‘We are money laundering’

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — About 12 miles south of Washington, D.C., the Gaylord National Resort looms over the Potomac River, its 19-story indoor garden atrium delivering a perpetual oasis as thousands of tourists meander underneath its glass ceiling.

This week, university and conference executives participate in the annual NCAA convention here.

As it turns out, the scene — thousands of convention-goers under a single roof — is indicative of the NCAA as a whole. The Gaylord is quite literally a “big tent,” the term often used to describe the NCAA’s scope of member schools with drastically differing missions, standards and financial prowess, yet they are all governed under a single national association.

Perhaps, it’s time for a change.

“Big problems are not solved in big rooms filled with people. That is a principle,” SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said in a recent interview with Yahoo Sports.

In the midst of the association’s annual gathering, leaders from the NCAA’s aristocracy — the Football Bowl Subdivision, including most notably the four power conferences — are charting a course for more change to the governance and enforcement of college athletics, in particular football.

Unbeknownst to many, college leaders have created a new committee with the expressed mission to study the future of FBS governance and determine if the subdivision should operate outside of the NCAA structure — a long-discussed move gaining more momentum than ever.

But there is, perhaps, something even more serious brewing: a frustration from those in many power leagues at the lack of enforcement from the NCAA — and College Sports Commission too — over allegations of tampering of college athletes, eligibility rulings and the circumvention of the industry’s new roster spending cap.

For some, a solution is emerging: Each conference should govern itself, enforce its own rules and, perhaps even, compete solely with its own members.

“If the CSC is not going to enforce the House settlement, if the NCAA is not going to enforce tampering rules and if Congress is not going to pass the SCORE Act, then it leaves the SEC in a position that we have to go our own way to create some rules and a level of responsibility,” Georgia president Jere Morehead, a former chair of the NCAA DI Board of Directors, told Yahoo Sports earlier this month. “We’d be able to make a much stronger argument that we are not in violation of antitrust rules because we don’t have market power.”

Frustrations over tampering and lack of enforcement from the NCAA have the four power conferences considering drastic changes. — Leaders from across college sports are gathering this week at the Gaylord National Resort in National Harbor to discuss the industry’s many pain points.

While the SEC isn’t alone in its dismay over national enforcement, league officials are publicly expressing their feelings, while they privately take preliminary steps to contemplate a new model.

Sankey cautions any suggestion of the long-discussed “breakaway” by the SEC and other power leagues. Nobody wants to “rush there,” and the SEC remains committed to a “national organization,” he says.

However, “there are limits to that,” Sankey said. “The frustration level is building. I anticipate that there’s a lot of people that are saying, ‘This might not work for us.’”

Those people exist well beyond the SEC’s footprint, even if they remain in the background.

“There is support among other memberships for a similar model,” one Big Ten athletic director told Yahoo Sports. “Each league governs itself and plays only games within the league.”

At the forefront of the latest frustrations is the unruly nature of the college sports landscape six months into the industry’s most fundamental change in its more than 100-year history — schools directly compensating athletes through a capped revenue-sharing model.

The enforcement failures are directed at the NCAA, charged with tampering and overseeing eligibility, and the new entity created by the power leagues, the College Sports Commission, charged with policing the cap.

The pursuit of athletes at other schools is a common occurrence, described by Mississippi State president Mark Keenum as “widespread tampering.” Coaches and staff members are encouraging athletes from other schools to enter the portal, despite many of them being under signed revenue-share agreements with their current programs — something that has resulted already in one lawsuit (Wisconsin is suing Miami over tampering allegations).

Roster budgets are booming well beyond the $20.5 million cap meant for all athletes within a university athletic department. Most big-brand football roster estimates are exceeding $25 million as schools arrange the redirection of revenues — from the athletic department to rosters — using third-party marketing and endorsement deals exempt from the cap.

They are using old-fashioned methods (collectives and boosters), multimedia rights partners (Playfly and Learfied) and apparel brands (Adidas, Nike and Under Armour). And while these deals must pass through the CSC’s new clearinghouse, NIL Go, university administrators are guaranteeing the cash to athletes before they reach the point of being cleared.

The situation has left the industry exasperated and broken, with many wondering aloud four simple words.

What are we doing?

“We are money laundering,” said one high-level Big Ten school administrator. “All we are doing right now is moving money around.”

Three power conference athletic directors — all of them outside of the SEC, as it turns out — told Yahoo Sports within the last week that they believe there should be no cap as the enforcement of it is far too difficult.

