The arrival of revenue-sharing hasn’t settled much at all in college football.
The House v. NCAA court deal that took effect July 1 was supposed to do a little taming of the Wild West chaos (via booster collectives) that has prevailed since players got the right to profit off their name, image and likeness four years ago.
Starting this month, schools now directly are sharing revenue with their athletes (not just football players) up to a pre-set cap — $20.5 million per school this year. (Football players will get about three-quarters of that total.)
Meanwhile, the athletes are supposed to remain able to sign third-party NIL deals — most of which are set up by collectives of boosters — although any such deals worth more than $600 now have to be approved by the new NIL Go clearinghouse.
The clearinghouse, which is run by the Deloitte accounting firm, aims to ensure deals have a “valid business purpose” and are within a “fair market value.”
In other words, NIL Go is there to ensure the deals are legitimate and not just a way for boosters to funnel money to athletes outside the approved revenue-sharing structure.
The newly established College Sports Commission is tasked with overseeing the clearinghouse and handling any disputes or violations.
However, amid frequent reports of billionaires recruiting the best players money can buy for schools such as Texas Tech and Michigan, the future of the new college football setup appears murky at best.
As The Athletic reported, guidance issued Thursday by the College Sports Commission said that “an entity with a business purpose of providing payments or benefits to student-athletes or institutions, rather than providing goods or services to the general public for profit, does not satisfy the valid business purpose requirement set forth in NCAA Rule 22.1.3.”
That means the money athletes receive from collectives should be for legitimate endorsement deals and not just a pay-for-play inducement to sign with a particular school.
Naturally, an association of collectives blasted the College Sports Commission’s position, claiming it is “misguided” and “ignores both legal precedent and economic reality.”
So, yeah, this likely will wind up in court, too. That’s why many college sports observers are skeptical that the House settlement is really going to settle anything.
As The Athletic’s Stewart Mandel wrote: “I don’t pretend to know what the athlete payment model will look like even six months from now, but I continue to believe House will not hold up. The state of Tennessee recently became the first to pass legislation that’s in direct contradiction to the settlement, allowing its schools to provide unlimited NIL compensation unless a federal law overrides it. Similar bills are being considered in Michigan and New Jersey. You know more will follow. This is exactly how NIL became a thing in the first place.”
Meanwhile, the UGA Athletic Association has launched an NIL partnership with Learfield, which previously handled licensing and marketing deals for them, to “unlock new revenue-generating opportunities for UGA student-athletes amid the evolving landscape of college athletics.”
The UGAAA said “this cutting-edge collaboration” will function independently from the university as a comprehensive marketing and NIL agency “to provide student-athletes with unprecedented tools to build their personal brands, connect with sponsors and earn income beyond traditional revenue-sharing models.”It will replace the independent Classic City Collective.
“Our student-athletes are already among the most competitive in the country,” UGA Athletic Director Josh Brooks said. “Now, they’ll have the infrastructure and support to maximize their NIL potential while strengthening their connection with the Bulldog Nation and beyond.”
While the UGAAA described its Learfield deal as “a fully integrated, athlete-first NIL ecosystem with brand partners that empowers student-athletes while elevating the Georgia brand on a national scale,” it more importantly is an attempt to keep those collective deals that its athletes sign from straying into forbidden territory and incurring the wrath of the new College Sports Commission.
Here’s hoping they succeed, although I think Mandel is right and this latest attempt to stabilize college athletics is unlikely to last. As I’ve said before, I think the only way all of this is going to work in the long run is to make college athletes contracted employees of the universities for whom they compete.
QUICK KICKS
I wrote here a few weeks back about UGA’s interest in holding concerts at Sanford Stadium to raise more revenue, and now the athletic association has signed an exclusive partnership with Does Entertainment to bring concert events back to Dooley Field, beginning spring of 2026. The shows will be called Live Between the Hedges, and April 25, 2026, is the target date for the first show. Headline performers and other details will be announced at a later date. To express an interest in buying tickets to the Live Between the Hedges shows, click here.
UGA athletics has rebranded its YouTube channel. Formerly known as Georgia Bulldogs All-Access, the channel now is named Georgia Bulldogs Athletics.
‘SUSTAINED EXCELLENCE’
Here’s more on this year’s fall athletics history exhibit at UGA’s Hargrett Library in Athens, which will focus on the swimming and diving program.
Jason Hasty, Hargrett’s UGA athletics history specialist, said that the exhibit, dubbed “Sustained Excellence: A History of UGA Swim & Dive,” will “highlight some of our most accomplished swimmers (and divers) as well as the overall athletic and academic accomplishments of the program. Jack Bauerle [retired coach of the swimming and diving program] is co-curating this with me, so this exhibit will very much be a story he is telling.
