AMELIA ISLAND, Fla. — Pounding rain gave way to sunshine as ACC administrators clasped their carry-ons and exited the Ritz-Carlton on Wednesday at the conclusion of the league\u2019s spring meetings.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a sunnier existence in the ACC these days. There were no lawsuits to discuss, nor realignment to assess, while conference revenues are pushing past $700M annually.<\/p>\n
But less than a year into college sports\u2019 revenue-sharing era, leaders within the ACC and across the Power Four are already confronting a familiar problem: Schools are spending beyond the system meant to control them, and no one is fully sure who has the power — or the will — to stop it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only thing worse than having rules is having rules that are amorphous and that people aren\u2019t following,\u201d Notre Dame AD Pete Bevacqua told Sports Business Journal. \u201c… The cap is not operating the way it\u2019s intended. The cap needs to be looked at, and I think cap people agree it needs to be raised and rules need to be clarified.\u201d<\/p>\n
This week\u2019s ACC meetings provided a lens into the increasingly complex and frustrated world of high-major college sports.<\/p>\n
The House settlement was designed to create an annual revenue sharing cap starting at $20.5M and increasing by a percentage each year. Schools have blown past that number through third-party NIL deals that don\u2019t count toward the cap under the settlement\u2019s terms. Football programs are spending $40M-plus to field teams, while men\u2019s basketball rosters are eclipsing $20M.<\/p>\n
The subsequent issues present two basic problems: 1) Schools inflated the market by front-loading deals ahead of the launch of the College Sports Commission in July 2025; 2) Third-party multimedia rights companies are being used to funnel above the cap funds to players.<\/p>\n
Such problems have created a growing frustration with the CSC\u2019s inability to enforce the cap, while administrators feel a pressure to consider taking the dramatic step of conference-specific governance.<\/p>\n
\u201cMarket forces have outpaced the enterprise from when we started the negotiations with the House settlement — structurally, logistically, enforcement, and obviously the numbers and the value of third-party NIL agreements that we\u2019re talking about,\u201d Ohio State AD Ross Bjork told SBJ. \u201cThat\u2019s why we\u2019re now at this place where all of this has to be rethought, reimagined.\u201d <\/p>\n
Power Four commissioners discuss amnesty for big money deals<\/p>\n
The only constant in college sports these days is rising roster costs.<\/p>\n
But as table stakes grow, administrators are concerned that deals being held up in NIL Go, the CSC\u2019s vetting system, could force a breaking point where schools cannot keep the promises they\u2019ve made to athletes.<\/p>\n
One option, sources familiar with the talks told SBJ, is allowing schools effectively a one-year exception to go over the cap in order to keep those steep commitments. The concept has been discussed among the Power Four commissioners, and would likely be favored by the Big Ten and SEC.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s unclear is which deals would qualify for forgiveness \u2014 and whether a one-year exception would encourage schools to load up again next year in hopes of another bailout.<\/p>\n
If it directly impacts the cap, such a motion would also presumably require approval from the NCAA and Pac-12 — both of which are named defendants in the House settlement — along with plaintiff\u2019s attorneys.<\/p>\n
ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips said Wednesday his league would likely oppose full amnesty. Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark, too, is unlikely to support the pitch, which opponents view as letting the Big Ten and SEC off the hook for overcommitting to athletes.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow do you ever go backwards?\u201d said one industry source of efforts to rein in roster costs. \u201c… It\u2019s like in \u2018Men in Black,\u2019 the [memory eraser] that Will Smith puts his glasses on and pushes. How do you make student-athletes and high school kids not remember that people just make gobs and gobs of money?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSchools are writing checks they can\u2019t cash,\u201d added a second industry source. \u201cThey\u2019re hiding behind the fact that \u2018Well, kids aren\u2019t going to get paid and then they\u2019re not going to play.\u2019 That\u2019s not [our] problem.\u201d<\/p>\n
Could the SEC take governance into its own hands?<\/p>\n
The SEC and Commissioner Greg Sankey remain central in deciding how to account for the rising costs of rosters and what shape college sports might next take. <\/p>\n
League sources told SBJ frustration with the CSC\u2019s rollout and subsequent enforcement came to a head during last week\u2019s meeting of the conference\u2019s athletic directors in Birmingham, Ala. <\/p>\n
Sources characterized the discussion as something between an intense examination of the future to a mild idea session brought on by lingering sentiments of some within the league.<\/p>\n
The underlying impetus for those talks, however, has created a wariness across the industry — the SEC\u2019s frustration might just be the thing that pushes it to take governance on at the conference level.<\/p>\n