INDIANAPOLIS — Prior to the skirmishing that will take place in a conference room here Friday morning, muffins will be served. And fruit. And coffee. Rules were broken, but bread will be broken before the misdeeds are discussed.

“The breakfast is the most enjoyable part,” says college sports attorney Stu Brown.

What follows will be up to two days of high-stakes, high-profile college sports jurisprudence, as the Michigan Wolverines and NCAA Enforcement staff meet for a hearing before the Division I Committee on Infractions at NCAA headquarters. This is the penultimate act in the Connor Stalions affair, a bizarre impermissible scouting scandal that broke new ground in the well-plowed landscape of college football cheating. The final act will be the ruling that comes out of this hearing, probably toward the end of the summer (although, this being the NCAA, delays are always possible).

And then we’ll see if this case is the NCAA’s last stand as the sovereign judge and jury of college sports misbehavior. This Michigan vs. NCAA hearing feels like one of the final compelling showdowns in the form we’ve come to know. Massive changes are coming in every facet of the industry, including the eternally controversial rules that govern fair play and who enforces them.

“I’m not sure what will be left in the rules manual,” says Josephine Potuto, a Nebraska law professor emerita and former chair of the Committee on Infractions. “There will not be as many rules, including many that were often broken.”

To be clear, the rules broken by Michigan football staffer Stalions and his cohort of spies who recorded future opponents’ play signals will still be on the books, and still be subject to NCAA oversight going forward. But in a post-House v. NCAA settlement world—which may or may not come any day—a new investigative and adjudicative entity will handle NIL-related infractions for all conferences that opted into the settlement. That’s expected to be a large chunk of what the NCAA used to do.

That development comes as the traditional, in-person, Committee on Infractions hearings already are dwindling. In a largely successful effort to accelerate the infamously dawdling infractions process, COI hearings often are being replaced by negotiated resolutions between the enforcement staff and offending schools. It takes some serious disagreement to bring everyone to the table nowadays.

“Unless a school wants to go Full Metal Jacket on something, most of the time there doesn’t need to be a hearing,” says one former COI chair.

Hoo-rah. Michigan is that school, and this is that case.

After multiple suspensions, firings and resignations within the football program, the parties will meet to discuss and debate 11 alleged NCAA violations. Six of them are Level 1 allegations, the most severe, and could be subject to the greatest sanctions. The most pertinent issues are expected to be these:

Any additional penalties for current Michigan head coach Sherrone Moore, who was the offensive coordinator at the time Stalions was playing spymaster and has been suspended by the school for two games this upcoming season.

Program penalties as a “repeat violator” of NCAA rules that has been charged with “failing to monitor” its football program. Those penalties could include recruiting restrictions, monetary fines and whether a postseason ban could be in play. The latter sanction has fallen out of favor in recent years, mostly because affected athletes often were not even enrolled at the school at the time violations occurred.

Any vacation of records from Michigan’s undefeated 2023 national championship season. In the future, NCAA record books may not say the Wolverines went 15–0.

How did we get here? It began in October 2023, when news broke that Stalions—a program staffer with a flair for espionage and an excessive love for Michigan football—had taken his assignment of stealing opponents’ play signals a bit too far. An NCAA investigation was underway into Stalions’s use of several associates as in-person scouts who recorded video of upcoming Michigan opponents’ plays being signaled in from the bench.

Stalions purchased tickets to games of many Big Ten opponents and a select few nonconference foes, and the Wolverines began to gain a reputation around the conference for having opponents’ signals. He is believed to have orchestrated the gathering of signs from more than 50 games over a three-year span.

While it’s legal to gather and decode signals from game film or during a game, the work obtaining signals via attending games on other campuses violated NCAA bylaw 11.6.1 regarding advance scouting.

Then there was Stalions’s ultimate spy game: showing up on the Central Michigan Chippewas’ sideline in disguise as one of the staff members for their Sept. 1, 2023, season opener against the Michigan State Spartans, a major rival of the Wolverines. An NCAA investigation of Central Michigan’s role in the Stalions affair ensued and remains ongoing. Assistant coach Jake Kostner, a friend of Stalions’s and a former Michigan staffer himself, was ultimately let go by CMU. Head coach Jim McElwain, who also spent the ’18 season at Michigan as an assistant, announced his retirement after the ’24 campaign.

The backdrop for all of this was a preexisting NCAA investigation into impermissible contact with recruits and the use of impermissible staff members in coaching roles during offseason workouts. That case had become very public and very contentious, with some Michigan partisans assailing the NCAA for investigating head coach Jim Harbaugh “for a cheeseburger” with a recruit. (The case was, in fact, never about a cheeseburger; it primarily was about meeting with recruits during the COVID-19 dead period. Harbaugh was suspended the first three games of the 2023 season, and Moore was suspended for a game as well.)

