College Sports
What is NIL Go, and why is it the latest subject of debate among college sports leaders?
ORLANDO, Fla. — The man steps onto a raised platform, walks behind a podium and leans toward the microphone. Before him, more than 200 college athletic administrators shift to the front of their seats. For months now, they’ve been waiting for this moment. Advertisement “I’m Karl,” the man says, “with Deloitte.” Karl Schaefer is a […]

ORLANDO, Fla. — The man steps onto a raised platform, walks behind a podium and leans toward the microphone.
Before him, more than 200 college athletic administrators shift to the front of their seats. For months now, they’ve been waiting for this moment.
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“I’m Karl,” the man says, “with Deloitte.”
Karl Schaefer is a young man with perfectly cropped hair, a sharp grin and slender frame. He is here to lead a 40-minute presentation on the single most talked-about concept of college athletics’ new revenue-sharing era: the Deloitte-run clearinghouse dubbed “NIL Go.”
Though it remains unsaid by those in power, the goal of NIL Go is quite clear: prevent booster payments to athletes that, for four years now, have been masquerading as commercial and endorsement deals.
As Schaefer flips through slides of the NIL Go software system, for the first time revealed publicly, whispers within the room build to murmurs. Attendees capture slides with photos. Some video the entire event. Others scribble notes on a pad.
How Deloitte and the new enforcement entity, the College Sports Commission, plan to prevent booster pay is the target of much criticism and fascination — plenty of it shrouded in secrecy for the last many months.
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In central Florida, at an annual conference of administrators this week, the shroud was at least partially lifted. Not only was the platform’s interface shown on a giant projection screen during Schaefer’s presentation — including the six-step submission and approval process — but, in interviews with Yahoo Sports or during other public presentations, college sports executives who helped craft the system answered questions that, up to this point, had remained unanswered.
While many doubt that the clearinghouse will withstand inevitable legal challenges, administrators here provided legitimate reasons for why they believe in its long-term survival. Most notable of those, says NCAA president Charlie Baker, is that the clearinghouse’s appeals process — arbitration — is equipped with subpoena powers.
“They do have that power,” Baker told Yahoo Sports this week. “Arbitration typically has subpoena power and I’m pretty sure since this one sits inside an injunction, they will have it.”
Officials at the power conferences confirmed that “significant subpoena powers” exist under the arbitration appeals process, but those powers are less expansive than subpoena authority within a courtroom. The decision to use subpoena powers and how exactly to use them — limited or broad — is expected to rest with the arbitrator presiding over the appeals process.
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A subpoena compels individuals or entities to produce evidence under penalty of law, such as turning over text messages, emails and phone call logs as well as testifying before investigators. It is one of the more important tools for officers of the law, such as police investigators — and something that was never available to the NCAA enforcement staff.
“We won’t have complete subpoena power, but if an athlete goes into arbitration … those records, you can get access to some of those records,” said Ohio State athletic director Ross Bjork, who is a member of a settlement implementation committee that helped construct the new enforcement entity.
“It’s going to be a new day.”
The algorithm
Back in the Deloitte presentation room, Schaefer is explaining the submission process for NIL Go. Athletes are required to submit third-party NIL deals of $600 or more using a web-based submission system, not unlike an online registration system for, say, a passport.
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Shaefer explains, gesturing toward a giant projection screen, that the clearinghouse makes three determinations once a deal is submitted:
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Is the third party an “associated entity” with the university, such as a booster, or a business contracted with a school like a university sponsor or apparel brand? If so, more intense scrutiny is applied in the vetting process. Public companies can, and many of them will, be deemed as associated entities.
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Is the deal for a “valid business purpose?” The third-party business, brand or individual must be receiving true value from the activities, such as an autograph session, television commercial or speaking engagement.
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Is the deal within Deloitte’s “range of compensation” paid to similarly situated individuals? This is perhaps the most criticized of the concepts. Deloitte created “the range of compensation” through an algorithm using fair market value analysis, comparing similar types of NIL deals struck between an athlete and the third party.
More is now known about that algorithm.
Clemson athletic director Graham Neff, one of the implementation committee members, details the factors used to form a compensation range: “Athletic performance is a big part of it. Your social media reach and following. Market — where schools are at. The reach of your school within said market.”
This will vary by school. Neff offers an example. “The reach of Georgia Tech in Atlanta is different than the reach of Georgia State,” he says.
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Neff believes that a “majority” of NIL deals will derive from “associated companies,” as school sponsors, multi-media rights partners and individual alumni and boosters work to provide universities with additional compensation so they can exceed the $20.5 million revenue sharing cap that each school is afforded. Third-party NIL compensation that passes the clearinghouse does not count against the cap.
Even those who helped craft the new enforcement entity acknowledge that the system is attempting to do a very difficult thing: bring regulation to an enterprise that has, for four years now, seen little to no regulation or enforcement of athlete compensation.
