The rest of college football is getting fed up with the Big Ten and SEC, especially when it comes to how their teams seemingly flout the rules around third-party NIL deals laid out by the new College Sports Commission, created out of last Summer\u2019s House v. NCAA settlement.<\/p>\n
Iowa State<\/a> athletic director Jamie Pollard put his two Power Four conference brethren on blast Monday during a Cyclones Tailgate Tour stop in Des Moines, and even suggested the Big Ten and SEC should follow through of potential threats to \u201cbreak away\u201d from the NCAA if the leagues don\u2019t want to follow the agreed-upon NIL limits laid out in the House settlement.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s what\u2019s frustrating to me, the same people that say they want rules only want rules if they don\u2019t apply to them,\u201d Pollard said Monday, via Cyclone Fanatic<\/a>.\u00a0\u201cI said it three years ago \u2014 let \u2018em break away. I would turn it around and say we should break away from them. Let them go, but they have to go in all their sports and see how fun it is to play baseball and softball and track when it\u2019s just the 20 of you.<\/p>\n Jamie Pollard expresses his frustration with the Big Ten and SEC for not adhering to the rules of the College Sports Commission. He adds he would be okay with the two conferences splitting from the NCAA.<\/p>\n “The four commissioners spent a lot of money creating the CSC. Then to have\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/99sxDi89oQ<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Cyclone Fanatic (@cyclonefanatic) May 19, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s what I think we should do, but I\u2019m one person, and you know that\u2019s probably a little more draconian. But that\u2019s how I feel about it,\u201d Pollard continued. \u201cLike, let\u2019s quit talking about it, quit threatening, go do it. But if you\u2019re going to do it, you don\u2019t get to just do it in football and then keep all your other sports with us. No, take them all, see how fun it is.\u201d<\/p>\n Pollard\u2019s comments came on the same day the Big Ten Spring Meetings kicked off Monday in Los Angeles, where power brokers within college sports\u2019 wealthiest conference is meeting to discuss prominent topics like future College Football Playoff expansion among other issues. <\/p>\n Pollard\u2019s admitted frustrations with the Big Ten and SEC are rooted in the knowledge some teams within those two leagues are far exceeding the established financial limitations that the CSC has been tasked with enforcing, especially with regard to third-party NIL deals that are allowing some of college football\u2019s biggest brands to field $30-40 million roster budgets. According to On3\u2019s Pete Nakos, more than 20 football teams will field rosters next season valued at $30 million or more, while there are more than 10 basketball teams exceeding $20 million, with much of those hailing from the Big Ten and SEC. <\/p>\n The landmark House settlement, which passed last June, established legal revenue-sharing between schools and student-athletes, but implemented a $20.5 million salary cap for which teams are able to utilize. That cap increased to $21.3 million for the 2026-27 fiscal year, but recent numbers from the CSC itself reveal some teams are more than doubling that total. And while some third-party NIL deals don\u2019t necessarily count against a team\u2019s revenue-share cap, they\u2019re not intended to let teams run up the tab.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s frustrating, because collectively, the four [Power] conferences created the CSC. And we spent a lot of money. The four commissioners spent a lot of money creating the CSC,\u201d Pollard added. \u201cThen to have two of the conferences not want to adhere to it is perplexing to me, because then it\u2019s like why did we spend the money? If you didn\u2019t want rules, then why did you create this entity?\u201d<\/p>\n According to Yahoo! Sports<\/a>, of the more than $250 million worth of third-party NIL deals submitted to the College Sports Commission since Jan. 1, the Big Ten and SEC accounted for more than 75% of those deals. And while $115 million of that $250 million has has been cleared according to the CSC\u2019s own publicly-released data, \u201croughly $125 million or more remain under review or have been rejected.\u201d<\/a> <\/p>\n