The CSC beat Nebraska in arbitration, but it shouldn’t provoke the state’s attorney general

*Though your favorite AD probably uses this term as a pejorative, do not read it as one here. We have no issues with pay-for-cook, pay-for-sing, pay-for-teach or pay-for-treating illnesses. There is nothing morally wrong with paying someone for being good at sports.

The underlying issue is the settlement is not legal precedent and what the CSC is doing probably violates the Sherman Antitrust Act and every state antitrust law. It isn’t legal in this country for competitors to collude to price fix a labor market. That’s precisely what the schools are doing by joining forces to create a revenue share cap. Absent an antitrust exemption granted by Congress or a collective bargaining agreement that contains a cap, the schools probably can’t legally set a limit on what players can be paid.

Power conference schools can’t sue the CSC because they are parties to the settlement. Ditto for the players, who had to opt in to get their money. Those parties must settle disputes through arbitration. House plaintiffs attorneys can challenge the CSC, and they currently are doing that in federal court.

But state AGs — if properly provoked — might be able to blow up the CSC faster. The AGs aren’t parties to the settlement. And when the terms of the settlement were announced, it was easy to determine which schools the CSC would be most unwise to challenge: Nebraska, Tennessee, LSU, Missouri and West Virginia.

All of these schools are the dominant programs in states with governors and AGs who aren’t shy to engage when they know nearly 100 percent of the electorate will be on their side. There is no political downside for Nebraska’s AG to fight for the paychecks of Nebraska football players. Just as there was no political downside for West Virginia’s AG to recruit fellow AGs to challenge NCAA transfer rules (the AGs won) or Tennessee’s AG to recruit other states to challenge the NCAA’s NIL rules (the AGs won).

Plus, officials at the schools that created the rules are themselves the ones trying to find ways around the rules. The denied deals in the Nebraska case involve Playfly, a multimedia rights company that works with dozens of schools. In the days before athletes could get paid, these MMR companies — Learfield is the other big one — would pay schools a fixed amount and then make sponsorship deals on the schools’ behalf. Since players were allowed to get paid starting in 2021, MMR companies have evolved. Now, part of their role is as a passthrough for NIL deals so schools can get money to players through third parties. Nebraska isn’t alone by any stretch. But the Cornhuskers didn’t feel they were getting much guidance from the CSC. Weirdly, the arbitration hearing may have provided the roadmap Nebraska officials sought in order to structure their deals in ways the CSC would approve.

The denied deals involved a practice called “warehousing” NIL rights. Playfly was identified as an “associated entity,” which meant it couldn’t just buy a player’s NIL rights lock, stock and barrel. An MMR company facilitating a deal for, say, a series of autograph signings to promote a local company can pass the CSC’s sniff test.

At the moment, Nebraska officials aren’t ready to go to war with the CSC. Seely, meanwhile, seemed like someone who wants to avoid a war with Nebraska at all costs. So perhaps the resubmitted deals pass muster.

“This arbitration was not about whether these student athletes can get paid,” Seely said Monday. “It was about whether they can get paid in this particular way. I believe there are deals in the pipeline for these student athletes, with actual sponsors attached to them, that we can approve. I believe that will happen. I don’t believe litigation is necessary for these student athletes to get money for their NIL.”

This sounds as if Seely wants Nebraska to do a little more paperwork. Maybe the $1 million worth of deals can be split into 50 $20,000 deals spread among 18 players and assigned to specific sponsors with specific deliverables, and perhaps they go through.

If that happens, the CSC probably gets to live a little longer.

That won’t allow the CSC to actually limit what schools pay players — because, again, that’s illegal — but it will allow the schools to keep pretending they are.