“There’s some toothpaste back in the tube a little bit given the environment,” Neff said.
For example, Deloitte officials claim that 70% of past deals from booster collectives would have been denied in their algorithm, while 90% of past deals from public companies would have been approved. Deloitte has also shared with officials that about 80% of NIL deals with public companies were valued at less than $10,000 and 99% of those deals were valued at less than $100,000.
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These figures suggest that the clearinghouse threatens to significantly curtail the millions of dollars that school-affiliated, booster-backed collectives are distributing to athletes.
“No one is trying to restrict someone’s earning potential, but what we’re trying to say is, ‘What is the real market?’” Bjork says. “Everybody you talk to about the pro market will tell you that NIL deals for pro athletes are really small. In the collective world, we created a false market.”
Denial, approval and arbitration
Displayed on the giant screen before hundreds of athletic administrators is the six-step clearinghouse submission and approval process.
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Step 6 lays out the process for a player if his or her deal is denied by the clearinghouse because it either is not struck for a valid business purpose or it does not meet the compensation range.
(1) Revise and resubmit the deal so that the compensation amount falls within the algorithm’s range. For instance, if the clearinghouse deems that a submitted $1 million deal should be $500,000, the athlete can resubmit for $500,000 and the school, if it so chooses, can compensate the athlete for the other $500,000 through its revenue-share pool.
(2) Cancel the deal completely.
(3) Request arbitration as an appeals process.
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(4) Accept the rejected deal as is. In this case, the athlete “may face enforcement consequences (e.g., loss of eligibility),” the Deloitte presentation slide reads.
According to settlement terms, attorneys for the plaintiffs (the suing athletes) and defendants (NCAA and power conferences) will work together to select a neutral arbitrator or arbitrators to preside over these cases. Individual arbitration processes are expected to last no more than 45 days.
In an interview last fall, plaintiff lawyer Jeffrey Kessler described the arbitration as a trial-like set of hearings in front of an arbitrator — the new enforcement entity on one side (NCAA and power conferences) and the athlete on the other side.
NCAA president Charlie Baker says the new NIL enforcement process will add accountability to the system, as long as athletes and schools follow the rules. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
(Kevin Dietsch via Getty Images)
How an arbitrator rules may “depend on what evidence” each side produces, Kessler said. As Baker and others have noted, that evidence may now be generated through limited subpoena power.
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But one lingering question remains: Will an athlete’s school fight alongside him or her in the case? “I expect that if the athlete pursues it, the school will support the athlete and help provide the athlete with counsel to help represent them in that challenge,” Kessler said.
Penalties for NIL violations
Implementation committee members say they are finalizing a “menu” of penalties for those found to commit violations within this new revenue-sharing era, most notably those found to have (1) circumvented the cap with old-fashioned cheating or intentional or accidental miscalculations; and (2) tampered with another college athlete or prospect who is under contract.
Officials decided against using a set penalty matrix as the NCAA currently does (Level I, Level II, etc.). Instead, they are providing the new College Sports Commission CEO, Brian Seeley, with the flexibility to choose penalties from a wide range of options, depending on the individual circumstance.
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“Those penalties being worked through are going to be significant and are going to be different than any penalties we’ve had previously,” said new Michigan State athletic director J Batt, a member of the implementation committee.
An example of a new kind of penalty is a reduction in transfers that a school can acquire from the portal, Bjork says. But there are others. A postseason ban remains among the penalties, said Desiree Reed-Francois, the Arizona athletic director and implementation committee member.
There are also stiff fines — multi-million dollars in value — that may be levied against schools, administrators and coaches. Suspensions, for coaches and administrators, are on the penalty menu as well.
“The fines are substantive,” Reed-Francois says.
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One penalty is off the table. Administrators say that reducing a school’s revenue-share pool for subsequent years is not permitted. The settlement guarantees that schools are afforded the same revenue share pool.
Pushback
The clearinghouse has made its way to the U.S. Capitol.
During a congressional hearing over college sports on Thursday, Rep. Lori Trahan, a Democrat from Massachusetts, chided college leaders for instituting a new enforcement process that “guarantees people in power always win and the athletes who fuel this multi-billion dollar industry always lose.”
One of the witnesses in that hearing, Ramogi Huma, the executive director of the National College Players Association, chimed in as well, accusing the NCAA and conference leadership as wanting to “shut down boosters’ ability to pay players just to monopolize it” themselves.
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College executives reject these notions and consider all of these elements — even the new enforcement process — as protected by a legally binding settlement. The new enforcement entity was not created by committee members in some “backroom,” Bjork says. The implementation committee only provided structure to an enforcement piece that is “codified” within the settlement.
“There are processes here that have been approved by the court and the plaintiffs and the defendants that people are going to be expected to follow,” Baker told Yahoo Sports. “Given so much of what’s been going on in the third-party space hasn’t been accountable or transparent, and has made a lot of people outside of college athletics a lot of money, I can understand why there might be some grumpiness about this.”
