STILLWATER – We wrote in our story on Monday (May 2) that we would love to be a fly on the wall at the Big 12 Spring Meetings in Scottsdale, Ariz. The conference athletic directors are there along with the head coaches in football, men’s basketball, and women’s basketball; and that includes the three new schools (Cincinnati, Central Florida, and Houston) that are hoping to negotiate their way to an early exit from the American Athletic Conference and with independent BYU join the Big 12 early. We knew the topics would include NIL, transfer portal, and all the recent changes that are rocking major college athletics. Today’s news may be trending college football and all of it’s major schools toward that new entity of a Power Five league that would include the top schools and could be not just football, but all sports. Taking those major schools out of the NCAA.
This afternoon here came a report from Sports Illustrated and Ross Dellinger on how the NCAA, which has a task force of member administrators looking into many of these same topics. For those that thought the NCAA had been neutered and was incapable of policing it’s landscape anymore. There is news for you as the latest tampering case in the NCAA Transfer Portal with Pittsburgh wide receiver and Biletnikoff Award winner Jordan Addison going in the portal with alleged promises of a multimillion-dollar NIL deal from USC connections may have helped prompt some of this. We know it prompted Pitt head coach Pat Narduzzi to contact USC head coach Lincoln Riley and make threats.
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NCAA
That might be fun to be a fly on the wall for. The news is that the NCAA taskforce is saying they are close to having new guidelines and rules with regard to NIL. Those new guidelines will clarify that boosters and booster-led collectives are to steer completely clear of recruiting. The SI report also states that schools with boosters that overstepped into using NIL and NIL collectives to put money in the hands of recruits, both high school and transfer portal entries, could be punished for their actions. The guidelines are still in draft form, but they clearly outline outline that booster-backed collectives should be prohibited from associating with high school prospects and college transfers. The NCAA wants boosters and their money to stay out of the recruiting process.
That is the way it has always supposed to have been, but we know over the years booster have been up to their elbows in cheating, some were caught (SMU, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Miami (Fla.), Mississippi, Texas A&M, and more) and some were never caught.
The wild, wild west that has been going on since NIL was instituted last summer could make the process easier as boosters and their collectives have openly bragged about their involvement.
This new pursuit of recent rule breakers could really cause a lot of work for lawyers, both those for schools and boosters, and for the NCAA representatives to try to improve their batting average in the legal system.
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Dr. Shrum, Gundy, and Weiberg on the same page with NIL. Slow and careful.
Oklahoma State should be completely clear on this one. Athletic director Chad Weiberg has been cautious and diligent in moving the Cowboys and Cowgirls forward in NIL.
“We are moving very deliberately on this,” Weiberg told me this spring. “We have two collectives that we will debut, one will be for profit (Unbridled) and the other will be for charity (Pokes with a Purpose). We want to give our athletes every opportunity, but we are going to do it within the rules.”
“I think Chad Weiberg, our athletic director, has done a very good job of being guarded about this initially, because different people like Texas and Florida have done some interesting things and it has been like the wild, wild west,” Darren Schrum, husband of OSU President Dr. Kayse Shrum recently told Pokes Rpeort. “Who knows when the NCAA may come out and put more rules and regulations in regarding NIL.”
Exactly, it looks like that time may be very soon. Oklahoma State head football coach Mike Gundy has been supportive of NIL with his players, but under the guideline of Oklahoma State University and within the spirit of the “Cowboy Culture” in the football program.
“What direction it's going to go from now moving forward, who's going to police it, what the mandates will be, I'm not sure,” Gundy added while confirming that OSU is close to having a finalized collective that will pay each of the student-athletes money. “We're just living day to day with this. So, myself, Chad Weiberg, and Dr. Shrum and some others are coming together to come up with what we're creating and calling a model of consistency here. We're close here to finalizing our model of what our athletic department and our administration and myself feel like as best. We could be within a month, and the companies that we have and working with them to try to weed through all this. NIL that would allow us to do the things that we feel like are important to enhance the student-athletes opportunities when they're in school competing and get an education. But they're not going to be tied contractually to anything we're doing to keep them from doing a separate NIL deal.”
Things are heating up with this and in Scottsdale there will be talk. Oklahoma State and others like Kansas State, Iowa State, even Oklahoma have done things right so far by NIL, but others have not. Rather than face NCAA scrutiny and possible punishment could this tremor move the power schools to that eventual major college sports league that would include Notre Dame and the Power Five schools with possibly a few others. They would leave the NCAA and create their own organization and police and govern themselves. It would be a “best case” development financially for Oklahoma State and the Big 12 members. The Pac-12 and ACC would also come out on the high side financially.