With most of the Big Ten whipped into a fury by the Stalions revelations, new commissioner Tony Petitti took controversial action. With legal action being threatened, Petitti nevertheless proceeded with a three-game benching of Harbaugh to end the regular season. Even with Harbaugh missing exactly half of the 2023 regular season, the Wolverines rolled through undefeated. Harbaugh left for the NFL afterward, getting out ahead of the NCAA posse, but the investigation continued.

Last August, the enforcement staff delivered its notice of allegations to Michigan. The full document still has not been made public. In January of this year, the school filed its response, a portion of which was publicized. The response reportedly accuses the NCAA of “grossly overreaching” and “wildly overcharging” Michigan. The NCAA subsequently filed a response of its own—which has remained private—and the rules of engagement were thus set for this week’s showdown in Indy.

The involved parties will likely walk into a conference room with a U-shaped seating arrangement—COI members seated at the bottom of the U, with one side reserved for NCAA Enforcement staff and the other reserved for Michigan staff. A stenographer will sit in the middle of the room. And yes, there will be lawyers.

“There has been an escalation of arms over the years,” says the former COI chair. “Where it used to be that a school would show up with its general counsel and maybe one lawyer, now there are five lawyers with the general counsel. The stakes got higher, with the money and careers at stake.”

The hearings tend to follow a formal script. The groundwork has already been laid by the notice of allegations and subsequent responses, and the notion of 11th-hour surprise revelations is left to TV law dramas.

“There is no new information,” says a former longtime NCAA Enforcement rep. “But there may be disputes about the veracity of the previously gathered information.”

After a brief introduction by the COI chair, there are opening statements from the school and enforcement. Then most of the hearing consists of an allegation-by-allegation back-and-forth about what happened and why.

“It’s never comfortable for an institution’s president or chancellor to have to sit there and hear about how their institution had substantial problems, or improper oversight,” Brown says. “It’s embarrassing. There’s also not a lot of time to push back on everything. This is a two-day hearing, not an eight-week trial.”

Sometimes, there is little dispute over the facts. Sometimes, there is considerable dispute—not just over the facts, but how violations may have been characterized and charged.

“The school can expect the enforcement staff to mischaracterize things from A to Z,” says one lawyer who has defended coaches and others charged with NCAA violations. “I’m not saying they make stuff up out of whole cloth, but if people could reasonably agree that a violation is a three on a scale of one to 10, the enforcement staff will say it’s a nine. You’ve got to be prepared to knock down these exaggerations.”

(In Michigan’s case, one of those key points of contention will be Moore’s deleted text messages from Stalions. NCAA Enforcement charged Moore with a major violation for erasing 52 texts on the day the Stalions revelations first broke. The school has argued that the texts, once they were recovered, revealed no smoking-gun knowledge of Stalions’s scheme. Michigan has suspended Moore for two games—the third and fourth of the season, in an unconventional twist. The NCAA might seek a longer suspension.)

Former Notre Dame Fighting Irish athletic director Jack Swarbrick sat through a hearing years ago that ultimately led to the football program vacating 21 victories from the 2012 and ’13 seasons due to academic fraud, when a student trainer did classwork for players. The school discovered the violations on its own and suspended the players, but that didn’t spare it from sanctions.

Today, Swarbrick does not remember the hearing process fondly.

“The process was so short of expectations,” he says. “When we wanted a transcript of the hearing, the initial response was, ‘You can’t have it.’ When we finally prevailed and got it, it was so riddled with errors that you couldn’t make heads or tails of it. A member of our hearing panel fell sound asleep, and nobody woke him up.

“But the most disappointing part for me was the prosecutorial nature of the NCAA. They’re making their case, I get it, but we’re also members of the association. I expected a level of professionalism that was evident nowhere.”

That said, almost all of the six people interviewed for this story said the process is not very contentious. There are disagreements, and sometimes those accused of violations will become heated by a line of questioning.

“Coaches, especially head coaches, are averse to being questioned on occasion,” Potuto says. “Sometimes they don’t think they should be pushed.”

One person who consistently receives high marks for his comportment in hearings and throughout the investigative process is NCAA vice president of enforcement Jon Duncan. He is as close to unflappable as a person can be in a controversial job.

“You can’t find a better human being, with more integrity, than Jon Duncan,” says one lawyer who has crossed swords with the NCAA.

“Jon Duncan is the steadiest leader I’ve ever been around,” says the former enforcement rep. “He truly sees himself as the umpire, there to call balls and strikes.”

After all the allegations have been discussed and debated, the next phase of the hearing is of crucial importance when it comes to weighing sanctions: aggravating circumstances and mitigating circumstances. If the COI decides there were “aggravators,” in NCAA parlance, it can lead to increased penalties. “Mitigators” can have the opposite effect, leading to reduced penalties. Those interpretations are often where the most significant debates occur.

What is unknown is how much the contentious nature of the successive Michigan infractions cases will factor into the committee’s deliberations. The school chose on several occasions to take the fight public, which runs counter to standard NCAA operations, and Harbaugh was difficult for investigators to deal with during the impermissible contact case. The COI’s refusal to accept Michigan’s proposed sanctions on Harbaugh as sufficient in 2023 was telling.

