In a dramatic twist to the ongoing College Athlete NIL Litigation, Duke University tennis player Samuel Landau, an NCAA Division I Athlete, has filed a limited objection to the proposed House settlement, accusing the school of luring him with false promises of NIL payments and retaliating when he spoke out.

$45K NIL Deal, Potential False Rumors, and Anti-Semitic Accusations Surface in Filing

The objection, which was filed on Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Oakland division, claims that Duke Men’s Tennis Head Coach Ramsey Smith promised Landau $45,000 in NIL compensation in addition to his scholarship to secure his transfer to Duke in late 2023.

According to the objection, Coach Smith assured Landau and his family multiple times, including in an April 2024 text message to Landau’s mother, that the player would be “well taken care of.” However, once Landau joined the program, he alleges that the NIL money never came through.

The objection, filed by Landau’s attorney, Rodger Landau, paints a troubling picture of alleged misconduct within Duke’s athletic department. It accuses the university of retaliating after Landau raised concerns about the NIL payments. According to the filing,

Coach Smith allegedly spread false rumors that Landau had a drug problem, citing a false statement from University of Texas coach Bruce Berque, which has since been denied in writing by the Texas program.

The filing alleges that Duke officials wrongly suspected Landau, who is Jewish, of running a social media account that was critical of his own team members, invoking what the family describes as an anti-Semitic trope. Landau argues that the current language in the proposed settlement is too broad and could allow Power 5 schools to escape liability for NIL misconduct, including false inducements and broken promises.

He is urging the court to revise the settlement to include expanded audit rights and establish an arbitration process for student-athletes to seek compensation for unpaid NIL deals. He proposes allowing arbitrators to impose penalties of up to $5 million per athlete for proven fraud or retaliation.

If such revisions aren’t made, Landau is calling for Duke University to be excluded from the House Settlement altogether. He argues that Duke, with its $12 billion endowment, has demonstrated an unwillingness to honor NIL commitments and has weaponized its institutional power to suppress dissent.

The NIL era has meant that college athletes can now earn money from their name, image, and likeness through endorsements and sponsorships. Earlier, college athletes were not paid and did not gain monetary benefits from the revenue generated by prestigious college sports programs.

The Ohio State football program has had to navigate a lot of changes in recent years to the game. From having a new College Football Playoff format, to NIL, to the transfer portal, the Buckeyes have done their best to navigate uncharted waters.

Figuring out the transfer portal has been a multi-year process. It has changed every single year since players were allowed to transfer as many times as they want. Now, the Ohio State Buckeyes have to recruit their own players to stay at the end of every season.

That’s something that Day and his coaching staff have been able to do very well over the years. That was on display during the Spring transfer portal window when Ohio State didn’t lose a single scholarship player. That shows that they have mastered the transfer portal.

Ryan Day and the Ohio State football team have mastered the use of the transfer portal

The other good thing about what Day has done is that he hasn’t tried to build an entire roster with just transfer portal players. He has supplemented his normal recruiting with transfer guys. Kids out of high school will always be the priority under Day, which is how it should be.

Day has done a very good job of landing elite players and depth pieces in the portal. Getting guys like Caleb Downs, Will Howard, and Quinshon Judkins is always great, but now he has gotten guys like Phillip Daniels and CJ Donaldson, who will help the depth of the current starters.

The Buckeyes have done one of the best jobs of anyone in the country when it comes to figuring out how to recruit kids from the portal. Day deserves credit for a lot of things, but that’s certainly something that he needs more credit for moving forward.

There’s still little information about the commission that president Donald Trump plans to form a presidential commission looking into college sports. According to a recent article from CBS Sports, the White House has still yet to respond to a request for official comment on the matter.

Ross Dellenger of Yahoo! Sports previously reported that the commission will seek to explore the transfer portal and debate of college athlete employment in the age of NIL. It was said that the commission would seek to “deeply examine the unwieldy landscape of college sports.”

Still, it’s unclear exactly how it will do so or what it hopes to accomplish. American Football Coaches Association executive director Craig Bohl is a name that has been floated to join the commission and revealed he has been in contact with leaders about it but added that nothing is official.

