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Over the past two seasons, a case can be made that there has been a changing of the guard as the Big Ten has arguably surpassed the SEC when it comes to being the top conference in College Football. The Big Ten has won the last two National Championships with 3 of the 4 teams that played in those final games, with Washington leaving the Pac 12.

The biggest reason the Big Ten may have surpassed the SEC is how they’ve been able to handle this NIL and Transfer Portal era. Once programs have been able to figure out this landscape, the Big Ten has won back-to-back Championships and may be able to continue its run of dominance if it can win it all again this season.

On his show “The Herd”, Colin Cowherd laid out why he believes that the Big Ten has been able to surpass the SEC over the last few seasons.

“Big Ten schools are bigger. They have more graduates. It’s easier to raise money for NIL. You add in Phil Knight and the Nike money, add in USC and the LA economy money, the Big Ten cities, LA, New York, Rutgers, Chicago, Northwestern, Minneapolis, DC, Seattle. Big Ten money is Hollywood, tech, and financial centers. A lot of car dealerships in the SEC and car dealerships are running on razor-thin margins. So right now, the top spenders in college football, according to the On3 poll, four of the top seven are Big Ten and that’s not changing.”

Colin Cowherd

The On3 Poll that Colin Cowherd is referring to is one run by On3’s Pete Nakos, as he surveyed individuals directly tied to programs to gain insight into who the biggest spenders in the sport are.

The case that Colin Cowherd is making is true, as the programs have some of the biggest boosters and have built some of the craziest rosters in the sport. Oregon has the backing of Phil Knight and Nike, Michigan had the backing of the 2nd richest man in the world, Larry Ellison, who helped secure Bryce Underwood, and Ohio State’s roster was declared the $20 million roster for a reason.

When you look at some of the SEC programs and their pushes to raise NIL funding, the point becomes clearer. LSU had an impressive offseason because its Head Coach declared he’d match any funds raised up to a million dollars, which allowed the program to drive donations.

On the other hand, several other SEC Programs have figured out how to use NIL to their advantage when building a roster. Texas lines up Lamborghinis every recruiting weekend, throwing their NIL prowess in everyone’s faces. Tennessee publicly made a massive NIL deal to land Nico Iamaleava out of High School and has found creative ways to raise funds.

While it may be too early in the new model of College Football, especially as revenue sharing arrives in the sport, the Big Ten has certainly figured out how to win in this era. If the Big Ten wins the National Championship again this season, it’ll be clear as day that the Big Ten sits above the SEC but this season the power looks to be swinging back toward the SEC.

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BILLINGS — Montana State has gone out of its way to market its student-athletes through the Bobcat Collective, and it’s the faces of the university that are benefiting exponentially.

“My brother, Wilson, is pretty happy for me, but then I tell my borther Mitch and he says, ‘What? How come I didn’t get any of that?’ He gets pretty fired up,” said Montana State senior defensive lineman Paul Brott, whose brothers played previously for the Bobcats.

“They’re paying for me to eat every month, and as you can tell it’s kind of expensive. Probably around 2-3 pounds of beef. A lot of carbs, so the grocery bill is upwards of 200 bucks a week.”

“The Montana Army National Guard one is super cool,” said Montana State women’s basketball player Taylee Chirrick. “We got to fly in a Blackhawk up to Helena, which is crazy. We shot some guns — M4, M249 — shot a machine gun. It was super, super cool to experience. That’s a fun NIL to have.”

For guys like Brott, a few extra bucks in the pocket certainly doesn’t hurt. Brott has put on roughly 80 pounds since arriving in Bozeman years back, but he’s been able to do so in a healthy way.

“Back in the day when I was really bulking, it was six meals a day. Seven if I would sneak one in. It was 6,500, 7,000 calories a day, and when you were done it was like if you moved you were going to throw up,” Brott said. “It would be a lot harder, because with the NIL I’m able to pay for all the stuff I need, to where I might have to eat a little dirtier if I didn’t have the money.”

NIL — a acronym for name, image and likeness — represents a giant shift from times of less than a decade ago where we saw athletes get punished for receiving monetary benefits. Now we see athletes with their faces on t-shirts and trading cards helping inspire the next generation.

With the recent approval of the House settlement, the athletes now have the ability to earn revenue from the school directly.

“It’s so cool. Just to see that you’re a leader for young girls and they look up to you so much. It shows such an impact that you have,” Chirrick said. “To keep playing and keep working hard, it honestly pushes me even more to want to represent Montana and represent these young girls that want to play past high school and push to play college basketball, because it’s a really cool opportunity.”

It’s been a busy summer making appearances, but it certainly makes the college life a bit more comfortable for these Bobcats.

LAS VEGAS — Less than a month into the implementation of the House settlement, college sports’ new enforcement entity is adjusting its approach.