“I think the Harbaugh hatred was palpable,” says one attorney with familiarity of the Michigan case.

Michigan’s decision to suspend Moore for the third and fourth games of the season, instead of the customary first and second, seemed like another indication that the school was not going to accept responsibility without offering its own flippant spin on it.

“How did you conduct yourself during the investigation?” asks the former enforcement rep. “For this case, that could weigh heavily. Airing your grievances in a case that becomes this public, that traditionally is not a good thing.”

Ultimately, the committee’s interpretation of the violations and attendant factors likely won’t be known for months. But with appeals of COI rulings virtually wiped out, those decisions should be final.

“This is a big program and a big case, so there is an imperative to properly adjudicate it,” the former enforcement rep says. “The pressure comes from the outside, but it’s probably more on the committee than the school. You lay the case at the feet of a committee that is human.”

Then we’ll see if the NCAA ever handles a case of this magnitude again.

In a post-House world, much of the crime-and-punishment work is expected to be outsourced to Deloitte via a Collegiate Sports Commission. A CEO who could make $1 million, according to ESPN, would be in charge of doling out penalties in that model. The CEO would answer to the Power 4 conference commissioners, a potentially glaring conflict of interest.

But even with a stripped-down rulebook and narrower focus, there would be a need for the NCAA as a compliance organization. There still is a panoply of potential misdeeds to police.

“More than 200 bylaws will cease to exist the minute House goes into effect,” says the former COI chair. “But the rulebook is still going to exist, and there are a lot of conferences that didn’t opt into House.”

College sports leaders have to hope the new enforcement entity functions more effectively than the last time they tried to build a better mousetrap. The Independent Accountability Review Process, which came out of the FBI investigation of college basketball in the late 2010s, was shut down after just a few years of seemingly nonsensical rulings.

“I thought that [the IARP] was going to be a disaster,” Potuto says. “I don’t want to say I was right, but they did eliminate it.”

Whether college sports can function smoothly with two different investigative entities for two different sets of rules and two different sets of universities remains to be seen. There is hope, but also well-earned cynicism from industry leaders.

“In a big-picture way, I still believe in the NCAA,” says the former COI chair. “I do believe in self-governance, and I wish it would work better. But seemingly every time a rule is put in place in college athletics, the first act is for schools to figure out a way around it.”

This article was originally published on www.si.com as What’s at Stake in Michigan’s NCAA Committee on Infractions Hearing Over Connor Stalions .

AI-assisted summary The House v. NCAA settlement proposes a revenue-sharing model between schools and athletes, potentially paying athletes backpay for NIL deals missed between 2016 and September 2024.

A judge’s decision on the settlement is delayed due to disagreements over roster limits, with objectors arguing for mandatory grandfathering of current athletes.

If approved, the settlement would cap revenue sharing at $20.5 million per school, with distribution methods varying by institution.

Regardless of the settlement’s outcome, some schools, including Louisville, plan to pay athletes directly under state laws.

Roughly five years after its initial filing, the House v. NCAA settlement is still awaiting a decision from the courts.

It’s one of the most talked-about lawsuits in the history of college athletics. And for good reason. If approved, the settlement would establish a first-of-its-kind revenue-sharing model between schools and athletes.

Industry leaders have been operating for months under the assumption that the agreement would go through this spring and go into effect July 1, including those at the University of Louisville and the University of Kentucky. But they’ve yet to receive the all-clear.

Here’s everything you need to know about the settlement, including how Kentucky’s two major schools are planning for two different futures: one where the agreement is approved and one where it’s not.

The proposed House settlement stems from the merging of three different lawsuits filed by current and former Division I athletes against the NCAA: House v. NCAA, Hubbard v. NCAA and Carter v. NCAA.

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Plaintiffs Grant House (former Arizona State swimmer) and Sedona Prince (former Texas, Oregon and TCU basketball player) filed a class-action complaint in June 2020 alleging that the NCAA violated antitrust laws by restricting athletes’ ability to profit off their name, image and likeness. Former Oklahoma State running back Chuba Hubbard and former Duke defensive tackle DeWayne Carter filed similar complaints against the NCAA and power conferences. Judge Claudia Wilken, who previously presided over the Alston v. NCAA lawsuit finding the NCAA in violation of antitrust laws by capping the value of athletic scholarships, later consolidated the House suit with Hubbard and Carter.

On Oct. 7, Wilken granted the House settlement preliminary approval. That version of the settlement would provide $2.8 billion in back damages to athletes who could not profit off their NIL between 2016 and Sept. 15, 2024. It would also bring revenue sharing to college sports starting July 1 with a projected cap for 2025-26 of $20.5 million per school. But one aspect of the agreement has delayed her final decision by nearly two months.

Instead of scholarship limits, the version of the House settlement Wilken granted preliminary approval to established roster caps. Objectors spoke out against roster limits at the April 7 final approval hearing in Oakland, California. Afterward, Wilken gave attorneys two weeks to amend the roster limit concept. She suggested grandfathering in athletes already on existing rosters. Executives from the Power Four conferences — Big Ten, SEC, ACC and Big 12 — agreed to an optional grandfathering-in model for schools.

