https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6414771/2025/06/10/nil-house-settlement-paying-athletes-deals-ncaa/
The new enforcement terms under the House settlement instruct college athletes to declare any third-party NIL deals worth at least $600 into a clearinghouse database. The idea is that the clearinghouse, dubbed “NIL Go” and managed by the accounting firm Deloitte, will serve as a restrictor plate on NIL collectives and pay-for-play, flagging deals that do not reflect a valid business purpose or fall within a reasonable range of compensation. Yahoo Sports reported that at the recent ACC spring meetings, Deloitte officials shared that 70 percent of past deals from NIL collectives would be denied under the new clearinghouse.
But in candid conversations, coaches and recruiting staffers have serious doubts that athletes will declare those deals, or do so accurately. Some have suggested that players are being encouraged not to declare deals at all, but to simply take the money and keep quiet rather than risk the clearinghouse flagging it. And if that’s the case, where do we suspect that money might be coming from? “I guess it would just be the same as the way things used to work,” lamented the athletic director, frustrated by those already angling to undermine the settlement. “We’d be right back where we started.”
History suggests that power-thirsty boosters paying athletes under the table is a tough thing to police — particularly after collectives spent the past few years streamlining the art of bag dropping. Now, instead of an envelope of cash in a player’s locker, it’s a direct deposit into their bank account. (The IRS might complicate that process under the House settlement, but that’s what payment apps are for.) “If some donor wants to wire a player $25,000 a month, who’s keeping track of that?” one power conference administrator said. Money wires aside, the system of boosters paying players is much more sophisticated and far less frowned upon, and it’s going to be impossible to put that infrastructure back into the tube.