Attorneys for the House plaintiffs have struck an agreement with the power conferences and NCAA officials to amend the decision-making from the industry’s new enforcement arm, the College Sports Commission, related to how booster-backed collectives can compensate athletes. Multiple sources spoke to Yahoo Sports under condition of anonymity.

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As part of the agreement, the College Sports Commission is expected to treat collectives or any “school-associated entity” in a similar fashion as other businesses when determining the legitimacy of third-party NIL deals submitted to the CSC’s NIL Go clearinghouse.

This is a change from the CSC’s previously publicized approach.

According to a memo sent to schools two weeks ago, the CSC — created and administered by the power conferences — explained that it has denied dozens of athlete deals from collectives because it is holding collectives to a higher threshold, announcing that businesses whose sole existence is to pay athletes (i.e. collectives) cannot meet the definition of a “valid business purpose.”

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House plaintiff attorneys Jeffrey Kessler and Steve Berman took issue with that interpretation, sending to the NCAA and power league officials a letter demanding the guidance be retracted and suggesting those rejected deals be reinstated. Kessler, in his letter, threatened to take the issue to the magistrate judge, Nathanael Cousins, who is presiding over House settlement disputes.

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Some of the NIL deals that the CSC rejected while applying the previous guidance will be re-evaluated based on the new approach.

The interpretation of the “valid business purpose” rule is not insignificant.

It is one of two measurements used by the new CSC’s NIL Go clearinghouse to determine the legitimacy of third-party deals. The second is a Deloitte-created “compensation range” standard that deals must fall within.

The change to the valid business purpose standard potentially opens the door for the continuation of school-affiliated, booster-backed collectives to provide athletes with compensation that, if approved by the clearinghouse, does not count against a school’s House settlement revenue-share cap. This provides collectives a path to strike deals with athletes as long as those transactions deliver to the public goods and services for a profit for the organization, such as holding athlete merchandise sales, autograph signings and athlete appearances at, for example, golf tournaments.

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The resolution creates what administrators term more of a “soft cap” as opposed to a hard cap, as SEC commissioner Greg Sankey described it last week in an interview with Yahoo Sports. The expectation is that collectives will create legal ways to provide additional compensation, as Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti described Monday in an interview with Yahoo Sports from Big Ten media days.

“When something works, it gets copied,” he said. “Things happening out there to provide additional NIL deals for student athletes that make sense and are allowed under rules, you’re going to see more versions of that.”

The change also, at least for now, prevents a legal challenge from leaders of a group of NIL collectives who began drafting a lawsuit against the CSC’s approach. Over the last four years, collectives have served as the driving force for schools to compensate athletes, raising millions in booster money to provide schools a way to recruit and retain players.

However, the CSC’s original interpretation of the “valid business purpose” definition, and resulting denials of collective deals, speaks to one of administrators’ goals of the settlement — to shift athlete pay from these booster-run organizations to the schools, which are now permitted to directly share revenue with athletes under the capped system that began July 1. That said, many schools are still operating their collectives as a way to, perhaps, circumvent the system.

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For example, schools continue to operate their collectives — some out of fear that others are doing the same and some believing that the settlement will fail under the weight of legal challenges.

“We know that some people are saying, ‘We’re not worried because we don’t think they can really enforce it.’” Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin told Yahoo Sports last week from SEC media days. “They don’t think NIL contracts are going to get kicked back [by the clearinghouse] or they think they’re not going to be able to win long-term [legal challenges] because of players rights.”

Ultimately, Sankey suggested, schools hold authority to control their own affiliated collectives.

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“For how long have people been begging for guardrails?” Sankey asked. “Well, now we have guardrails. Those broadly across the country that claim they wanted guardrails need to operate within the guardrails. If you allow what’s happened to continue to escalate, there would be a very small number of programs that would be competitive with each other and we’d not have a national sport or a national championship.”

The resolution may not completely end what will likely be continuous negotiations over particular enforcement rules between the power leagues controlling the CSC and the House plaintiff attorneys, who hold authority and veto powers over various aspects of the settlement.

Petitti cautioned Tuesday that more such negotiations are expected in the future.

“I don’t think it will be the last time that an issue comes up in the process,” he said. “The settlement approval came later than expected. It compressed the time period.”

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The guidance change may also not prevent future legal challenges over other enforcement aspects, including Deloitte’s compensation range concept or the appeals arbitration system that athletes can use for deals denied a second time.

The CSC, in its first month of existence, is reliant on athletes submitting deals. Athletes are required to submit any third-party deal of $600 or more to an NIL clearinghouse, NIL Go. Those deals flagged by NIL Go are sent to the CSC and its new leader, Bryan Seeley, to determine an enforcement decision. As of two weeks ago, more than 100 deals were denied and at least 100 more were under review. More than 1,500 deals had been approved.