Judge grants preliminary injunction over NIL rules
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Dan Murphy, ESPN Staff Writer
A federal judge in Tennessee granted a preliminary injunction Friday afternoon that prohibits the NCAA from punishing any athletes or boosters for negotiating name, image and likeness deals during their recruiting process or while they are in the transfer portal.
The injunction is not a final ruling in the case, but the judge’s decision will likely have an immediate and dramatic impact on how NIL deals are used in the recruiting process.
“The NCAA’s prohibition likely violates federal antitrust law and harms student-athletes,” U.S. District Judge Clifton Corker wrote in his decision Friday.
NCAA rules prohibit student-athletes from signing NIL contracts that are designed as inducements to get them to attend a particular school — one of the few restrictions in place for how athletes can make money. For example, the NCAA recently announced sanctions against Florida State football because a member of its coaching staff connected a prospect with a booster collective that works closely with the Seminoles. The collective made a specific offer to the player, who was considering transferring from his current school to Florida State.
The attorneys general of Tennessee and Virginia argued that the NCAA is illegally restricting opportunities for student-athletes by preventing them from negotiating the terms of NIL deals prior to deciding where they want to go to school. The lawsuit was filed Jan. 31, one day after University of Tennessee chancellor Donde Plowman revealed in a letter to the NCAA that the school’s athletic department was being investigated for potential recruiting rules violations.
In Friday’s ruling, Corker determined that the attorneys general have a reasonable chance of winning their case and that student-athletes could suffer irreparable harm if the restrictions remain in place while the case is being decided.
“Turning upside down rules overwhelmingly supported by member schools will aggravate an already chaotic collegiate environment, further diminishing protections for student-athletes from exploitation,” the NCAA said in a statement. “The NCAA fully supports student-athletes making money from their name, image and likeness and is making changes to deliver more benefits to student-athletes, but an endless patchwork of state laws and court opinions make clear partnering with Congress is necessary to provide stability for the future of all college athletes.”
Anthony Skrmetti, Tennessee’s attorney general, said in a statement Friday that his office plans to litigate the case “to the fullest extent necessary to ensure the NCAA’s monopoly cannot continue.”
“The NCAA is not above the law, and the law is on our side,” Skrmetti said.
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares called the win in court “rewarding” and saw it as an extension of the Supreme Court ruling in the NCAA vs. Alston case in 2021, which he said should have put the NCAA “on notice” for its legal vulnerabilities.
“We’re finally getting to the point where you’re seeing real student-athlete empowerment at the collegiate level,” Miyares told ESPN in a phone interview late Friday. “The NCAA in an arbitrary and capricious manner was trying to restrict that.”
Miyares said the NCAA model has gotten to the point where it’s unsustainable, pointing out the billion-dollar NCAA tournament television contract that was signed without the players getting any cut of it. The potential of change to NIL rules that would come with this ruling could be just the start.
“I think could be the first steps of significant change,” he said. “And I think it’s been coming for a long time.”
College athletics attorney Tom Mars, who worked with a Tennessee collective, Spyre Sports Group, on this case, said the ruling could mark the beginning of the end for the NCAA.
“I think this will be one more brick in the wall that is the end of the NCAA,” Mars said. “Short of intervention by Congress, the demise of the NCAA now seems inevitable based on nothing but a financial analysis, as it appears the NCAA is poised to lose all of its upcoming antitrust cases. The cumulative effect of which could make the NCAA financially insolvent.”
“A bad case is a bad case, and they’ve put all their defenses forward,” Mars added. “And there’s no precedent anywhere in the United States that supports their defenses.”
Corker said the NCAA’s lawyers did not make a compelling argument for why using NIL contracts as recruiting inducements would undermine the academic side of college sports.
“While the NCAA permits student-athletes to profit from their NIL, it fails to show how the timing of when a student-athlete enters such an agreement would destroy the goal of preserving amateurism,” the judge wrote.
Earlier this week, Skrmetti told ESPN that he was willing to work with the NCAA to find some middle ground on how it could enforce some of its recruiting rules while the case is resolved.
“If they want to talk about possibilities for finding a workable solution in the short term, we’re always open to conversation,” Skrmetti said, noting he had not discussed the case with NCAA leadership. “There’s no guarantee we’ll be able to reach an agreement, but if there’s a mutually agreeable path forward as we work to get these issues figured out, we’re open to that.”
In an interview with ESPN on Tuesday, NCAA president Charlie Baker said the restriction on recruiting inducements was written because the association wants athletes to choose their future schools based on the best educational opportunities rather than where they could make the most money.
