In a Friday night news dump, the College Sports Commission—the new college sports enforcement entity set up as a result of the House v. NCAA settlement—said it published massively inaccurate data Thursday regarding how many NIL deals have been cleared by the new NIL Go clearinghouse.
The CSC initially said Thursday it cleared 8,359 deals for a total value of $79.8 million in the period between June 11, when NIL Go was launched, to August 31.
Its clarification Friday shows that NIL Go only cleared 6,090 deals during that time for a total of $35.42 million. The CSC further clarified that the first two numbers reflected the total amount of deals (and their value) that have been entered in the system, rather than cleared.
The CSC called the data inaccuracies a “clerical error,” though a difference of $45 million amounts to far more than a rounding error.
It’s just the latest incident in a rocky start for the system that launched as a result of the House v. NCAA settlement, which was approved in June.
The settlement, in addition to allowing revenue-sharing, set up NIL Go as a platform by which all NIL deals would be reviewed to ensure they were offering fair-market value and not “pay-for-play” in disguise. The settlement also established the College Sports Commission, a new independent body funded by the Power 4 conferences to enforce the rules of the settlement and oversee NIL Go.
The group said the mistakes were the fault of Deloitte, which built the NIL Go system.
“Deloitte Consulting regrets providing a report to the CSC this week that inaccurately labeled two data points,” Deloitte said in a statement provided by the CSC. “We take full responsibility for this reporting error. We have taken additional measures to avoid any future recurrence and are fully confident in the NIL Go platform.”
The CSC reiterated that 332 deals in the period were all-out denied, and that the value of those deals was $10 million.
The Collective Association, a group representing Division I collectives which has been a vocal critic of the NIL Go process, said in a statement Thursday that deals have lagged and in many cases been completely ignored. As a result, players have lost out on the opportunity to earn NIL dollars from deals that had time-sensitive components.
TCA said that among 25 D-I NIL collectives that reported 384 deals, only 25 have been approved, 120 have been rejected, and 192 have not received a response. The CSC asked for more information on 47 of the deals. The total value of the “stalled” deals was $11 million.
In a new statement Friday, TCA ripped NIL Go. “The recent correction of CSC’s NIL data highlights exactly what collectives have been experiencing: a system lacking clarity, accuracy, and speed.”
In its correction on Friday, the CSC added new data acknowledging that 2,003 deals are still pending as of Aug 31 (though it claimed 70% of deals submitted have been approved in total).
The total value of the deals in purgatory is $35.99 million.
The CSC said Friday that the deals still awaiting approval are, in many cases, the result of the CSC having to wait for clarity from House v. NCAA settlement lawyers.
“As with any new system of this scale, some early delays and growing pains are inevitable,” the CSC said. “Once all of the NCAA bylaw changes resulting from the Settlement have been finalized and adopted, the CSC expects review times to improve significantly.”