The settlement has been back in Wilken’s hands since May 16.

As the settlement currently stands, $2.8 billion would be provided to college athletes who could not profit off their NIL between 2016 and Sept. 15, 2024. These athletes had to file objections to or claims to be part of the settlement before Jan. 31. About 40,000 filed claims suggesting they would participate in the settlement, Front Office Sports reported in February.

The backpay is to be doled out over 10 years — 60% by the NCAA from its reserves and 40% from schools.

In addition to damages, the House settlement would bring revenue sharing to college sports starting July 1 with a projected cap for 2025-26 of $20.5 million per school. How that money is divvied up will be left to individual institutions.

Louisville athletics director Josh Heird told The Courier Journal at ACC spring meetings that U of L knows how it will distribute the $20.5 million among its varsity sports but declined to share exact numbers. Kentucky athletics director Mitch Barnhart told the CJ at SEC spring meetings that, rather than establishing firm percentages for each program, Kentucky will take a less rigid approach to meet each sport’s needs year in and year out.

Front Office Sports reported that power conference schools are expected to dedicate 75% of the $20.5 million toward their football programs. Texas Tech’s reported breakdown gives 74% to football, 17% to 18% to men’s basketball, 2% to women’s basketball, 1.8% to baseball and the rest to other sports. That’s $15.17 million for football, $3.69 million for men’s basketball and $410,000 for women’s basketball.

College athletes would make money through revenue-sharing agreements with their schools and still be eligible for third-party NIL deals if the settlement is approved. However, the NIL market would be more heavily monitored than it is now under an enforcement structure that some industry leaders are skeptical of.

All NIL deals exceeding $600 will have to be reported to and pass through a clearinghouse called “NIL go,” starting three days after the settlement is approved. NIL go will be operated by Deloitte with the purpose of assessing athletes’ fair market value.

Officials from the clearinghouse have been sharing data about past deals with athletics directors and coaches over the last several weeks, including

70% of agreements from collectives would not have passed through NIL go;

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

Those numbers are a far cry from the millions collectives have reportedly spent on athletes over the last four years or so. Restricting compensation in this way feels, to some, like a bit of a step backward.

“They’re just encouraging people to cheat again,” Dan Furman, president of Louisville’s official collective 502Circle, told The Courier Journal.

SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey spoke about the clearinghouse at spring meetings. When asked directly if he had confidence in these guardrails, Sankey said yes.

“People are going to have opinions,” he said. “Nothing ever worked when people sat around and said, ‘Well, this won’t work.’ We’re adults, we’re leaders, and I think I communicated this (recently), we have a responsibility to make this work.”

Instead of scholarship limits, the version of the House settlement Wilken granted preliminary approval to established roster caps. This structure would cause thousands of athletes across the country to lose their spots — mainly in football and Olympic sports. Objectors spoke out against roster limits at the final approval hearing in Oakland on April 7.

Wilken told attorneys they needed to fix this issue or else she would reject the settlement. She suggested grandfathering in athletes already on existing rosters. Executives from the Power Four conferences came back with an optional grandfathering-in model for schools.

Objectors then argued for mandatory grandfathering, but lawyers from the NCAA and power conferences maintained that their proposal should satisfy Wilken’s demands and solicit approval.

Several states have laws permitting schools to directly pay college athletes — including Kentucky. The commonwealth passed Senate Bill 3 in March, amending its previous NIL legislation so state universities could legally operate within the House settlement’s proposed revenue-sharing model.

Ross Dellenger of Yahoo! Sports reported in early May that athletics directors predict many schools will use state law to begin paying athletes, regardless of whether Wilken denies the settlement. One AD told Yahoo!: “What can the NCAA do about it?”

If Wilken denies the settlement, U of L will likely move forward with paying its athletes directly, Heird told The Courier Journal at ACC spring meetings.

“That’s probably the path we would go down,” Heird said. “Just from the standpoint of the more control you can have of the situation, the better. It’s been a little bit disjointed with outside entities, collectives, doing things. So I would presume that’s the road we would go down.”

Should the settlement get denied, U of L wouldn’t be beholden to the $20.5 million cap. Instead, paying athletes would just “be a budget constraint,” Heird said. “But I’d contend it’s a budget constraint now.”

UK, like all other universities, will be limited to $20.5 million to share with its athletes under the settlement’s current terms. This $20.5 million represents 22% of the average revenue of power conference schools and Notre Dame across eight categories, including but not limited to ticket sales and media rights. UK totaled $129.2 million across those categories, according to its 2023-24 NCAA financial report.

Barnhart told The Courier Journal at SEC spring meetings that, rather than establishing firm percentages of the $20.5 million for each program, Kentucky will take a less rigid approach to meet each sport’s needs year in and year out.

