Iowa State AD Jamie Pollard calls out Big Ten, SEC for breaking CSC rules: 'Let them break away'
Story by Alex Byington
• 2h•
4 min read
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’s
House v. NCAA settlement.
Iowa State 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 “break away” from the NCAA if the leagues don’t want to follow the agreed-upon NIL limits laid out in the House settlement.
“That’s what’s frustrating to me, the same people that say they want rules only want rules if they don’t apply to them,”
Pollard said Monday, via Cyclone Fanatic. “I said it three years ago — let ‘em 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’s just the 20 of you.
“That’s what I think we should do, but I’m one person, and you know that’s probably a little more draconian. But that’s how I feel about it,” Pollard continued. “Like, let’s quit talking about it, quit threatening, go do it. But if you’re going to do it, you don’t 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.”
Pollard’s comments came on the same day the Big Ten Spring Meetings kicked off Monday in Los Angeles, where power brokers within college sports’ wealthiest conference is meeting to discuss prominent topics like future College Football Playoff expansion among other issues.
Pollard’s 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’s biggest brands to field $30-40 million roster budgets. According to On3’s 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.
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’t necessarily count against a team’s revenue-share cap, they’re not intended to let teams run up the tab.
“It’s 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,” Pollard added. “Then to have two of the conferences not want to adhere to it is perplexing to me, because then it’s like why did we spend the money? If you didn’t want rules, then why did you create this entity?”
According to Yahoo! Sports, 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’s own publicly-released data,
“roughly $125 million or more remain under review or have been rejected.”
Last week, an
independent arbitrator ruled the CSC properly applied its rules around third-party NIL agreements when it rejected millions in NIL payments meant for a group of 18 Nebraska football players from Playfly, the Cornhuskers’ media rights holder. Playfly had agreed to redirect $10.25 million of its $15-year, $300 million multimedia rights deal signed in 2022 into NIL payments.
“We are pleased with the arbitrator’s decision to affirm the CSC’s fact-based application of the rules,” said College Sports Commission CEO
Bryan Seeley in a statement. “This process shows the system is working as intended: a decision we made was challenged and a neutral arbitrator assessed the facts to inform a final decision. We hope and expect that the student-athletes will submit new deals that comply with the rules, so we can promptly review them.”