“I also think it makes it enormously challenging, as we are currently seeing in the existing NIL environment, for kids and families to figure out what the right choice is in the first place because an enormous amount of information flows their way that may not in fact be accurate,” Baker said.
ESPN asked Baker if having contracts that the prospective athletes could sign before committing to a school would help ensure that the offers they were receiving were accurate or could provide some way to hold a booster or school accountable for false promises.
“I don’t know,” Baker said.
Since adopting new rules that opened the door for NIL deals in 2021, the NCAA has issued two sanctions related to how boosters used NIL opportunities as an inducement in the recruiting process: the recent Florida State case and one involving the Miami women’s basketball team in February 2023.
The NCAA has struggled to enforce the inducement rules despite widespread acknowledgement and complaints from coaches, players and administrators that offers for NIL money have become a central discussion in recruiting players out of high school and the transfer portal. The rules allow coaches and collectives to share information about a prospect’s potential earning power as long as they don’t make specific offers or promises. Without documented evidence of a violation or cooperation from parties directly involved in an offer, the NCAA’s enforcement staff doesn’t have the power to compel the information they need to levy sanctions.
Plowman, Tennessee’s chancellor, said in her letter to the NCAA that it was “intellectually dishonest” to have rules that allow collectives to meet with recruits and enter into contracts with recruits but prohibit “conversations that would be of a recruiting nature.”
“Any discussion about NIL might factor into a prospective student-athlete’s decision to attend an institution. This creates an inherently unworkable situation, and everyone knows it,” Plowman wrote. “Student-athletes and their families deserve better than this.”
Baker told ESPN that he didn’t think the NCAA was ignoring reality by asking athletes to pick their schools based on academic and athletic opportunities and worry about NIL opportunities after they arrive.
“I think the most important thing here is let’s deal with some of the issues around accountability and transparency and consumer protections first,” Baker said. “And if we then want to have a conversation about other stuff, about how this should all work, especially if we get to the point where we give schools the ability to do more in this space, I’m all-in on that.”
In a separate case about the NCAA’s rules that restrict an athlete’s ability to transfer to a new school without penalty, a federal judge decided in December to grant an injunction. That ruling compelled the NCAA to change its rules to allow athletes to transfer as many times as they would like during their college careers while the case is pending.
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David Hale, ESPN Staff Writer
The committee has revealed its third set of rankings this season, and aside from BYU tumbling after a loss and Tennessee falling just outside the current playoff field, not much has changed.
But that doesn’t mean there’s not a reason to be outraged. Indeed, it means the committee had a whole week to fix the mistakes it had already made, and it chose not to!
So, who should be most angry this week? Grab a pillow to scream into and a stress ball to clutch. We’ve got a lot to get off our chests.
A fact the committee made clear this week: Beating Mercer by 45 points is better than sitting at home on the couch.
So it is that Alabama, which was ranked behind Miami last week, beat up on a hapless FCS opponent and jumped Miami during the Canes’ open date.
Was there a message in this?
Surely, the message could be that taking the week off isn’t something to be rewarded, but we’re betting that’s not a message the committee wants to send while coaches are arguing about the value of playing in a conference title game.
Is the message that blowing out a team from the Southern Conference is really impressive? All due respect to UMass-Lowell, but we doubt it.
No, the message seems to be that the ACC needs to understand its place in the pecking order, and the line starts behind Alabama. Funny, because we thought the ACC already got that message last year, when Florida State was left out.
Alas, Miami went from No. 4 in the first rankings all the way to No. 8 now, thanks to a one-possession loss to a solid (and underrated) Georgia Tech team. But is that fair?
Miami has four wins over SP+ top-40 teams this season — the same number as Alabama and twice as many as Notre Dame.
Miami has a better loss than either of the two teams directly in front of it: Georgia Tech is No. 55 by SP+. Vanderbilt (one of two losses for Alabama, remember) is No. 61. Northern Illinois, which beat Notre Dame in South Bend, is No. 84.
Miami’s problem, of course, is it lacks a signature win. Notre Dame has Texas A&M. Alabama has Georgia. Miami has … Florida ?
So perhaps the Canes shouldn’t be quite as mad at the committee here as they should be furious with Louisville. The Cardinals were the lynchpin victory for both Miami and SMU (and helped Notre Dame, too), but they bungled their way to a loss to Stanford that will be studied by future generations as a model of ineptitude.
That the committee has woefully undervalued SMU all season, has shoved Miami behind the two-loss Tide, and thinks Clemson is worse than Colorado is the real message here though. The ACC is a one-bid league. The committee is spelling it out loud and clear.