U of L, like all other universities, will be limited to $20.5 million to share with its athletes under the settlement’s current terms. This $20.5 million represents 22% of the average revenue of power conference schools and Notre Dame across eight categories, including but not limited to ticket sales and media rights. Louisville totaled $105.5 million across those categories, according to its 2023-24 NCAA financial report.

Heird told The Courier Journal at ACC spring meetings that U of L knows how it will distribute the $20.5 million among its varsity sports but declined to share exact numbers.

Reach college sports enterprise reporter Payton Titus at ptitus@gannett.com, and follow her on X @petitus25.

Rob and Kelvin debate whether it’s fair to say that Tyrese Haliburton has already won the postseason whether he winds up getting a ring or not, and react to the breaking news that colleges will now be able to pay NCAA student athletes directly. Plus, VSiN senior NBA analyst Jonathan Von Tobel swings by to discuss all the biggest storylines to come out of Game 1 of the NBA Finals

Hour 3 – Tyrese Haliburton Has Already Won Whether He Wins Or Not + VSiN senior NBA analyst Jonathan Von Tobel

Episode Transcript Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.

USC coach Lincoln Riley is among the coaches preparing for significant changes to the way name, image and likeness payouts are awarded to athletes if a NCAA settlement is approved.

Hi, everyone! Welcome back to The Times of Troy newsletter. I’m Ryan Kartje, the USC beat writer at The Times. We’re nearing the end of the road for this year’s college sports calendar. After tonight’s men’s national title game, we’re left with just transfer portal scoops and 15-minute snippets of spring football to get us through April. After that, well … you can find me on the golf course.

Newsletter Fight on! Are you a true Trojans fan? Get our Times of Troy newsletter for USC insights, news and much more. Enter email address Sign Me Up You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.

But before I dust off the ol’ putter, we should probably mention that we’re approaching a momentous day in the history of college athletics.

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This morning, a final hearing will be held in a downtown Oakland courthouse to review the NCAA’s landmark settlement of three antitrust lawsuits. If approved, the settlements will launch a new era of college athletics — one featuring revenue sharing with athletes, a cap system for athlete compensation and a new enforcement arm meant to eliminate donor-backed payments that aren’t true name, image and likeness deals.

We have no idea when Judge Claudia Wilken will announce whether she approves the settlement. There are more than a dozen witnesses scheduled to object to the settlement during Monday’s hearing, and there is no guarantee the settlement, if approved, will withstand legal scrutiny it’s sure to face in the future.

But schools are spending millions anticipating the settlement is approved. And millions more on lobbyists to codify it into federal law. But no matter how many millions — or billions? — are spent to make it happen, there is one element of the settlement that I am quite certain, once it’s passed, is doomed to fail.

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To explain, let’s start with the basics. If the House settlement — which combines three separate cases — is approved, schools will be allowed to pay their athletes directly from a pool that’s tentatively set to start this fall at $20.5 million. Athletes will be allowed to sign legitimate name, image and likeness deals outside of that framework. Some examples include JuJu Watkins’ deal with Nike or Caleb Williams’ deal with Dr. Pepper. But any NIL deal that exceeds $600 will soon have to be reported to Deloitte for approval as “real NIL” and must have “a valid business purpose.” It is supposed prevent thinly veiled attempts at getting around the new salary cap.

The idea is to eliminate donor collectives and their unchecked, unregulated payments to college athletes. To police this new landscape, the power conferences have put forth a plan to create their own enforcement arm, outside of the auspices of the NCAA, that will impose long-awaited guardrails on NIL and punish any schools that try to circumvent them.

It’s a nice idea, but wishful thinking at best.

For one, it’s begging for legal challenges. Assuming Congress doesn’t act quickly on a college sports bill — a safe bet for anything involving Congress — then all it will take is one compelling antitrust lawsuit for the whole thing to fall apart. And a cap system that limits an athlete’s earning potential for his or her name, image and likeness is a pretty juicy case for any attorney to chase.

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When I asked USC coach Lincoln Riley this week for his thoughts on the viability of this new enforcement arm, it was the legal aspect of things that gave him the most pause.

“It’s tough because obviously there’s a whole legal side of all that,” Riley said. “And you’re going to need something that holds up legally, something that has enough teeth to accomplish what it needs to accomplish and is not just going to get run over with people getting sued and all of that. That’s the world those people live in. That’s why it’s been tough to find it. Obviously if we can, that would be great.”

But let’s say, in a perfect world, that the settlement framework survives legal challenges. That doesn’t mean schools won’t constantly try to cheat the system anyway.

Paying players outside of the rules is not a new concept. Boosters have been dropping bags of money in front of recruits and scholarship athletes, in one way or another, for decades — even if it meant violating NCAA rules to do it. The only difference in recent years is that this process is now playing out in the open, with collectives using booster money for payments to players that didn’t require a “valid business purpose.”

I’m skeptical that genie can be put back in the bottle. Especially with an entire cottage industry of agents already in place and a system already incentivizing athletes to chase newer, bigger paydays. The possibilities for paying athletes are now endless. And all it takes is one team skirting the cap to get ahead, before others naturally follow. That’s just the way of the world.

