Dabo Swinney reveals level of confidence in rule enforcement, punishments moving forward

The result of the House v. NCAA settlement — which eliminated the NCAA’s “amateur” model and ushered in revenue sharing — officially went into effect July 1. From that point forward, FBS programs that opted into the settlement have been allowed to share millions in direct payments with their athletes.

That includes at Clemson, where longtime head football coach Dabo Swinney recently expressed confidence that the new College Sports Commission — the enforcement arm created to regulate the House settlement terms — and NIL Go, the Deloitte online portal that evaluates the “fair market value” of third-party NIL deals.

“I do. I do. Because I think the commissioners and presidents put all that stuff together. They spent a bunch of money to create this entity. I think we’ve got to give it a chance. So, yeah, I’m optimistic,” Swinney said last week. “Because I think there’s been a lot of work put into putting an infrastructure in place, but now it’s gotta fill in. You’ve got to give it some time. But we’re not there yet.

“And with some of the money that was front-loaded, the cap’s going to be a little bigger for some people this year, but it’ll all settle out. The reality of it is, with the settlement, regardless, you might have a $300 million budget, but you’ve got $17 million you can spend on football,” Swinney continued. “Or you could spend the whole $20 (million) if you don’t want to give anybody else anything. Whatever it is, it goes up 4-percent (every subsequent year), and there’s a 10-year deal. There’s a lot that went into this settlement, it’s not like one person made a decision. This is a lot of people involved for a long time. So yeah, I’ve got faith.”

While Swinney expressed faith in college football’s New World Order, both the College Sports Commission and NIL Go are already facing plenty of detractors. That includes from NIL collectives that are preparing for a legal fight after House attorneys slammed the NCAA and the CSC’s guidance around third-party deals. The House attorneys sent a letter to NCAA and power conference officials last week, according to Yahoo! Sports, asking them to “retract” their prior guidance.

But regardless of what comes of pending legal battles, Swinney is just happy that there is some semblance of a framework to limit the unregulated NIL spending that has taken place over the last several years since its implementation.

“And again, we just haven’t dealt with the complete chaos. On a scale of 1-10, I’d say we’re about a 3 here. We’re blessed simply because of the continuity we’ve had and the culture and the structure and just how we go about doing things,” Swinney concluded. “But everybody’s been affected, and everybody, I think, is hopeful that we’ll have a little more order. Because at the end of the day, we’ve got to educate young people, and I think the No. 1 way to do that is to try to have a little bit better landscape that’s conducive to that.”

Greg Sankey pushes back against House v. NCAA settlement complaints, detractors

Just over two weeks after the House v. NCAA settlement took effect, questions are swirling. Many center around the NIL Go clearinghouse which launched as part of the agreement, vetting NIL deals worth more than $600.

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey heard the frustration and pushed back during an interview on The Paul Finebaum Show on Thursday. He pointed out the importance of the moment while also acknowledging bumps in the road that will come up so soon into the new era.

“A moment of important change,” Sankey said of where things stand. “And it is both wearying and exhilarating. … I just left a video conference with our presidents and chancellors. We invited Bryan Seeley. Bryan’s the new executive director of what’s called the College Sports Commission, overseeing settlement implementation. He’s already hired two staff. You can’t do any of that until you actually have a settlement. You’re not going to leave a job with Major League Baseball like Bryan had and wonder if there’ll be actual settlement. So we’re in the implementation process.

“Last week, the CSC sent a letter with really guidance that I think is based on settlement terms. Plaintiffs’ attorneys said, ‘Not so fast.’ They quickly released that letter. We’ll go back and forth to figure out if there’s a destination upon which we can agree. That will happen repeatedly.”

— On3’s Nick Schultz contributed to this report.