Soon, power conference schools — and others opting into the settlement — are expected to sign an affiliation or membership agreement. With this binding document, schools waive their right to sue over enforcement decisions and commit to settlement terms, even if their state laws contradict them.
The agreement — itself the subject of legal concerns, even from some schools — is an indictment on an industry of stakeholders that, for competitive reasons, are constantly scrambling to bend, break and shatter rules to gain even the slightest edge.
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Earlier this week in Orlando, members of the implementation committee publicly implored schools to follow rules.
“This has to be a mindset change,” Bjork told the audience. “We see all the reports and naysayers, that ‘we’re going to go back to old-school cheating and all these things and that this is not going to work.’ This has to work.”
“This will work if we make it work,” Reed-Francois said. “We need to shift our mindset and make this work.”
Can it be done? But what if athletes decide not to submit any of their third-party deals at all?
“People will be turning in people,” Reed-Francois said. “There’s a lot more `transparency now.”
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Back in the convention hall, Schaefer, from Deloitte, is winding down his presentation. He thanks the crowd before beginning to walk off the stage.
From among the crowd, a few raised hands emerge. Folks have questions.
Others in the audience remind the hand-raisers of something announced before the presentation began: The Deloitte employees are not taking questions.
College Sports
CFB Analyst Explains College Football’s Ongoing Turmoil Despite House Settlement Deal
College football has undergone several changes in recent years because of the introduction of NIL. While this is great for players, it has caused many issues, which led to the recent house settlement deal. This deal implemented a new system that will allow teams to pay their players directly. However, despite the recent implementation of […]

College football has undergone several changes in recent years because of the introduction of NIL. While this is great for players, it has caused many issues, which led to the recent house settlement deal. This deal implemented a new system that will allow teams to pay their players directly.
However, despite the recent implementation of the deal, many still feel like there is chaos in the college football world. On Saturday, analyst Adam Breneman posted a video on Instagram, giving three reasons why there is still turmoil following the house settlement.
“I don’t even know what the rules are. That’s what a college football head coach at a major program just said in July. It’s not just any coach, it’s a coach making $5 million per year, who won his conference’s coach of the year trophy last season, Kenny Dillingham. He’s also saying this after the house settlement went into effect. The final decision was intended to give college football leaders answers and rules to finally follow.
“Why does it feel like there’s no rules in college sports despite the United States judicial branch getting involved? There’s three major reasons. The first reason is schools are making big contract offers to recruits that are over the cap. One way they’re doing this is by front-loading the money. The second reason college football still feels like anarchy is schools are guaranteeing third-party NIL deals. That is technically against new revenue sharing rules but every team is trying to find ways to skirt the system,” he said.
Breneman continued the conversation with one more reason for turmoil in college football following the house settlement. He explained that part of the reason teams have continued to try to skirt the rules is because teams do not think they will be punished for delving into grey areas of the rules. They are willing to take the risk until the NCAA proves that there will be real enforcement of the rules.

What Is the College Football House Settlement Deal?
The house settlement deal is a result of three antitrust lawsuits against the NCAA, which claimed the NCAA limited the earning power of college athletes. This settlement will pay nearly $2.8 billion in back damages to athletes over the next 10 years.
Additionally, the settlement resulted in the implementation of an annual salary cap for teams. According to ESPN, the annual cap is expected to start this coming season with a roughly $20.5 million cap per school. However, according to Adam Breneman, it appears that teams are already trying to skirt the rules.
College Sports Network has you covered with the latest news, analysis, insights, and trending stories in college football, men’s college basketball, women’s college basketball, and college baseball!
College Sports
Wilkins re-signs with Stingrays | Pro Hockey News
NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. – The South Carolina Stingrays, ECHL affiliate of the National Hockey League’s Washington Capitals and American Hockey League’s Hershey Bears, announced that the team has signed forward Josh Wilkins to a contract for the 2025-26 season. Now entering his fourth season with the Stingrays, Wilkins, 28, has been a strong offensive player […]

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. – The South Carolina Stingrays, ECHL affiliate of the National Hockey League’s Washington Capitals and American Hockey League’s Hershey Bears, announced that the team has signed forward Josh Wilkins to a contract for the 2025-26 season.
Now entering his fourth season with the Stingrays, Wilkins, 28, has been a strong offensive player since arriving in South Carolina, consistently producing nearly a point per game over the past three seasons.
Wilkins was a key offensive player for the Stingrays during the 2024-25 regular season, leading the team with 58 points (22g-36a) across 59 games. He carried that momentum into the postseason, leading the team with 7 points (4g-3a) in seven games of the 2025 Kelly Cup Playoffs.
This summer, Wilkins will be playing for Team 3ICE Tennessee in the 3ICE professional three-on-three summer ice hockey league.