“We’ll have artifacts from Jack and some of the athletes who’ve competed for him through the years.”
Jason added that “as usual, I’ll be giving free tours of the exhibit at 3 p.m. on Fridays before home football games.”
He’s hopeful that Bauerle will be able to join him for at least some of those tours.
A GAMEDAY IN ATHENS
A new book is aimed at kids in Bulldog Nation. “A Gameday in Athens” by Kaitlyn Brown and Riley Humes, with illustrations by Sydney Shores, is available for $32 from stateoftheA.com.
This new volume tells in rhyming fashion about a game day in Athens for Dawgs fans and players.
Deciding to get a kid’s reaction to this book, which is billed as “a bedtime story,” I decided to read it to my 4-year-old granddaughter, Nora. However, at my son’s suggestion I skipped the actual text — since it looked a bit wordy for her age group — and instead told the “story” in my own words as we flipped through the pages — hoping the pictures would appeal to her.
Frankly, the colorful illustrations in the early portion of the 36-page book — covering tailgating and other pre-game festivities — didn’t really interest her much at all. She was much more into the book once we got to illustrations of Hairy Dawg, Uga XI and the football players.
Also, a two-page spread showing cheerleaders holding up signs spelling out GEORGIA was a chance for her to help me spell it out.
As for the text that we mostly skipped, sample lines are: “The frat boys were nestled all snug in their beds, while visions of touchdowns danced in their heads. When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter! It was a large group of girls with a Chick-fil-A platter.”
My granddaughter hasn’t learned to read yet, but I somehow doubt even children two or three years older than her are going to want to wade through the text, which is lengthier than your average children’s picture book. And that text uses phrases such as “cornhole and flip cup” and references to the downtown bar scene, which are not really suited for the prime audience of a bedtime picture book.
At the end of the story, I tried to explain the page about ringing the chapel bell after a win, but by that time my granddaughter was ready to move on to a book about a pair of nuts named Hazel and Wally who roll down a muddy hill.
I got the impression, really, that “A Gameday in Athens” is aimed more at the parents or grandparents doing the reading than the kids who are listening.
SPEAKING OF NUTS …
A couple of Blawg readers have asked whether my book about Southern music, “LARGE TIME: On the Southern Music Beat, 1976-1986,” has any UGA stories amid its tales of the Allman Brothers, James Brown, Johnny Cash, Amy Grant, Jimmy Buffett and other stars.
Yes, it does. Athens plays a prominent role in the book, with chapters devoted to the B-52s, R.E.M. and Randall Bramblett, as well as a tale of the first concert at the Georgia Theatre, but there also is a UGA-specific chapter.
In January 1981, I did something I never had done in my four years at UGA in the early 1970s; I attended a fraternity party.
And not just any party, either. This one featured a band that was legendary on Southern campuses — Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts.
I’d first heard of the band when a junior high classmate kept singing the refrain “Nuts, hot nuts, get ’em anyway you can.”
Later, when I was in high school, my Uncle Larry, just 11 years older than me, had told me about the band’s adults-only comedy routines.
Here’s a brief excerpt from that chapter of the book:
The brown van and trailer full of musicians and gear backed up slowly as the driver negotiated his way past a lamppost and up to the rear entrance of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity house.
The driver, a middle-aged Black man from Chapel Hill, N.C., named Doug Clark, hopped out and joined his older brother John and the other band members as they unloaded instruments and amplifiers.
All the while, a handful of young white fraternity brothers bombarded the group members with good-natured taunts:
“I thought you said we were gonna have a good band tonight. Hey, John! You know who’s No. 1 in the whole damn country? How ’bout them Dawgs!”
John Clark grinned. “Go Tar Heels!” he replied.
Another fraternity brother, wearing a Bulldogs cap, came out of the house and reminded Clark of a previous encounter he’d with the Pikes at an Atlanta nightclub before the football season. “You said we’d be 6-5. You said if Georgia went 12-0, you’d play for free, didn’t you?”
Clark, hauling an amp over the doorsill, stopped and patted the young man on the shoulder. “That was probably the other guy,” he said. “You know, y’all say we all look alike.”
You’ll find the full story of the Hot Nuts and the Pikes in my book, plus chats with the likes of Dolly Parton, Isaac Hayes, B.B. King, the Oak Ridge Boys, the Atlanta Rhythm Section, Roy Orbison, Barbara Mandrell, Jerry Lee Lewis, Willie Nelson, Lionel Richie and Charlie Daniels.
“LARGE TIME: On the Southern Music Beat, 1976-1986” is available on Amazon, and if you’re interested in getting a signed, numbered copy not available there, just email me at junkyardblawg@gmail.com for details.
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