The College Sports Commission is investigating multiple Power Four programs for potential violations of college football’s revenue-sharing and NIL rules, CBS Sports has learned. 

Through public records requests, interviews and sources throughout college football, CBS Sports can report:

• The CSC is currently conducting longer-term investigations of between five to 10 Power Four programs.
• Among those programs are multiple College Football Playoff contenders. The CSC has been on campus at schools conducting interviews in person.
• The CSC has focused on “potential cap evasion and NIL-related violations between institutions, student-athletes and certain third-parties,” per public records.
• These investigations of potential violations are not dissimilar from the NBA’s investigation of the LA Clippers and Kawhi Leonard, where both struck deals with third parties to get around the salary cap. The CSC is looking into third-party deals that allow college football programs to skirt the rev share cap and rules.
• Multiple sources believe the CSC participation agreement, which would have given the CSC additional authority and provided a barrier against legal intervention from the states, is very unlikely to ever be adopted.
• No long-term investigation has been completed to this point. Some schools would like to see something done before the transfer portal window opens in January to serve as a warning to potential violators of the rules. 

In a memo sent to university presidents, chancellors, athletic directors and other campus officials on Aug. 20, the CSC stated: 

“The DOI is actively conducting multiple, longer-term investigations into potential cap evasion and NIL-related violations by institutions, student-athletes, and certain third parties. The CSC encourages anyone with relevant information to contact the DOI. Input from athletic department staff on recruiting practices, agent conduct, and questionable business proposals helps the CSC apply the rules fairly by bringing potential violations to light.” 

The investigations represent the most significant test yet of the CSC’s ability to police college football’s revenue-sharing system at a time in which roster costs have rocketed past the around $21.5 million rev share number dictated in the House settlement. 

In conversations with 20-plus sources across college football, CBS Sports has learned that the CSC has been on campus at schools conducting interviews about active investigations regarding cap-evasion practices. There is no exact timeline on when those might be completed. 

🔍 CSC investigations FAQ

Schools are allowed to spend around $21.5 million on their student athletes in the 2026-27 academic calendar year through a revenue sharing model approved in the historic NCAA v. House legal settlement. 

Any money a student-athlete receives from a third-party must clear the CSC approval process, where it’s examined to see if the deal meets a fair-market range of compensation. In July, the CSC amended its rules to exempt all deals between $600 and $15,000 from the range of compensation review as long as that athlete has made $50,000 or less in “associated” deals. If the athlete is above that $50,000 number, the review is back in effect. 

With seven college football rosters ballooning into $40 and, in a few cases, $50 million range, according to previous CBS Sports reporting, schools are spending well beyond the rev share number, which is meant to serve for all sports. Given $40 million football rosters and $10-million-plus basketball rosters just to be competitive, schools are attempting to generate tens of millions in third-party money for their athletes just to remain competitive. There is no cap on how much a team can spend as long as the deals are submitted and approved as being in accordance with the fair market range of compensation through the CSC’s process. 

In September, the CSC reported that through its platform NIL GO it had cleared $227.25 million in deals between July 1 and Aug. 31. However, it failed to clear $67.08 million during that period in deals that did not meet fair-market-value standards or the terms of the House Settlement agreement. 

Since NIL Go launched, it’s cleared $582.5 million and denied $156.9 million in deals. 

When millions get held up in the NIL Go system, some teams look for ways around the rules to deliver the payments they promised their athletes. 

Sources have indicated the CSC isn’t even holding up all the deals it could. Many submitted deals don’t meet fair market value nor can it be proven the athlete ever provided the deliverables promised. 

“We could discipline 100 student athletes tomorrow who have not fulfilled their NIL obligations,” a source said. “The reality is, no one wanted them to. No one cared if they did. If they were real deals, the person would have made them do the obligations. The fact that they didn’t do the obligations shows this was a sham deal from the start. Who’s the person who put together that sham deal? It’s not the student athlete.” 

The CSC has run into considerable hurdles in its investigations. 

Its attempts to get all 68 Power Four institutions to sign a participation agreement have gone unfulfilled. The participation agreement was viewed as a critical piece of the House settlement, strengthening the CSC’s ability to force schools to comply with investigations and potential penalties as well as require those institutions to waive the right to sue over any enforcement decision. It would have also prohibited schools from assisting in lawsuits i.e. a state attorney general suing on the school’s behalf with its cooperation. 

There was brief momentum behind getting the schools to sign the agreement but the CSC could never get all Power 4 conferences on board with it at the same time and has all but abandoned its hopes of it ever happening. 

Without the power of the participation agreement, the CSC has consistently faced the same problems the NCAA did whenever it tried to enforce its rules. Every school loves to say it wants the rules to be enforced but embodies a “rules for thee, but not for me” mentality. While there are exceptions, more often than not schools aggressively respond with outside counsel and a non-compliant attitude. Often it would take weeks, if not months, for schools to respond to CSC’s requests for information. 

“This is the hardest enforcement challenge in sports in the United States,” one source told CBS Sports. “It’s not even close in my mind.”

High-ranking staffers have long had a skeptical view on whether the CSC will actually be able to enforce its rules. 

With so many programs aggressively attempting to skirt around requirements built into the system, it’s created an environment in which there’s pressure on decision makers to break the rules to remain competitive. 

“The problem with the CSC stuff is, what are they going to say: (This school) is ineligible?” a Power Four GM said. “They don’t have teeth to enforce it. The big ones, we all knew that. We’ve talked about this pretty openly before. 

“The GM position I truly believe you’re going to get fired for performance or fired for cause. You just choose which one. And if you’re fired for cause you chose to go down that road and it’s a fine line to walk.”

To this point, previous reporting has unveiled CSC inquiries into schools such as LSU, Kansas and Nebraska. The inquiry into LSU was quickly resolved in February and did not involve the football program. The CSC won its first arbitration case after Nebraska challenged a decision to deny a collection of multi-million dollar deals involving 18 football players. 

Those inquiries are separate from the multiple long-term investigations the CSC is currently conducting.  

Documents obtained by CBS Sports through a public-records request to North Carolina show the school engaged in communication with the CSC over its dealings with a third-party NIL company. More than two-dozen UNC football and basketball staffers were asked about their communication with the entity. The school told the CSC that only basketball GM Jim Tanner and football GM Michael Lombardi had contact with the company. Lombardi told the CSC he used its software for “recruiting purposes.”

Lombardi resigned from the program on Sept. 3 amid an internal investigation into a human resources complaint against him. 

Asked recently about the status of CSC investigations, ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said the CSC needs the authority to enforce the rules the membership agreed to.

“It’s gotten better,” Phillips said. “I think with the footing of the CSC and the work that [President] Charlie Baker has done from an NCAA standpoint, there’s been more synergy over this last year. And there needs to be because they have to work in unison. As I look towards the future, I only think that that’s going to get stronger as we go forward, but when you don’t have all of the tools necessary in enforcement, whether the NCAA or the CSC, it still leaves a hole in enforcement. You know, there’s a lot of cases that are out there. We have some in our conference with student-athletes and tampering and the rest of it, but until you have the authority necessary to do some of these things, there’s always going to be a little bit of a lag, but I feel good overall.”