Wilkins enters his sixth season of professional hockey with experience across multiple leagues, including 81 AHL games split between the Milwaukee Admirals and Tucson Roadrunners, where he has recorded 20 points (6g-14a).
During his time in the ECHL, Wilkins has been a consistent offensive presence, totaling 158 points (63g-95a) in 163 games. A product of Providence College, Wilkins has also skated overseas, suiting up for Sweden’s Hockey Allsvenskan during the 2021-22 campaign and spending part of the 2023-24 season in Slovakia with HK Dukla Michalovce.
College Sports
Will revenue sharing, NIL restrictions bring more level playing field to college athletics, or is more action needed?
On July 1, college sports entered a new frontier. For the first time ever, universities began directly paying their players as part of the “House v. NCAA” settlement. The settlement allows each university to pay its student-athletes up to $20.5 million per year, which works out to approximately 22% of the average athletic department revenue […]

On July 1, college sports entered a new frontier.
For the first time ever, universities began directly paying their players as part of the “House v. NCAA” settlement. The settlement allows each university to pay its student-athletes up to $20.5 million per year, which works out to approximately 22% of the average athletic department revenue at Power Four schools. The vast majority of that money will go to pay athletes in football and men’s basketball, the two most revenue-generating sports for most universities.
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With the revenue-sharing agreement comes a crackdown on NIL (name, image and likeness) deals. Prior to revenue sharing, the NIL was the Wild West, and essentially boiled down to pay for play.
The new system attempts to make NIL what it was originally intended to be — sponsorship opportunities for athletes at a true market value.
“Biggest issue is we’ve got to have somewhat of a level playing field with the NIL space, I shouldn’t say NIL, but with what we’re paying them.”
Utah coach Kyle Whittingham
Every NIL deal will now be sent through a clearinghouse managed by accounting firm Deloitte, which will assess those deals and has the ability to approve or deny each NIL deal according to if it meets “fair market value.”
Already, the system is working, sending some NIL deals back for reworking — including a few at the University of Utah.
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“I will say with the settlement, with the cap, with NIL Go and our athletes have been submitting on NIL Go. Since the settlement was decided three or four weeks ago, the turnaround has been pretty quick,” Utah athletic director Mark Harlan said in an interview on ESPN 700.
Utah Director of Athletics Mark Harlan speaks at a press conference to introduce Alex Jensen the new head coach for the University of Utah men’s basketball team at the Jon M. Huntsman Center in Salt Lake City on Monday, March 17, 2025. | Tess Crowley, Deseret News
“We’ve had all but a few approved here at Utah, the ones that haven’t been approved, we go back and we help the student-athlete restructure to make sure it’s in that range of compensation.”
From the beginning, Harlan has said Utah will be “all-in” on revenue sharing. Men’s basketball player Keanu Dawes was the first to receive a revenue-sharing deal from the university, with others, including football players, following shortly after.
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Utah was able to retain key players like offensive tackles Spencer Fano and Caleb Lomu, cornerback Smith Snowden and others, and got New Mexico quarterback Devon Dampier and Washington State running back Wayshawn Parker out of the transfer portal.
“We’re excited to be able to, again, to have a dramatic increase for what football had,” Harlan said. “You don’t retain two first-rounders (Fano and Lomu) and guys like Smith Snowden and others if you don’t have capital and great donors involved. It’s never enough because there’s always someone that’s got more, obviously Texas Tech.”
Texas Tech, as Harlan mentioned, has made waves in the past year, signing one of the top transfer classes this offseason, including Stanford edge rusher David Bailey and North Carolina offensive tackle Howard Sampson, spending over $10 million, according to The Athletic.
California Power’s Felix Ojo during OT7 Week 2 Sunday, March 23, 2025, in Dallas. | Jessica Tobias Associated Press
Texas Tech followed that up by signing five-star high school offensive tackle Felix Ojo, who will receive “an annual compensation of $775,000 per year for three years from Tech’s revenue-sharing pool,” according to The Athletic.
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There was a mad dash to sign and pay out NIL deals before July 1; deals paid out thereafter would be subject to review by Deloitte. One NIL deal platform, Opendorse, had its biggest day in company history on June 30, processing nearly $20 million in payments.
“There’s teams that are front-loading all the extra money they had prior to the rev share kicking in,” Utah coach Kyle Whittingham said. “We got teams spending supposedly $50 million or more on players, and that’s five, six times what we got.”
The Houston Chronicle reported that Texas will spend $35-$40 million on its 2025 roster, between revenue sharing and NIL deals, many of which were signed before the NIL clearinghouse went into effect.
“Biggest issue is we’ve got to have somewhat of a level playing field with the NIL space, I shouldn’t say NIL, but with what we’re paying them,” Whittingham said.
