TRO Hearing, FSU Investigation, Mid-Major Collectives, + ICYMI | NIL Newsletter #205
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Quick Hitters:
Hearing Takes Place in Ohio v. NCAA
On Wednesday morning, Judge Bailey, from West Virginia’s Northern District, heard arguments for the Temporary Restraining Order filed by Ohio and six other states.
RaeQuan Battle, a current player at West Virginia, had his second-time transfer waiver denied by the NCAA, and filed a lawsuit against the NCAA earlier this week.
Battle’s suit was consolidated with the Ohio lawsuit, and he offered testimony during Wednesday morning’s hearing.
Judge Bailey granted the Temporary Restraining Order against the NCAA, enjoining them from enforcing their transfer restriction rules. This order is binding on the NCAA until a final decision for a preliminary injunction, and will stand for at least the next two weeks.
As a result, all currently ineligible student athletes will likely be able to play, at least until the preliminary injunction hearing.
Florida Attorney General Launches Investigation into CFP
On Tuesday, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody announced that she had opened an antitrust investigation into the College Football Playoff’s exclusion of Florida State.
“I’m a lifelong Gator, but I’m also the Florida Attorney General, and I know injustice when I see it,” Moody said. “No rational person or college football fan can look at this situation and not question the result.”
The Attorney General’s office has made multiple requests of the committee, including:
Information about communications related to “the availablity of key players and coaches”
The individual and collective votes of the committee
Communications to and from the ACC, SEC, ESPN, or NCAA
“We will carefully review this demand for information, but it sure seems to be an overly aggressive reaction to a college football ranking in which some fans somewhere were bound to be disappointed,” CFP executive director Bill Hancock said.
Mid-Major Collectives Drive Basketball Success
There are currently 362 universities that compete across 32 conferences in Division I basketball. Approximately 60% of those schools have NIL collectives supporting their men’s basketball programs.
Mid-Majors, for our purpose, means schools not in the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac 12, SEC, or Big East.
Using Ken Pomeroy’s eponymous KenPom rating system, Sports Illustrated’s Noah Henderson found that 30 Mid-Major programs sit in the top 100 ranked teams in Division I. Of those 30 programs, 27 have a fully operational collective.
This number drops precipitously as the rankings fall:
Mid-Majors in the top 100 with collectives: 90%
Mid-Majors ranked between 100 - 181 with collectives: 72%
Schools ranked between 181-362 with collectives: 31.5%
The level of correlation indicates that a collective’s presence is strongly associated with a program’s performance, particularly at the Mid-Major level.
ICYMI
Seattle University partnered with The Brandr Group to establish a group licensing program. LINK
The Texas-focused Texas One Fund is partnering with WME Sports. LINK
The Iowa-focused SWARM collective received a $500,000 donation from Elite Casino Resorts. LINK
Caitlin Clark announced a deal with Gatorade, which will donate $22,000 to the Caitlin Clark Foundation. LINK
Have you checked out OSC’s website?
Head to www.OptimumSportsConsulting.com to find important resources and features relating to all things NIL. These resources include State by State Resources for Admins, Agents and Athletes, including our initial “OSC Summaries” for over a dozen states coming soon.
More to come too, including links to helpful state information- agency laws and information about school policies, as well as seminar/congressional notes, worksheets, and much more!