2. Everyone not named Texas in the SEC
Let’s state something at the top: Texas is probably quite good. It is, of course, not the Longhorns’ fault they joined the SEC and still drew a Big 12-caliber schedule. But facts are facts, and in a conference with six eight-win teams and four more already bowl eligible, Texas has played exactly two Power 4 opponents with a winning record this season. Those games resulted in a three-point win over Vanderbilt and a shellacking by Georgia.
But Texas has one loss, and the rest of the SEC competition has two or three. Is that all that should matter?
Will be interesting to see the SEC pecking order, and it’s hard to fault Texas for the schedule it was handed… but 1 team is not like the others here. pic.twitter.com/K6yISrTFN5
— 💫🅰️♈️🆔 (@ADavidHaleJoint) November 19, 2024
Ultimately, winning games is the most important thing, and the committee seems to recognize that with Indiana at No. 5, despite a schedule that might well have included a home game against Bishop Sycamore.
But is it all that matters? If Texas played Georgia’s schedule, would it still have a better record? Their head-to-head meeting would suggest otherwise.
Again, it’s hardly Texas’ fault the SEC rolled out the red carpet in Year 1. But it is up to Texas to impress when the spotlight is on, and since the blowout win against Michigan — a team vastly overrated at the time — the marquee moments have been mostly meh, right up to last week’s mediocrity against Arkansas.
Ultimately, an incredibly good SEC team — Georgia, Ole Miss, Tennessee, Texas A&M, South Carolina or Alabama — is going to end up having played a markedly tougher schedule, proved they can hang with the best of the best, and either go on the road for a arduous opening-round matchup or be left out altogether.
(Seriously, how is Georgia the 10th-best team in the country? There’s no logical argument.)
But Texas? Even with a loss to A&M, it’s hard to see the Horns falling from No. 3 to a place outside the top 11.
How bad was the Kansas loss?
There’s a good case to be made that the Jayhawks are an incredibly undervalued opponent right now. They opened the season ranked in the top 25, they’re just rounding into shape now, and they’ve been incredibly unlucky, going 1-5 in one-possession games. SP+ ranks Kansas as a better loss than Vandy or Georgia Tech. And BYU was still probably the better team in that game, but a special teams miscue cost the Cougars a win.
So what? BYU probably should’ve lost to SMU or Oklahoma State or Utah, and karma is a real jerk.
Still, let’s compare some résumés here.
Team A: 9-1, No. 13 strength of record, best win vs. SP+ No. 12, loss to SP+ No. 84, 3 wins vs. bowl-eligible Power 4 teams
Team B: 9-1, No. 15 strength of record, best win vs. SP+ No. 46, loss to SP+ No. 5, 0 wins vs. bowl-eligible Power 4 teams
Team C: 9-1, No. 9 strength of record, best win vs. SP+ No. 22, loss to SP+ No. 55, 2 wins vs. bowl-eligible Power 4 teams
Team D: 9-1, No. 8 strength of record, best win vs. SP+ No. 13, loss to SP+ No. 42, 3 wins vs. bowl-eligible Power 4 teams
They’re all in roughly the same demographic, sure, but if you’re splitting hairs, it’s hard not to split them in Team D’s direction, right?
Well, of course, Team D is BYU. And, of course, Team A (Notre Dame), B (Boise State) and C (Miami) are all ranked higher.
Way back when the playoff began and the committee was launched, the idea was not to adjust the rankings entirely off the previous week — sending teams that lose tumbling and teams that win inching up as attrition occurs above them — but to view each team’s résumé anew each week. But this committee is acting every bit like the AP voters of old — dropping Miami and Georgia and Tennessee and, particularly, BYU, because of recency bias rather than the sum total of the results. Heck, BYU is now behind SMU — a team with the same record the Cougars beat head to head!
And the real issue here? With BYU, Colorado and Arizona State all now ranked behind Boise State, the odds of the Big 12 missing an opening-round bye are looking pretty strong.
Maybe Coach Prime should use some of his considerable air time to mention that.
Speaking of Coach Prime, here we are again with the clearly superior two-loss Big 12 team ranked five spots behind Colorado.
Same record. Arizona State’s worst loss was by 10 without its starting quarterback. Colorado was blown out by Nebraska. ASU’s best win is against SP+ No. 18; Colorado’s is No. 49.
And, if we’re being honest, Kenny Dillingham’s postgame rants this season have been more entertaining than Deion’s, too.