In a recent interview on an Ohio-based podcast, the Tim & Beanie Show, Ohio State athletic director Ross Bjork said college leaders need to seriously consider no longer “restricting the money,” as it results in rule-breaking and legal challenges. He suggests that the $20.5 million cap figure is no longer enough, evident by the third-party workaround from schools.

“Should we just make it an open market?” Bjork asked.

But not everyone wishes to drastically alter a system that is only six months old.

In a wide-ranging interview with Yahoo Sports recently, Sankey specifically directed his dissatisfaction toward the NCAA for inconsistencies in eligibility waiver rulings that often magnify frustration and confusion among coaches, he says, and also chided the organization for little tampering enforcement.

“I’m mystified why there is a lack of clarity over the responsibility for tampering,” Sankey said. “That is the responsibility for the NCAA to oversee.”

However, tampering is not an easily prosecuted violation. Firstly, NCAA officials point to a Tennessee judge’s ruling in 2024 that allows booster-funded NIL collectives to communicate with high school recruits and transfer portal players. That judge’s preliminary injunction still stands.

In a statement to Yahoo Sports, the NCAA says its enforcement team has processed about 95 tampering cases thus far this year, some of which remain with the Committee on Infractions for final approval.

“Successfully enforcing tampering cases requires cooperation from coaches, student-athletes and administrators — especially from those whose teams were tampered with — and while the Association is thankful for the support for the finished cases, more cooperation will lead to more closed cases,” said Tim Buckley, the NCAA’s senior vice president of external affairs.

However, the roster spending cap is another matter entirely.

It is overseen by the College Sports Commission.

‘Gun shy’ CSC?

The College Sports Commission is only in its infancy, but its CEO Bryan Seeley has by all accounts worked diligently with conference and member schools to assure an earnest operation of the system.

However, in a situation indicative of the strife within college sports, the CSC’s participation agreement — drafted and encouraged by attorneys from the power leagues — has twice failed to gain consensus among the 68 schools in the SEC, Big 12, ACC and Big Ten. The original version of the document — signed by the SEC but only binding if all power league schools sign — prohibits universities from taking legal action against the CSC. It’s a way to protect the CSC to enforce rules and avoid the death knell of NCAA enforcement — legal challenges from its own member schools.

“Everyone wants to blame the NCAA. The NCAA is us,” Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte said. “We made the rules as a governing body and yet members broke the rules and lawyered up to sue over the rules they created.”

In a presentation from the NCAA convention on Wednesday, Seeley delivered an impassioned 10-minute plea to schools, urging them to sign the participation agreement — a document he refers to as “foundational” to the future — and encouraged administrators to openly support it.

“If there’s a time to stick out your neck, it’s now,” Seeley told the room of conference and school officials.

Investigations could be right around the corner. Seeley says the organization is in the process of notifying several schools of “issues we’re looking into in terms of unreported NIL deals.” The CSC recently hired a 10th member to its staff, which includes at least one former FBI investigator.

Morehead and three other power conference university presidents penned a letter earlier this week encouraging schools to sign the CSC agreement so true enforcement can begin. The situation with the CSC agreement is “the perfect example of why we can’t fix our problems,” said Joe Castiglione, the outgoing athletic director at Oklahoma.

“The CSC is probably a little gun shy to enforce things at the Power Four schools because we basically just fired the NCAA,” Tennessee athletic director Danny White said.

Many administrators attribute some of the ballooning rosters not as much to cap circumvention but to schools “frontloading” athlete contracts last spring. Universities paid millions to players for their 2025 roster before the implementation of the new enforcement entity and the creation of the cap, thus providing them with excess cash to use in the portal for next year’s roster.

“It’s going to take a couple of years to normalize what happened in the frontloading,” said Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark, who says he’s aggressively working toward having the participation agreement signed soon. “CSC is prepared to enforce settlement rules and is making real progress.”

Last summer, ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said that a school may need to be punished to fully realize the effectiveness of the new enforcement arm.

“That needs to happen,” Phillips said. “And if it happens in our league, I won’t feel any differently about it because this is about us trying to settle down the whole entire enterprise.”

Is enforcement on the way?

Sankey gestures toward the NIL Go clearinghouse as one avenue for enforcement by approving and denying third-party compensation to athletes. In the latest figures, the CSC has approved 17,321 deals worth $127.2 million and denied 524 deals worth $14.9 million. Several hundred more are under review.