So in order for this new entity to actually deter schools from cheating, it will need the power to punish schools, coaches or athletes who step outside of those rules. But why would we assume this entity would wield that power more fairly and effectively than the NCAA? Or who’s to say that any school with its back against the wall, faced with suspensions or a forfeit or a loss in cap dollars, would respect that authority?

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We don’t have any idea how that process will function or what punishments will look like. But if they aren’t severe enough to actually deter schools or athletes from taking outside payments, then there’s zero chance the system will function in the way the power conference athletic directors are hoping it will.

When I spoke to USC’s athletic director Jennifer Cohen in February, I asked her if she thought it was a realistic plan.

“I believe that we have to believe that,” Cohen said. “You know, I think if we want to get to a system that has some sort of constraints — like we’re in college, and we’re having a hard time having checks and balances. In the pros, they don’t have those same challenges, right? So I believe we have to believe we can reimagine how to operate in this new era in a way that’s as equitable as possible.”

And in a perfect world, maybe this new system would usher in a new, more equitable era for college athletics.

But coaches can already see the cracks in the foundation. And while I think the settlement is a step in the right direction, it’s going to be a rocky road ahead when it comes to actually enforcing it.

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Extra points

USC guard Wesley Yates III changed his mind about staying in Los Angeles, entering the transfer portal as NIL payout offers for athletes spiked. (Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

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Extra points

— With potential settlement payment limits incoming, there’s a rush to lock in big payouts right now in the transfer portal. On July 1, deals that haven’t been paid out to athletes will have to be sent to Deloitte for clearinghouse approval if the settlement is approved. But right now, boosters can still pay unchecked amounts to athletes under the guise of NIL, if they please. And that has something to do with the skyrocketing paydays you’ve seen in the basketball transfer portal recently. When it was reported that John Calipari had a $10 million budget to work with at Arkansas last offseason, the number stunned a lot of people. But one source in the college hoops world told me that several schools are set to spend that much this time around, knowing that things will change. Granted, USC isn’t one of them. “Everybody is playing ‘Beat the clock,’” Auburn’s Bruce Pearl told Yahoo’s Ross Dellenger this week.

— Wesley Yates III’s departure to the portal is a devastating setback for USC men’s basketball. As recently as a few weeks ago, the Trojans’ standout freshman was all-in on staying with USC. Everyone believed that still to be the case until recently. But as teams front load their spending, it’s safe to assume offers for Yates’ services went through the roof in recent weeks. When his name finally appeared in the portal, according to reports, it came with a “do not contact” tag, meaning Yates already has an idea of where he’s going. Keep an eye on Kentucky, which has plenty of money to spend. But regardless of where he winds up, this sort of situation is just the sad state of affairs in college basketball right now. USC basketball coach Eric Musselman and his staff helped deliver Yates’ breakout season, and now, some other coach and program will reap the rewards. USC has no choice but to go back to the portal once again, in search of another difference-maker.

— With Avery Howell and Kayleigh Heckel out, Lindsay Gottlieb has a lot of work to do in the transfer portal. Losing those two freshmen, both of whom should have had big roles next season, is a tough pill to swallow. But that’s how it goes these days. Especially when you have a superstar, such as Watkins, who siphons up a lot of the scoring and attention. USC’s most pressing need in the portal, prior to their departures, was the frontcourt, and already, Gottlieb has had one coveted forward on campus in Breya Cunningham, a 6-foot-4 forward who hails from San Diego and spent the last two seasons at Arizona. But to stay afloat without Watkins for most — or all — of next season, USC may need to pull a big name out of the portal in the coming weeks. Could Olivia Miles, formerly of Notre Dame, give USC a look? What about Ta’Niya Latson, the nation’s scoring leader who is leaving Florida State? It’s not like the Trojans are barren of talent. But the circumstances next season without Watkins suddenly seem much more bleak.

— Watkins led all female college athletes in NIL deals. That’s not exactly a big surprise, I know. But the sheer number of deals is impressive. According to data from SponsorUnited, Watkins currently has 20 NIL deals. And these aren’t local car dealerships — we’re talking Nike, Gatorade, United Airlines, Fanatics. North Carolina’s R.J. Davis (25) and Arizona punter Cash Peterman (21) are the only college athletes who have more NIL deals. Starting next season, Watkins will get to add revenue-sharing money on top of her NIL earnings.

In case you missed it

Professor Pete Carroll finds a rapt USC audience for his ‘Win Forever’ philosophy

Promising USC guard Wesley Yates III enters the transfer portal

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USC falls to Villanova in College Basketball Crown quarterfinals

JuJu Watkins becomes first USC player to win AP player of the year

J’Onre ‘Big General’ Reed brings energy and power to USC offensive line

Rashaun Agee helps USC men’s basketball beat Tulane in Crown tournament

How will USC women’s basketball adapt next season without star JuJu Watkins?

