. It’s not like there’s a bunch of third-party deals raising questions. Right now, you wouldn’t need to do all that, as long as your administration has greenlit that process. It’s like Learfield getting all the money through.
“School is ok with it? Yeah.”
The MMR deals most glaringly came under scrutiny when Nebraska athletics had millions of dollars in proposed deals for its athletes rejected,in part because the deals were initially deemed by a third-party arbitrator as "lacking a valid business purpose." Nebraska resubmitted the deals to the CSC and on July 31, 2026, saw them approved with more precise wording and business purposes specified in the agreement with PlayFly.
Added yet a third individual in the ecosystem, “Nobody’s (freaking) sharing anything. We could all make this better on ourselves if we just shared info about these investigations, but nobody wants to share anything.”
Will Protect College Sports Act help bring order?
The question was posed if the Protect College Sports Act, which essentially would double the rev-share component, as well as further remove barriers for school-negotiated MMR deals for NIL, would bring order to the chaos.
“No, I don’t. I sure don’t,” said the general manager of a team in the US LBM Coaches Poll. “In every iteration of this, aggressive universities, teams, athletics departments have found ways around it. (Restaurant) money counts for our rival, but they’ll find somebody else in a different way.
“Corporate partners become more valuable if this (PCSA) passes. Big ones. These Adidas deals going out right now seem like high-leverage ... but I think everybody has so much doubt about it passing.”
Why?
“Anything that limits earning potential or power in U.S. courts, has that not been defeated over and over again?,” the general manager asked. “It will make it harder for a little while but the Miamis, the LSUs will still find ways.”
Might the PCSA, with reinforced oversight powers for both the CSC and the NCAA, then help level-out spending, as well as competition?
“It will raise the roof for teams that can get up to it,” a third Power Four general manager said. “There will be a way, it’s unclear now, but there will be a way to get around it. Some things will change but at its root I don’t see it changing (the landscape). I guess it’s the pessimist in me.
“But as long as some company wants to give money to players, it will happen. Maybe it helps some. Maybe it diminishes these Fortune 500 companies’ buying powers. I just don’t know how much it closes the gap. Will raising the cap create more schools that can suddenly fund that much, $45 to $50 million if there’s only 13 of us this year?”
Latest trend in high school sports is prep equity
Multiple general managers who spoke with USA TODAY Sports this month relayed the latest emerging trend in high school sports – essentially, prep-equity.
Think scaled-down private equity investments into high school prospects. They specifically mentioned basketball and football.
A high school sophomore football prospect, for example, might be amassing major scholarship offers and zooming into the various prospect-rankings systems. Third-party companies, the GMs explained, are offering the prospect and his family up-front money for a portion of future NIL earnings through the individual’s collegiate career.
“Some companies out there, they’re trying to act like its kosher when you can tell it’s not, fronting money to high school players for a portion of their future NIL rights,” the Power Four personnel head said.
Another executive likened it to what has happened with some regularity in the Dominican Republic involving promising professional baseball prospects. Fernando Tatis Jr. lated sued the Big League Fund after the group advanced him $2 million as a teenager in exchange for 10% of Tatis’s future earnings. He’s currently under contract with MLB’s San Diego Padres on 14-year deal worth $340 million and lost his lawsuit against Big League Fund.
“You give a high school kid one-hundred-grand, and they say you give us 10% of your NIL money through college,” a major school executive said. “(Starting with) sophomores. They want to see do they have the upside to become that level prospect. And it might be $50k instead of $100k, but it’s some groups out there. Very much like the Dominican baseball deals similar to Fernando Tatis.”
The executives wanted it to be made clear: they staunchly oppose these types of prep-equity deals, calling them bad for the prospects and their families. They also noted high school NIL now is legal in many states.
According toNILparent.com, 48 states as well as Washington, D.C., allow some form of NIL for high school students.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What We're Hearing: College Sports Commission investigating, clearing programs
