Six programs have estimated market valuations of their NIL rosters north of $40 million. Texas sits at $47.9M. Arch Manning alone carries a NIL valuation of $5.4 million, the highest in college football. And Greg Sankey is standing at the podium explaining why a federal enforcement bill is bad, actually.
This is not reform. This is a school district principal calling the fire department too loud after the building is already gone.
The SEC’s specific gripe with the Protect College Sports Act is the private right-of-action clause — language that would let athletes sue schools directly for violations — plus restrictions on “associated entities” like Learfield and Playfly, the third-party collectives that currently funnel unlimited booster money outside the House settlement cap. The bill passed the Senate Commerce Committee 19-9 earlier this year. Sankey called it likely to “increase litigation rather than reduce it.” That is a very careful way of saying the SEC does not want to be sued.
Here’s the part that turns this from hypocrisy into actual farce: the SEC already tried to cap NIL internally. Football at $13.5M. Basketball at $3M. Kentucky, which had spent roughly $15 million on basketball alone, killed it. The conference that now opposes federal enforcement is the same conference that couldn’t enforce anything internally because its own members refused to comply. So they’re opposing the only mechanism that might actually work.
The $20.5M House settlement figure everyone keeps citing covers only direct school revenue-sharing. Collective and booster money sits entirely outside that number, which is why total estimated roster values at blue-blood programs blow past it by $20 million or more. An anonymous Big Ten administrator put it plainly: “We are money laundering. All we are doing right now is moving money around.”
Schools are guaranteeing 3rd-party NIL, collectives are paying recruits & $50M frontloaded rosters are here.
As the NIL clearinghouse is mired in legalities, Big 12 coaches say cap circumvention is happening.
“People are lying & promising fake things.”https://t.co/zc8m5LCYqn
— Ross Dellenger (@RossDellenger) July 9, 2025
For AAC programs, the math is brutal and getting worse. The AAC set a $10 million cumulative collective floor — the first conference to do it, a genuine milestone — but power conference schools are stacking the House revenue share on top of their collective spending. The revenue distribution gap between the SEC and a program like Memphis or Tulane is already 4x or more. A federal cap that grandfathers in existing structures or gets watered down to protect “associated entities” doesn’t narrow that gap. It locks it in.
Texas AD Chris Del Conte said it out loud: “Everyone wants to blame the NCAA. The NCAA is us. We made the rules.” Nick Saban testified before the Senate on June 3rd and called it “a race to the bottom.” Both are architects of the current system, and they’re saying so in public.
The SEC opposing federal enforcement while simultaneously failing to enforce anything internally is a deliberate strategy. Keep the structure chaotic enough that established booster networks and Learfield relationships stay advantages. The schools that built those pipelines years ago win. Everyone else runs a slower race on a longer track.
Mid-majors asked for federal intervention. The SEC just told them to figure it out themselves — the same way they did, back when $10 million still meant something.