USC women fall again to Paige Bueckers and UConn in Elite Eight of NCAA tournament

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What I’m watching this week

Seth Rogan arrives for the series premiere of “The Studio” on the opening night of the South by Southwest Film Festival on March 7 in Austin, Texas. (Chris Pizzello / Invision / AP)

It’s been a fantastic few months for television, and Apple, fresh off its “Severance” success, has just added another excellent entrant into the small-screen mix. I will generally follow Seth Rogen wherever he might ask me to go, but “The Studio” might be his best work yet as a producer and show creator. The show follows Rogen as the new head of a legacy film studio that’s struggling to adjust to the new age of movies and content. It’s poignant. It’s hilarious. And it’s great filmmaking — the entire second episode is about a scene that’s a single shot … that’s shot in a single, 30-minute shot. Brilliant stuff.

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From 2001 until 2009, University of Miami booster Nevin Shapiro took a blowtorch to the NCAA rule book.

He picked up the bill for players at exclusive South Beach nightclubs. He hosted wild parties with recruits at his waterfront mansion overlooking Biscayne Bay. He placed bounties to knock opposing players out of games, offered cash and gifts to athletes and used his yacht for decadent outings.

Shapiro recalled that he never paid a player to come to Miami, but he often joked he was the program’s “chief recruiter” because of the lifestyle he was able to show was possible if they became a Hurricane. Bottles. Booze. Cars. Flights. Hotel rooms. Sex workers. Providing anything of value was a NCAA violation at the time. He estimates he spent $4 million overall.

But those were the days when the NCAA cultivated an image of enforcing amateurism. With college sports rapidly being professionalized, the NCAA is essentially getting out of policing financial deals. In its place is a new entity, conceived and operated by the power conferences to monitor and enforce so-called extra benefits in the current era of NIL deals and direct revenue sharing.

Count Shapiro among a chorus of skeptics to the new approach of paying athletes for their NIL rights while outsourcing monitoring and enforcement to others.

“I think it’s a flawed system before it gets started,” St. John’s basketball coach Rick Pitino said. “Totally flawed.”

“I think [enforcement will] be very hard,” Kansas basketball coach Bill Self said.

“We have zero trust,” Purdue basketball coach Matt Painter said.

“This is not the way to regulate this,” Shapiro said. “I applaud them for giving an effort, I guess, but this is not practical. There’s one million ways to circumvent it.”

Starting this summer, schools will be allowed to pay players directly as part of an industry-shifting antitrust settlement of three federal lawsuits collectively known as the House settlement.

The deal, which still needs to receive final approval from a federal judge, would set a limit on how much each school could give to its athletes on an annual basis — starting at roughly $20.5 million next year.

To help keep wealthier teams from using boosters or NIL collectives to gain an advantage by exceeding the cap, the NCAA’s power conferences are creating a clearinghouse, separate from the NCAA, to approve future NIL deals between players and boosters. The House settlement states that athletes have to report any NIL deal they sign with a third party that is worth more than $600 and that any such deal has to be for a “valid business purpose.”

Acceptable deals, deemed “real NIL,” can range from a national advertising campaign for, say USC women’s basketball star JuJu Watkins, to a three-figure appearance fee at a local car dealer for a lesser known athlete.

The power conferences have contracted with auditing giant Deloitte to review booster NIL deals and decide whether each is a legitimate endorsement contract or a veiled attempt to circumvent the salary cap.

Deloitte plans to use data from past endorsement deals signed by college and professional athletes along with other information to pinpoint whether each deal exceeds an athlete’s fair market value.

The power conferences are also creating a new organization tasked to enforce the salary cap and “fair market value” rules. This new entity will be separate from the NCAA’s enforcement arm. Several of the college sports leaders involved in creating the new entity say it’s an attempt to fully reset the crime-and-punishment process of college sports that has long been criticized for its lack of efficiency, transparency and equal treatment among offenders. It could be in place as soon as July 1.

A group of 10 power conference athletic directors have been meeting regularly during the past six months to design the new organization but have not publicly shared any details about what kinds of punishments a school or its athletes might face if they break the rules or how they intend to solve the same problems that roiled the NCAA’s enforcement team.

The settlement will give them some new tools — most notably a binding arbitration process that could speed up resolutions, provide the new enforcement group with greater power to compel coaches and schools to turn over evidence and make it more difficult to challenge punishments in court.

Kansas Jayhawks head coach Bill Self counts himself among the skeptics of a new monitoring system to enforce NIL rules. Trevor Ruszkowski-USA TODAY Sports

WITHIN COLLEGE ATHLETICS, there is hope that the appetite for change is great enough to try something new.

“We’ve arrived at sort of a tipping point for the enterprise as a whole,” Purdue athletic director Mike Bobinski said. “We’re either going to suck it up and just take a little medicine and get it right for the long haul, or God knows where we’re going here over the next however many years, and none of that would be good. I think we have one shot to try to get this thing, and so we’ve got to do it. We’ve got to do it.”

Many in college athletics have sought to impose new rules as the process of procuring players focuses more on the increasing amount of money thrown into NIL deals. However, finding rules that are both effective and capable of standing up to inevitable legal challenges is arduous.