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“Bottom line, they’re professionals, they’re getting paid like professionals and we’ve got to get a handle on that. We can’t have X amount of schools paying, spending $50 million on rosters and the rest of us $12 million … There’s about 12 teams that’ll have a chance to win it all every year and that’s it. So I would say leveling the playing field with a salary cap, again, back to the NFL model, and making things more uniform. It works in the NFL, so why can’t it work at this level?”
The big question around college sports is this — will the revenue-sharing cap and “true market value NIL” bring a sense of parity in terms of what teams can spend?
That’s the hope — but Whittingham is unsure if it will work in practice.
“I don’t think the rev share is an equalizer or is going to be the equalizer that everyone thinks it’s going to be because they’re going to circumvent it,” Whittingham said.
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“They’ll find ways around it just like everyone always has. And so you’re still going to see a big disparity in the opportunity to build rosters. But again, until we get to an NFL model, where there’s a salary cap and that’s it, and if you break that cap, then you get huge penalties — I mean huge penalties, then it’s not going to work.”
Fueled by the infusion of money into the space, the unlimited transfer portal has turned college football from a place where players would be developed for three or four years at one school into one in which half or more of every annual roster is comprised of new players.
“Instead of 20 or 30 guys turning over each year, it’s 60 guys. Half your roster is new,” Whittingham said.
The new age, where players can transfer without penalty, has both helped and hurt the Utes. This offseason, Utah lost star defensive tackle Keanu Tanuvasa to BYU and star cornerback Cam Calhoun to Alabama. After spring practices, promising receiver Zacharyus Williams took off for USC.
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Meanwhile, Utah has used the transfer portal to its advantage with players like Dampier, Parker, Cal receiver Tobias Merriweather and cornerbacks Don Saunders (Texas A&M) and Blake Cotton (UC Davis).
Even players not in the transfer portal are being contacted to play for other schools.
In a video published by the Daily Universe’s Sam Foster, Snowden replied to a question about if BYU reached out to him this offseason.
“It wasn’t directly to me,” Snowden replied. “… BYU wasn’t the only school (to reach out), it’s kind of what the name of the game is right, with the transfer portal. I wouldn’t say that it was any tampering type thing, it was more of agents and all that type of stuff.”
Nowhere else in sports is every player a free agent after every season, except in college sports right now. But after the NCAA and the Department of Justice reached a settlement in 2024, the NCAA was permanently barred from restricting a player’s eligibility. In the previous iteration of the rules, athletes had to sit out a year before joining their new team.
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A solution to all of it could be collective bargaining, just like what happens in all of professional sports, but the implementation could be extremely difficult.
Collective bargaining could make players employees of the schools, set a clear total salary cap and perhaps create contracts that lock a player into a school for a certain number of years.
Nearly every Big 12 coach at media days told Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger that they support employment/collective bargaining.
“I think it’s heading that way,” Whittingham said of collective bargaining.
“I don’t know if I support or don’t support it. I know that the system we have in place is not sustainable and even with the rev share and the changes that have been made, I’m still not buying the fact that it’s the answer.”
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Whittingham supports going to an NFL minor league model, he said this week.
“I realize when you say, well, college football’s not the NFL, but the NFL has been doing some good things for a lot of years and we ought to take some pages from them on how to implement salary cap, collective bargaining if it comes to that,” Whittingham said.
“I think that’s the only real way to get a grasp and a handle on things. As distasteful as it might sound to some people, I think an NFL minor league model is the best direction to head personally. That’s my own opinion.”
Whittingham has long said that there will eventually be a “super conference,” and he doubled down on that this week.
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“I still believe that super conference concept is on its way. I really buy into that and I think that there’ll be X amount of teams that break away. They’ll have their own conference commissioner and they’ll do things the way they want to do and everyone else is going to kind of have to fend for themselves,” Whittingham said.
Another avenue for change in college sports would be congressional action.
On Thursday, members of the House of Representatives introduced a bipartisan bill — the SCORE act — that would make conferences exempt from antitrust lawsuits and would let the NCAA once again set parameters “for the manner in which a student-athlete may transfer between institutions, if such rules provide that at least one occasion each student-athlete may transfer between institutions and be immediately eligible.”
It would also codify into law the House settlement, including the current 22% revenue-sharing cap and the new NIL rules. NIL deals would need to serve a “valid business purpose” and have fair market value compensation.
“Instead of 20 or 30 guys turning over each year, it’s 60 guys. Half your roster is new.”
Utah coach Kyle Whittingham
The bill wouldn’t advance collective bargaining, in fact, it would prevent college athletes from being employees of their schools, conferences or an athletic association
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The bill would also provide protections for athletes, such as requiring schools to provide “coverage of medical expenses for athletic injuries for up to 3 years post-enrollment,” and would cap agent fees at 5%.
It would also establish a process for registering and certifying agents and “setting parameters for the ability of member institutions to negotiate with agents who are not registered under such process.”
Capping agent fees is something Whittingham is in favor of.