“The only thing that I can say is that the AFCA, we’ve had significant conversations with, what I believe are the stakeholders in college football and our perspective and my perspective is that we listen to all the coaches and we certainly have some insight that I think is unique,” Bohl told CBS Sports. “But as far as the formulation of the commission, I’m not aware that anything has been set in stone. I’ve had dialogue, but there’s not been anybody from that commission to say, ‘Hey Craig, we want you on here.’ I’ve had a dialogue. I just don’t know where it’s all at.”

Former Alabama coach Nick Saban was reported to be serving as co-chair to Trump on the commission. This comes after the two met recently to discuss how the recent rise of NIL has impacted the parity of college sports.

However, Saban even admitted recently that he isn’t entirely sure the exact details on the commission. At this point, perhaps because it is still in its infancy, it doesn’t appear that many people are.

“To be honest with you, I don’t really know much about this commission,” Saban said Wednesday morning ahead of his annual appearance at the Regions Traditions Pro-Am in Birmingham, Alabama, according to BamaOnline. “I don’t really know what the commission will do. I think we know what needs to be done, I just think we need to figure out who’s got the will to do it.

“I learned one thing about coaching all these years: when you get into a subject like this that’s very complex, it’s probably good not to talk about it off the cuff. So I’ll find out more about it, and if there’s something I can do to help college football be better, I’ll always be committed to do that. I was committed to do that as a coach, to help players be more successful in life, and I’d continue to do that same thing now.”

Bohl was a college football coach for 40 years, most notably at Wyoming and North Dakota State. He was on Capitol Hill last month when he addressed members of the House Judiciary Committee at an NIL roundtable in April.

Bohl offered three key recommendations on agent regulation, standardization of contracts and urging congress to create a governing body to oversee NIL issues with coaches serving a formal role on such a body. One would imagine that those would be the same issues he would push hard to fix if part of the committee, and it seems a real possibility he could soon officially be on board with Donald Trump to find a solution that’s best for college sports.

“I know [President Trump] is a big college football fan,” Bohl said. “I do know he cares, and I do know that Coach Saban cares. I think it’s imperative that each lane, whether it’s a commissioner, whether it’s college presidents, whether it’s coaches or student athletes or some members of Congress, that everybody has an opportunity to engage and clarify and offer their perspective on a pathway forward.”  

Just how high Kentucky’s ceiling for the 2025-26 season can reach depends in large part on Otega Oweh‘s NBA Draft decision. If he returns to the Wildcats for another run — as is still expected, although not a lock — the Big Blue Nation can truly begin to dream about what the future might hold this fall.

After an All-SEC season as a junior at Kentucky in 2024-25, Oweh is testing the professional waters. Although he’s not currently projected as one of the 59 picks in next month’s draft, the 6-foot-5 guard impressed at the NBA Draft Combine scrimmages earlier this week in Chicago. Will it be enough to boost his stock and earn the first-round guarantee he’s looking for? That’s yet to be seen.

Oweh still has a handful of post-Combine workouts scheduled with NBA teams beginning next week. He has until May 28 to either stay in the draft or pull his name from the pool of prospects. That’s potentially another 10 days of waiting for the BBN.

But if Oweh ultimately does return, he’s going to receive plenty of love as a preseason All-American candidate. The former Oklahoma Sooner was excellent in his first season at Kentucky, leading the Wildcats in scoring at 16.2 points per outing while chipping in 4.7 rebounds, 1.7 assists, and 1.6 steals for good measure. He shot 49.2 percent from the field and 35.5 percent from deep on his way to making an All-SEC Second Team.

There is some improvement needed within his game, but you won’t find many better college basketball players in 2025-26 than Oweh.

“We’ll see what happens with Otega,” Kentucky head coach Mark Pope recently said on The Sideline with Andy Katz. “He is knocking on the door of this draft, and so we’re cheering for him like crazy. And if he decides to come back, clearly he’d probably come back and be the presumptive SEC Player of the Year.“

After a historically good run last season, the Southeastern Conference as a whole is expected to take a step back in 2025-26. There will still be plenty of deep and talented rosters, but likely not enough to see another 14 schools crack the NCAA Tournament. That opens up a larger window of opportunity for someone like Oweh, who would immediately be considered one of the best players in the SEC — and the country — if/when he announces his return to Lexington.

Led by a likely Preseason SEC Player of the Year candidate in Oweh, Kentucky would be among the best teams in the nation in 2025-26 if Pope can get his star back for one more run.