The system created to regulate name, image and likeness deals across college sports is facing a reality its architects did not fully anticipate.

A surge of NIL agreements tied to school-affiliated entities — including booster collectives, multimedia partners and apparel companies — is overwhelming the College Sports Commission, college sports’ new clearinghouse, and driving longer review timelines, according to data released Tuesday by the commission. The spike coincided with the January transfer portal window, when thousands of players moved between programs across college football.

“I don’t think the system was designed with this amount of associated deals in mind,” said Bryan Seeley, CEO of the College Sports Commission.

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NIL agreements involving associated entities accounted for 63% of all NIL deals and 78% of their value in January and February. Among power-conference programs, associated deal volume rose 65% compared to November and December, while the average value of those deals increased sharply.

Associated deals require greater scrutiny from investigators under the House settlement reached last year, contributing to longer review times and rising frustration among schools and attorneys overseeing the settlement.

Operationally, many deals still move quickly through the clearinghouse. Roughly 50% are resolved within 24 hours, and 70% reach resolution within seven days once the required information is submitted.

The CSC’s clearinghouse, known as NIL Go, was created to review NIL deals under the regulatory framework established through the House settlement. But the structure of the modern NIL market is forcing far more manual scrutiny than originally expected. When the system was first designed, as many as 90% of NIL deals were expected to flow through an automated system without human review.

Instead, the clearinghouse is confronting a marketplace that Seeley says bears little resemblance to the traditional endorsement economy NIL was once expected to mirror.

“I think it’s fair to say that the NIL market in college athletics is not a normal organic market,” he said. “It’s a market in which schools are manufacturing NIL for their student athletes.”

The delays have drawn scrutiny from attorneys at Winston & Strawn, which represented players in the House settlement with the NCAA. Those attorneys have raised concerns about the speed of reviews and the potential impact of delays on recruiting and roster management.

Seeley said he asked Winston & Strawn to provide specific examples of delays and has also requested additional information from schools that raise concerns about review timelines.

Seeley acknowledged that review times have increased but said the nature of the deals themselves — not staffing shortages — is the primary cause. The CSC has enlisted help from Deloitte, which designed the NIL Go system, and an outside law firm to expedite the process. The CSC has expanded from nine employees to 15 since December, with plans to add more in the coming months.

“The lack of staff is a contributing factor to increased deal review times, but it is not a large contributing factor or even the most significant contributing factor,” he said. “A lot of this is problems with the system just not being designed to handle this.”

Another issue complicating the process, Seeley said, is resistance from some entities involved in deals.

“There are people who do not wanna provide information, particularly if it’s information they think that will lead to their deal not being approved,” Seeley said. “And the people in this case are not student-athletes. The people are the entities doing the deals or the schools.”

That pushback, he said, slows reviews even further.

When asked for data quantifying the increase in review times, Seeley said he did not have those figures available.

Between January and February, 3,704 NIL deals worth $39.29 million were cleared, while 187 deals worth $14.36 million were rejected. 

Currently, 18 deals are in arbitration, though those cases have been consolidated into a single arbitration. Seeley declined to confirm whether the deals involve the same business or school.

“In general, in arbitration, deals are consolidated because the issues are essentially the same,” Seeley said. “And what that often looks like is they are different student-athletes, but it’s the same or identical deal, or similar or identical deal, and they’re all from the same school.”

Ten deals listed under arbitration as of Dec. 31, 2025, were later withdrawn by the players involved.

While the clearinghouse processes thousands of deals, the legal framework that gives the College Sports Commission its enforcement authority is still being debated.

At the center of that debate is the CSC’s participation agreement, which requires conferences and schools to grant the commission investigative and enforcement authority over NIL activity under the House settlement.

Many schools rejected the initial version of the document, prompting CSC and conference leaders to negotiate revisions. Those discussions are still underway on the conference level. Some of the proposed changes weaken the agreement, Seeley said.

“I think the participant agreement is a key tool to giving the CSC the enforcement powers it needs,” Seeley said. “And without the participant agreement, there will be major challenges.”

He warned that weakening the document could undermine the system’s ability to regulate NIL deals.

“There comes a point where the document is not strong enough to justify it being in place and the CSC signing it.”

More than 21,000 NIL deals worth roughly $166.5 million have been submitted for review since the NIL Go platform launched in June. The system now includes 38,242 registered student-athletes, along with 1,331 institutional users and 4,923 representatives.