A recent filing in connection with the upcoming court hearing concerning final approval of the proposed multi-billion-dollar settlements of three athlete-compensation antitrust cases against the NCAA and the Power Five conferences expressed concerns about what name-image-and-likeness (NIL) agreements among schools and athletes will look like if the settlement is approved.
It also provided a window on what those agreements generally may look like: lengthy, granting the schools wide-ranging use of athletes’ NIL and placing some significant limitations on the athletes.
Technically, the filing asks U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken for permission to submit for her consideration a friend-of-the-court (or, amicus) brief — a commentary on the case by an interested third party. It came from lawyers for Athletes.org, Inc., an organization that described itself in the filing as an entity that “exists to educate, organize and represent college athletes as their chosen players association to ensure that their interests are protected as college athletics continues to evolve.”
But in addition to seeking permission to file the amicus brief, the organization filed the brief and supporting exhibits that included documents described as templates of NIL agreements written by the Big Ten and Southeastern conferences and from the universities of Arizona, Kansas and Minnesota. The document attributed to Arizona does not include any specific school or conference name.
The SEC confirmed to USA TODAY Sports the authenticity of the submitted template, although spokesman Herb Vincent said in a statement: "After discussion several months ago about whether we should consider adopting a conference-wide NIL agreement template, this document was submitted to our schools as a draft for review but no action was taken to adopt it."
It is unclear whether any SEC schools have used any parts of the template as a basis for their agreements, and, in any case, the template includes a footnote on its first page that reads: “This agreement includes various sample provisions, almost all of which are negotiable, and this sample agreement should be carefully reviewed and revised to fit the specific needs and terms of the applicable parties.”
The Big Ten said in a statement it “does not verify documents submitted to a court by other parties.” In response to an open-records request from USA TODAY Sports after the filing, Minnesota provided the current version of its document — and it tracks, but does not fully replicate, the document the filing attributed to the Big Ten.
Kansas and Arizona did not respond to inquiries about the documents respectively attributed to them.
NIL deals said to already exist
The presumptive amicus brief says — and the supporting exhibits indicate — that schools already have been putting agreements in place with athletes, with a proviso that they would become void if the proposed settlement does not receive final approval.
The presumptive brief says that Athletes.org, Inc., “supports this proposed settlement as an initial step in the right direction of addressing long-standing injustices that have existed within college athletics ... but that does not mean, from AO’s perspective, that the proposed settlement should be approved” because the group has “grave concerns,” including about NIL contract provisions that it says ...