Start with the fact that no system has ever prevented cheating — payments to players that violate NCAA rules have existed for generations. Miami was only punished for Shapiro’s violations after he cooperated with them following a federal indictment for securities fraud. There was a glimmer of hope among some in 2017 when the FBI arrested 10 men when it alleged that federal corruption laws were broken in concert with violation of NCAA rules. The FBI’s William Sweeney boldly promised more to come as prosecutions proceeded.

“We have your playbook,” Sweeney famously declared.

Except there were no more arrests and while four assistant coaches and then-Louisville head coach Rick Pitino lost their jobs, almost everyone else, including a majority of the head coaches who were caught up in the scandal, either stayed in place or quickly found new employment. The case was a dud, its impact minimal, at best.

If neither the FBI nor the NCAA enforcement staff could do much, why would anyone think this new entity will?

“What we went through the last seven years [from], ‘Hey, we have your game plan, we know what you’re doing’ and then to end up where we did, that was embarrassing,” Painter said. “To me, that was really embarrassing.”

The architects of this new system believe coaches and administrators around the country are so fed up with the past few years of relative lawlessness that they will accept the enforcement group’s authority rather than run to the nearest attorney general’s office to challenge any investigative action as soon as their school gets popped for a rules violation. That theory won’t really be tested until the coaches who claim to want strict rules are staring down the barrel of a postseason ban, a hefty fine or losing a star player.

Then there is the challenge of figuring out whether a player is being paid the proper amount for a deal.

A deal that might seem too generous to, say Caitlin Clark before her junior season at Iowa, might actually turn out to be a bargain. Or as an old axiom goes: Something is worth what somebody is willing to pay for it.

“I actually think in theory it’s good,” Self said of the new system, but “it’s hard to imagine how someone can [define] fair market value because to me, the fair market value is what a company or an organization sees that individual’s worth as.”

Others worry about how Deloitte will factor the market surrounding a school where a NIL contract is made. Is an Ohio State quarterback automatically more valuable than a Bowling Green quarterback for a similar deal? How about a USC point guard living in Los Angeles compared to an Iowa State point guard in Ames? If so, by how much?

“I’m just curious how they’re going to identify market value,” said Dan Hauser, the athletic director at mid-major High Point University, located in North Carolina. “Are they going to be able to say market value for one of our HPU athletes is at a lower or different level than the market value is somewhere else?”

Hauser said he wonders if athletes at a school like his will be undervalued because the market for legitimate endorsements is crowded by more high-profile in-state programs such as North Carolina or Duke, let alone local professional franchises. There are only so many car dealership endorsements to go around.

Deloitte and the new enforcement group say they plan to provide information about what variables they will use when assessing a fair range of compensation for each deal, but they don’t want to reveal the exact formula due to fears that some parties will try to manipulate the system if they know exactly how it works.

Then there is the potential for abuse.

There is plenty that coaches and administrators dislike about current NIL deals, but at least much of it is out in the open. Houston basketball coach Kelvin Sampson recently inquired about a potential transfer and was told the price for one season would be $2.5 million, a stunningly high number and not reflective of the actual value of his name, image and likeness. Still, at least Sampson knew what he was dealing with.

“I don’t want it to get where they put it back under the table,” Sampson said. “Let’s keep everything above. Let’s keep everything on the table.”

That’s where Shapiro says the rule breaking would be greater than even in the old days of strict amateurism and the NCAA. Back then, there were explicit rules about interactions between boosters and players, let alone recruits. Shapiro said he personally didn’t take the rules — or the NCAA’s ability to catch him breaking them — seriously.

“I was taking care of the players once they were at the University of Miami,” he told ESPN this week. “I had a lot to do with the enticement of the players to make their decision to come to Miami.”

It ended abruptly in 2010, when he pleaded guilty to federal securities fraud while operating what prosecutors called a $930 million Ponzi scheme. Shapiro, now 55, was sentenced to 20 years in prison but the first Trump administration gave him house arrest during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. President Joe Biden granted him clemency in 2024.

Now any business or booster can make a legitimate NIL deal — and thus have unlimited contact — with not just college stars but high school athletes, not to mention their parents, coaches and agents.

The possibilities for funneling money to players is almost endless, and virtually impossible to police.

“You might as well give it the name ‘Green light, go,'” Shapiro said. “Is this even realistic?”

That remains the question. The NCAA will no longer be in the business of extra benefit enforcement, but can a new entity be any better at enforcing the rules, especially against an ingrained culture of cheating?

“It’s the curse of this business,” said Purdue’s Bobinski, who remains optimistic something can be worked out. “I’ve been in it for 40 years. A rule gets made and people don’t say, ‘That’s what we’ll have to do.’ The first thing they say is, ‘How do we get around it? How do we bend it to our purposes or our objectives?’ That has to change.”

The new rules are coming. So too, perhaps, are the old ways of breaking them.

ESPN reporter Dan Murphy contributed to this story.