“I think it would help the players. Some of these guys are taking 20, 25% from these guys. That’s outlandish. It should be 3 to 5%, just like the NFL is, and certification would be certainly, absolutely a step in the right direction.”
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One thing is clear from talking to coaches across the Big 12 — the current system is unsustainable.
Whether through the new NIL rules and revenue-sharing cap being tightly enforced, collective bargaining or an act of Congress, the powers that be feel like change needs to come to college sports.
Coaches and media participate in the Big 12 NCAA college football media days in Frisco, Texas, Tuesday, July 8, 2025. Utah coach Kyle Whittingham will take center stage in Frisco, Texas, Wednesday, along with seven other Big 12 head coaches. | LM Otero, Associated Press
College Sports
Myers: Big money signings the latest twist in college hockey’s new world
At the 2023 NCAA Frozen Four in Tampa, Fla., Gophers coach Bob Motzko took questions before the tournament with future NHLers like Logan Cooley, Ryan Johnson and Jimmy Snuggerud flanking him. On that day, just over two years ago, Motzko was asked about how name, image and likeness money was affecting other college sports and […]

At the 2023 NCAA Frozen Four in Tampa, Fla., Gophers coach Bob Motzko took questions before the tournament with future NHLers like Logan Cooley, Ryan Johnson and Jimmy Snuggerud flanking him. On that day, just over two years ago, Motzko was asked about how name, image and likeness money was affecting other college sports and how it might affect NCAA hockey in the future.
“Hockey is behind a little bit in the conversation,” Motzko said, perhaps inadvertently quoting Minnesota music legend Bob Dylan in his answer. “I think it’s going to be a conversation that’s going to heat up more and more in hockey over the next couple of years. We just don’t have that many teams compared to football and basketball. But it’s starting to heat up. And there are more discussions. You’re hearing million-dollar deals for football and basketball. Our players get burritos. But I think times are changing.”
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It’s 27 months later. And the times have changed in a big, big way.
Gavin McKenna, a Canadian forward with eye-popping offensive numbers in major junior hockey is 17 years old and projected by many experts to be the top overall pick in the 2026 NHL draft. Last week, he was reportedly offered $250,000 to attend Michigan State in the fall and skate for a Spartans team that returns one of the nation’s top goalies in Trey Augustine. The Spartans are a not-overly-risky bet to win the Big Ten’s first NCAA hockey title since an underdog Spartans team did it in 2007.
After visiting campus and mulling their official bid, McKenna handed Michigan State a polite ‘No thank you,’ and instead opted to skate for conference rival Penn State next season. That decision came after the Nittany Lions – who are coming off the program’s first Frozen Four appearance – were able to reportedly triple Michigan State’s monetary offer.
Tilting ice
Over the past 15 years, the money game is the fourth seismic shift to hit the world of college hockey, which involves roughly 60 teams from Alaska in the West to Maine in the East and as far South as Arizona State’s rapidly emerging program.
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The first came in 2010 when Terry Pegula, the billionaire owner of the NHL’s Buffalo Sabres and the NFL’s Buffalo Bills, gave more than $100 million to his alma mater, Penn State, to build an arena that facilitated the Nittany Lions’ move from club to Division I hockey. That made for a half-dozen Big Ten schools with hockey programs (with the Nittany Lions joining Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Ohio State and Wisconsin). In short order, the Big Ten became the first Power Five conference to include hockey, and long-standing, hockey-only conferences like the Western Collegiate Hockey Association and the original Central Collegiate Hockey Association either disbanded or radically changed their membership.
The next two changes came in the past five years, as NIL meant, for the first time, college athletes could get paid for the use of their name, image and likeness without losing their NCAA eligibility.
While football and basketball players were receiving six-figure deals from the start, the immediate impact on hockey was players hosting summer hockey camps, websites giving players a few hoodies in exchange for the use of an athlete’s name, and the aforementioned free burritos, with the Mexican chain Chipotle signing several Gophers skaters to endorse their food.
With the money offered to top players skyrocketing, there seems to be a movement afoot in Dinkytown to get the Gophers more involved in that game. Last month, social media posts were sent and a bare-bones website went live announcing the Golden Helmet Collective, which is lacking detail, but seems to be the start of a hockey-specific effort to raise NIL money for future Gophers.
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The opening of the transfer portal allowed players to move from one program to another without having to sit out or lose eligibility. This brought de facto free agency to college hockey, where smaller schools are now routinely losing their top players to bigger schools after a year or two.
One coach in Atlantic Hockey America, which is home to mid-major programs like Air Force, Bentley, Mercyhurst and Robert Morris, compared their conference to a shopping center, where many of the six players named to the AHA all-rookie team one season are likely to be playing in the Big Ten or Hockey East by the time they’re sophomores.
The Gophers have been sporadic but effective users of the transfer portal, bringing in players like NHL first-rounder Matthew Wood from Connecticut and goalie Liam Souliere, who backstopped much of last season’s Big Ten title run, from Penn State.