1:07
ASU coach labels kicking game ‘atrocious,’ confirms tryouts for Monday
ASU coach Kenny Dillingham labels his team’s kicking game “atrocious” and says it will be hosting open tryouts on Monday.
This is a mistake by the committee, plain and simple.
5. The Power 4
We won’t get to say this very often, but the power players are getting screwed.
OK, not really. The SEC and Big Ten will be fine, and even if they’re not, they can cry themselves to sleep on giant piles of money.
But the fact remains that Boise State is primed for a first-round bye, and this week’s top 25 includes four teams from outside the traditional power conferences: Boise State, Army, Tulane and UNLV.
That’s the most during any one week since the final poll of the 2021 season that featured five, but among those were Houston, Cincinnati and BYU — all power conference teams now. Only twice before have four teams not currently in a power conference league (or the Pac-12) been ranked concurrently — in the wild COVID year of 2020, and for a single week in 2019 with Boise State, App State, Memphis and Navy.
Somewhere, Greg Sankey is diabolically petting a cat in an oversized chair and plotting revenge.
Also Angry: Duke, Pitt, Kansas State, Syracuse, James Madison and Washington State (all 7-3 or better, unranked and with more wins vs. bowl-eligible Power 4 teams than Illinois), SMU (9-1, No. 13), Georgia (8-2, No. 10. Seriously, who thinks there are nine better teams?)
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Paolo Uggetti, ESPN
In its inaugural season as a member of the Big Ten, Oregon has officially clinched a spot in the conference title game — on a Tuesday.
The Ducks, again No. 1 in this week’s College Football Playoff rankings, appeared to have clinched a berth in the championship when they beat Wisconsin on Saturday to go to 11-0 this season and 8-0 in conference play. The Big Ten, however, did not confirm that was the case until Tuesday afternoon.
“Following a comprehensive evaluation of all possible scenarios over the final two weeks of regular season play across all 18 teams, the Big Ten Conference determined there are no conditions whereby the Ducks do not finish No. 1 or No. 2 [in the league],” the conference said in a news release.
The conference also released a separate document outlining the 10 tiebreaker scenarios that could occur over the remaining games. The three teams vying for the other spot in the title game are Indiana (7-0 in conference play), Ohio State (6-1, with its only loss to Oregon) and Penn State (6-1, with its only loss to Ohio State). Each of those teams has two conference games remaining, and Ohio State and Indiana face off this weekend.
In eight of the 10 tiebreaker scenarios, Oregon would face either Indiana or Ohio State in a rematch of their thrilling October matchup that the Ducks won 32-31. If the Hoosiers beat the Buckeyes, they are bound for the title game even if they lose to Purdue the following week. If the Buckeyes beat the Hoosiers, they are in unless they lose to Michigan in the season finale.
Penn State can meet Oregon in the title game only if the Nittany Lions win out and get help on other fronts. Penn State would also need Indiana to lose to Ohio State and Purdue, and Ohio State to lose to Michigan. Alternatively, it would need Indiana to lose to Ohio State and beat Purdue while the cumulative conference winning percentage of all conference opponents for Penn State remains higher than Indiana’s and Ohio State loses to Michigan.
Oregon is on a bye this week, then will face Washington on Nov. 30 in its final game of the regular season as the Ducks try to record an undefeated regular season for the second time in program history (2010). If Oregon beats Washington, it will also clinch an outright berth as the No. 1 seed in the title game.
The Big Ten title game is set for Dec. 7 at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.
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Andrea Adelson, ESPN Senior Writer
Boise State moved ahead of BYU in the third installment of rankings released by the College Football Playoff selection committee Tuesday night, putting the Broncos in position to receive a first-round bye ahead of the Big 12 champion.
The top five remain unchanged, with No. 1 Oregon leading the way, followed by No. 2 Ohio State, No. 3 Texas, No. 4 Penn State and No. 5 Indiana. But the biggest storyline is the way the committee dropped BYU after a 17-13 loss to Kansas put an end to its unbeaten season.
BYU (9-1) moved down eight spots from No. 6 to No. 14, falling behind No. 12 Boise State (9-1).
Using the current rankings, Oregon (Big Ten), Texas (SEC), Miami (ACC) and Boise State (Mountain West) would be the four highest-rated conference champions and would receive first-round byes in the 12-team playoff. BYU (Big 12) would be included in the playoff as the fifth-highest rated conference champion but would be the No. 12 seed and have to play in the first round.