The organization announced on Friday that it is “concerned” over third-party guarantees to athletes that have not yet been approved and that it is launching inquiries into several programs for unreported NIL deals. If these deals are eventually rejected, athletes may be risking their eligibility.

“If we don’t get the federal legislation and schools don’t legitimately agree to this settlement and do everything we can to follow the spirit of the law, if you don’t get to that place, we’re going to have to look at the other alternatives that allow us to have guardrails,” Baylor president Linda Livingstone, a former chair of the NCAA Board of Governors, told Yahoo Sports in an interview in August.

“The ones you hear most about are some kind of bargaining model,” she continued. “We don’t want an employment model, but everybody recognizes bargaining is something we need to be considering.”

‘What’s old is new again’

Decades ago, even before Mike Slive and Jim Delaney deftly operated the SEC and Big Ten, enforcement and investigations originated from the conference office.

Many administrators believe such conference-only governance provides a way to create rules and enforce those rules — such as tampering, eligibility and the roster cap — without as much legal scrutiny as the NCAA endures.

But for many that also could mean something else: conference-only competition.

“Federal law prevents us from setting unilaterally national standards,” says Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin. “It seems like the only chance you have at setting a standard is a smaller subset of schools. We want to make this a national sport. But according to federal law, it’s a regional sport that happens to have national appeal.”

For years, conferences operated within silos, governing only themselves, investigating and enforcing themselves and playing mostly themselves until the postseason, when bowl games — tethered to specific leagues — arranged end-of-year matchups.

“What’s old is new again,” said one power league athletic director with a laugh here at the convention.

But such a model doesn’t solve all of the problems, Sankey acknowledges, though it’s “helpful to have a more consistent environment and more commonality among decision-makers to make decisions for the group,” he said.

“Regardless of everyone who calls you to pitch their idea, there is no easy button,” Sankey said.

From the convention on Tuesday, NCAA president Charlie Baker doesn’t necessarily disagree on some of these points. In fact, the NCAA plans to undergo what Baker described as a “pretty big review” of rule-making to “figure out where deregulation makes sense.” The vast majority of his membership believes that national standards should exist on academic and eligibility standards, seasons of competition and some level of playing rules. As for the rest of it, he hopes to shift to more “conference-centric.”

“The big question mark on some of this is, ‘Can you create a national championship if you don’t have some framework on how people are engaged?’” he asked.

It’s true.

What if other leagues don’t adopt similar rules and enforce them? One SEC athletic director says it’s “plausible” to have an SEC-only independent enforcement arm, but that could cause problems with national competition.

“If the Big Ten does something different, it doesn’t work,” the official said. “Our coaches would be up our asses.”

That’s why some within the SEC believe that conference-only competition is necessary — at least eventually — if other conferences do not adopt and enforce similar policies.

“l think we’d want to play with the schools following the rules,” said Morehead, the Georgia president. “I think this plan would work because college football fans are focused on the SEC. Look at the TV ratings this past season. Our fans want to see a rules structure.”

The SEC won 13 of the football national championships from 2006-2022. Despite not having a team for a third straight year in the national title game, the league’s viewership continues to top the sport. Twelve of the top 15 most-watched games this season involved an SEC team.

Can it survive only playing among itself? The league may be trading legal antitrust scrutiny for heated political criticism.

Sankey knows this. In fact, unprompted during the interview, he launched into his respect and appreciation for national competition such as the NCAA basketball tournament — one of the most popular events in American sports. Over the last several weeks, Sankey has distributed to his university presidents a history on “how we got to where we are now,” says Keenum, the Mississippi State president.

“The decisions made in the early 2000s, to pull the commissioner’s office out of investigation and enforcement, do we want to make any changes to the current status quo?” Keenum asks. “We are having early preliminary conversations in our conference in light of all the frustrations and without a clearly delineated enforcement and investigative body.”

Some suggest that it should go well beyond a conference-only governance model.

In a wide-ranging story published at Yahoo Sports in June, several power conference athletic directors publicly voiced their support for a collective-bargaining model as a way to establish rules, regulations and some stability.

As the NCAA convention marches onward here, beneath the giant roof of the Gaylord National Resort, everyone seems to be searching for a solution.

Anything but this.

“Lots of people in this league are saying, ‘What is Plan B?’” Texas A&M athletic director Trev Alberts says. “I’d put a really small group together, including current coaches. Put everything on the table. You’re basically saying, ‘If we were going to start over, what would it look like?’ The longer we wait, the deeper the hole gets.”

‘We are money laundering’ — With schools bending (or breaking) new rules, SEC and others mull new governance model