Open borders
In November 2024, a lawsuit prompted the NCAA to allow players from Canadian major junior leagues to maintain college hockey eligibility, which had not been the case for the past four decades or so. Because major junior players often receive a stipend of a few hundred dollars per month for living expenses, they were long considered professionals in the eyes of the NCAA. So in 2012 when current Minnesota Wild forward Ryan Hartman, who was committed to play college hockey at Miami of Ohio, went to play for a major junior team instead, his NCAA eligibility disappeared.
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The opening up of major junior players to college recruitment has meant a windfall of new talent available to NCAA programs. McKenna is just the latest player from the Canadian leagues to pack for a home on campus in the fall, with Wild prospect Ryder Ritchie (Boston University), defenseman Benjamin Vigneault (Bemidji State), defenseman Henry Mews (Michigan), left winger Blake Montgomery (Wisconsin), defenseman Ethan Armstrong (Minnesota State Mankato), left winger Nathan Piling (St. Thomas), defenseman Grayden Siepmann (Minnesota Duluth) and center Cayden Lindstrom (Michigan State) all moving from major junior to college hockey in the fall.
North Dakota, which is a program in transition after a coaching change in the spring, landed two of the top players from the Victoria (B.C.) Royals, center Cole Rischny and defenseman Keaton Verhoeff.
McKenna made his future Nittany Lions announcement live on ESPN SportsCenter, in a move reminiscent of LeBron James and his infamous, nationally-televised “Decision” from 2010. While some decried the big-money signing as an omen of college hockey’s demise, others noted that having the sport covered on national TV in the middle of the summer, and attracting the top young talent on ice, at least for one season, is a net positive, even as the sport goes through yet another recent change.
Whatever your personal opinion, it’s clear that the future of college hockey has arrived. And for programs large and small to attract and keep the game’s best players, more than burritos will be required.
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College Sports
Big money signings the latest twist in college hockey’s new world – Twin Cities
At the 2023 NCAA Frozen Four in Tampa, Fla., Gophers coach Bob Motzko took questions before the tournament with future NHLers like Logan Cooley, Ryan Johnson and Jimmy Snuggerud flanking him. On that day, just over two years ago, Motzko was asked about how name, image and likeness money was affecting other college sports and […]

At the 2023 NCAA Frozen Four in Tampa, Fla., Gophers coach Bob Motzko took questions before the tournament with future NHLers like Logan Cooley, Ryan Johnson and Jimmy Snuggerud flanking him. On that day, just over two years ago, Motzko was asked about how name, image and likeness money was affecting other college sports and how it might affect NCAA hockey in the future.
“Hockey is behind a little bit in the conversation,” Motzko said, perhaps inadvertently quoting Minnesota music legend Bob Dylan in his answer. “I think it’s going to be a conversation that’s going to heat up more and more in hockey over the next couple of years. We just don’t have that many teams compared to football and basketball. But it’s starting to heat up. And there are more discussions. You’re hearing million-dollar deals for football and basketball. Our players get burritos. But I think times are changing.”
It’s 27 months later. And the times have changed in a big, big way.
Gavin McKenna, a Canadian forward with eye-popping offensive numbers in major junior hockey is 17 years old and projected by many experts to be the top overall pick in the 2026 NHL draft. Last week, he was reportedly offered $250,000 to attend Michigan State in the fall and skate for a Spartans team that returns one of the nation’s top goalies in Trey Augustine. The Spartans are a not-overly-risky bet to win the Big Ten’s first NCAA hockey title since an underdog Spartans team did it in 2007.
After visiting campus and mulling their official bid, McKenna handed Michigan State a polite ‘No thank you,’ and instead opted to skate for conference rival Penn State next season. That decision came after the Nittany Lions – who are coming off the program’s first Frozen Four appearance – were able to reportedly triple Michigan State’s monetary offer.
Tilting ice
Over the past 15 years, the money game is the fourth seismic shift to hit the world of college hockey, which involves roughly 60 teams from Alaska in the West to Maine in the East and as far South as Arizona State’s rapidly emerging program.
The first came in 2010 when Terry Pegula, the billionaire owner of the NHL’s Buffalo Sabres and the NFL’s Buffalo Bills, gave more than $100 million to his alma mater, Penn State, to build an arena that facilitated the Nittany Lions’ move from club to Division I hockey. That made for a half-dozen Big Ten schools with hockey programs (with the Nittany Lions joining Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Ohio State and Wisconsin). In short order, the Big Ten became the first Power Five conference to include hockey, and long-standing, hockey-only conferences like the Western Collegiate Hockey Association and the original Central Collegiate Hockey Association either disbanded or radically changed their membership.
The next two changes came in the past five years, as NIL meant, for the first time, college athletes could get paid for the use of their name, image and likeness without losing their NCAA eligibility.