Based on résumés, Boise State has a better loss than BYU — on the road against No. 1 Oregon, after the Ducks kicked a winning field goal as time expired. BYU lost at home to a Kansas team that is 4-6. The week before, BYU needed a late comeback to beat Utah. The Cougars have not yet played any of the Big 12 teams ranked in the current top 25, though they play at No. 21 Arizona State on Saturday.
“We certainly consider strength [of schedule] in all of the conversations that we have,” Warde Manuel, chair of the CFP committee, said on ESPN’s rankings release show Tuesday night. “We also look at how the teams are playing, and what it is the success on the field.”
BYU’s best win is over SMU, and though the teams are both 9-1 and BYU has the head-to-head win, the Mustangs are ranked one spot ahead at No. 13.
That would still leave them on the outside looking in.
“We watch the games and we see how teams are playing each week,” Manuel said. “So we assess their body of work. We’re going to evaluate it each week, from how the team plays that week, but also the body of work.”
Notre Dame (No. 6), Alabama (No. 7), Miami (No. 8), Ole Miss (No. 9) and Georgia (No. 10) round out the top 10.
“I don’t think they value the Big Ten over the SEC, I think they value wins and losses,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said Tuesday, when asked if he thought the CFP committee treasures the Big Ten over the SEC. “So, they place people based on a column, a column of wins and a column of losses, not on the eye test of going to watch them play and see who they play. I think they base it on wins and losses. I don’t think they say, ‘well, this is better than that.’ They just say ‘this record’s better than that.’ That’s the most simple way to do it. It’s not necessarily the 12 best, so we’ll see what happens. I’m not worried about it much. I got to worry about our team and what we got going on.”
The first-round matchups would look like this: No. 12 BYU at No. 5 Ohio State; No. 11 Georgia at No. 6 Penn State; No. 10 Ole Miss at No. 7 Indiana; No. 9 Alabama at No. 8 Notre Dame.
The UPDATED College Football Playoff Top 25 rankings‼️ pic.twitter.com/TR54lloq8V
— ESPN (@espn) November 20, 2024
“We look at the data, we look at the stats, but we also have to watch the games and see how the teams are performing,” Manuel said. “And it’s a lot of debate. But that’s the value of having 13 people in this committee, with the conversations that are going on.”
Tennessee dropped four spots to No. 11 after its 31-17 loss to Georgia but would be the first team out of the 12-team playoff. Alabama, Georgia, Ole Miss and Tennessee are all 8-2 and have different head-to-head wins over one another. Alabama, which jumped Miami to No. 7 after beating Mercer, beat Georgia but lost to Tennessee; Ole Miss beat Georgia and will not play Alabama or Tennessee.
With so much left to be determined in the SEC race, there is a fear that the loser of the SEC championship game could get left out of the playoff as a three-loss team.
“I’ve talked to other coaches, so I’ll just kind of give you the feeling from some other coaches that, they don’t want to be in it,” Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin said during his news conference Monday. “The reward to get a bye versus the risk to get knocked out completely. I mean … that’s a really big risk.”
Texas A&M is also 8-2 but ranked No. 15. Still, the Aggies and Texas are the only two teams with one loss in SEC play. If both teams win this weekend (Texas A&M is at Auburn and Texas hosts Kentucky), their regular-season finale would be for a guaranteed spot in the SEC championship game. So the Aggies are not out of the race yet, either.
Colorado follows Texas A&M at No. 16, then it’s Clemson, South Carolina, Army and Tulane. Four of the last five teams are new to the rankings this week — Arizona State at No. 21, Iowa State at No. 22, UNLV at No. 24 and Illinois at No. 25. Missouri remained at No. 23.
Kansas State, Louisville, Washington State and LSU all dropped out after losses last weekend.
With conference title games approaching, eight SEC teams are ranked in the top 25 this week, along with five Big Ten teams, four Big 12 teams, three ACC teams and two each from the American Athletic Conference and Mountain West.
“We have a lot of value with the teams that make a conference championship game. Making that game is a valuable data point,” Manuel said. “We are ranking the teams through the championship games. But teams that make those championship games, the committee looks at them and puts them in high esteem.”
The four first-round games will be played at the home campus of the higher-seeded teams on Dec. 20 and 21. The four quarterfinal games will be staged at the Vrbo Fiesta Bowl, Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl, Rose Bowl presented by Prudential and Allstate Sugar Bowl on Dec. 31 and Jan. 1.
The two semifinal games will take place at the Capital One Orange Bowl and Goodyear Cotton Bowl on Jan. 9 and 10.
The CFP National Championship presented by AT&T is scheduled for Jan. 20 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.
Additional reporting from ESPN Senior Writer Mark Schlabach.
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