An escalating dispute over the extent of the College Sports Commission’s jurisdiction is now headed to court.
Late Monday, the House v. NCAA class counsel filed a motion asking the court to rein in what they characterized as the CSC’s “overreach” in defining and enforcing a “narrow” category of NIL agreement involving so-called “associated entities or individuals.” The lawyers argue that the CSC has significantly overstepped its intended authority in regulating the types of NIL deals it was designed to oversee.
The motion to enforce the settlement follows a CSC memo issued earlier this month reaffirming the commission’s view that athlete NIL deals involving university multimedia rights partners (MMRs)—such as Learfield or Playfly—as well as certain third-party brand sponsors, should fall within the scope of the CSC’s NIL Go review. Under this approach, such agreements are subject to the same fair market scrutiny applied to deals involving NIL collectives or boosters.
The CSC maintains that this grouping is appropriate when MMRs operate as “facilitators” of NIL transactions that ultimately benefit individual schools.
However, that interpretation has been strongly contested by the House class, as co-counsel Jeffrey Kessler told Sportico in an interview last month. On March 12, the plaintiffs’ lawyers raised the issue in a meeting with representatives of the defendant power conferences, who are in control of the CSC. Instead of resolving the matter, the motion states, “defendants and the CSC have doubled down.”
The House class is now seeking an order from a special master declaring that MMR companies and third-party sponsors are not associated entities and to block what they describe as the CSC’s attempt to “improperly meddle in NIL agreements” that should be outside their purview.
Monday’s motion argues that, unlike NIL collectives or booster organizations, MMRs represent hundreds of schools and “are agnostic to whether one school client performs better than the other.” It further contends that both the text of the House settlement and the history of its negation make clear that the “associated entity” label was intended to apply only to parties with a vested interested in a single school who might offer illegitimate NIL deals designed to influence recruiting.
The motion comes as both sides continue defending the broader settlement before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, where objectors have challenged both its damages and injunctive relief provisions. Among the contentions is that the damages framework—heavily weighted toward football and men’s basketball players—violates Title IX, and that the injunctive relief has led to program cuts and reduced opportunities for many athletes.