While football and basketball players were receiving six-figure deals from the start, the immediate impact on hockey was players hosting summer hockey camps, websites giving players a few hoodies in exchange for the use of an athlete’s name, and the aforementioned free burritos, with the Mexican chain Chipotle signing several Gophers skaters to endorse their food.
With the money offered to top players skyrocketing, there seems to be a movement afoot in Dinkytown to get the Gophers more involved in that game. Last month, social media posts were sent and a bare-bones website went live announcing the Golden Helmet Collective, which is lacking detail, but seems to be the start of a hockey-specific effort to raise NIL money for future Gophers.
The opening of the transfer portal allowed players to move from one program to another without having to sit out or lose eligibility. This brought de facto free agency to college hockey, where smaller schools are now routinely losing their top players to bigger schools after a year or two.
One coach in Atlantic Hockey America, which is home to mid-major programs like Air Force, Bentley, Mercyhurst and Robert Morris, compared their conference to a shopping center, where many of the six players named to the AHA all-rookie team one season are likely to be playing in the Big Ten or Hockey East by the time they’re sophomores.
The Gophers have been sporadic but effective users of the transfer portal, bringing in players like NHL first-rounder Matthew Wood from Connecticut and goalie Liam Souliere, who backstopped much of last season’s Big Ten title run, from Penn State.
Open borders
In November 2024, a lawsuit prompted the NCAA to allow players from Canadian major junior leagues to maintain college hockey eligibility, which had not been the case for the past four decades or so. Because major junior players often receive a stipend of a few hundred dollars per month for living expenses, they were long considered professionals in the eyes of the NCAA. So in 2012 when current Minnesota Wild forward Ryan Hartman, who was committed to play college hockey at Miami of Ohio, went to play for a major junior team instead, his NCAA eligibility disappeared.
The opening up of major junior players to college recruitment has meant a windfall of new talent available to NCAA programs. McKenna is just the latest player from the Canadian leagues to pack for a home on campus in the fall, with Wild prospect Ryder Ritchie (Boston University), defenseman Benjamin Vigneault (Bemidji State), defenseman Henry Mews (Michigan), left winger Blake Montgomery (Wisconsin), defenseman Ethan Armstrong (Minnesota State Mankato), left winger Nathan Piling (St. Thomas), defenseman Grayden Siepmann (Minnesota Duluth) and center Cayden Lindstrom (Michigan State) all moving from major junior to college hockey in the fall.
North Dakota, which is a program in transition after a coaching change in the spring, landed two of the top players from the Victoria (B.C.) Royals, center Cole Rischny and defenseman Keaton Verhoeff.
McKenna made his future Nittany Lions announcement live on ESPN SportsCenter, in a move reminiscent of LeBron James and his infamous, nationally-televised “Decision” from 2010. While some decried the big-money signing as an omen of college hockey’s demise, others noted that having the sport covered on national TV in the middle of the summer, and attracting the top young talent on ice, at least for one season, is a net positive, even as the sport goes through yet another recent change.
Whatever your personal opinion, it’s clear that the future of college hockey has arrived. And for programs large and small to attract and keep the game’s best players, more than burritos will be required.

College Sports
Former Tampa Infielder Kevin Karstetter Transfers To Penn State Baseball
The transfer portal rolls on in college baseball, as Mike Gambino continues to build up Penn State baseball for the 2026 season. The latest addition to the roster is a bit of a homecoming story. Infielder Kevin Karstetter, born and raised in State College, is transferring to Penn State for his graduate season, he announced […]

The transfer portal rolls on in college baseball, as Mike Gambino continues to build up Penn State baseball for the 2026 season.
The latest addition to the roster is a bit of a homecoming story. Infielder Kevin Karstetter, born and raised in State College, is transferring to Penn State for his graduate season, he announced on social media on Friday. He has one year of eligibility remaining.
Karstetter was the No. 321 player in the country and No. 8 in Pennsylvania in the Class of 2021, committing to State College of Florida. At this junior college, he spent the first three years of his collegiate career. After batting .415 in his junior year in 2023, he transferred to Arizona State, where he slashed a modest .260/.372/.410 with two home runs and 13 RBI in 34 games. He played two seasons with the State College Spikes in the MLB Draft League while he was there.
He spent 2025 with the University of Tampa in Division II. This past season, he slashed .332/.414/.500 with five home runs, 24 extra base hits, 48 RBI, and 19 stolen bases for the eventual national champions. He hit a massive game-tying home run late in a loser’s bracket elimination game to save Tampa’s season.
Karstetter got a sixth year of eligibility due to not only playing in the 2021 season, impacted by COVID-19, but also the recent court ruling that granted former junior college athletes an additional year of eligibility. The third baseman will join an infield consisting of Jack Porter, Bryce Molinaro, and two recent transfers, but things could change in this week’s MLB draft.
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