Kentucky will vacate football games and serve two years of probation because of rules violations committed in 2021 and ’22, the NCAA announced Friday.

The school reached an agreement with the NCAA’s Committee on Infractions on a case involving impermissible benefits for at least 11 football players who received payment for work not performed between spring 2021 and March 2022. Eight of the players went on to compete while ineligible, but Kentucky and the NCAA enforcement staff agreed that no Kentucky athletics staff member knew or reasonably should have known about the payments, so the program will not be hit with a failure-to-monitor violation.

The NCAA also sanctioned Kentucky for rules violations in its men’s and women’s swimming programs, which exceeded countable athletically related activities limits. The agreement states that athletes weren’t provided with required days off and exceeded practice hours for nearly three years. Kentucky agreed that it failed to monitor its swimming and diving program and the head coach was deemed responsible.

One former coach did not participate in the agreement. That part of the case will be considered separately by the committee. The process is ongoing and the committee’s final decision, including possible penalties for the…

The NCAA’s new name, image and likeness transparency platform, NIL Assist, went live on Thursday morning, providing deidentified NIL compensation information, as well as a service provider registry and educational programming.

The app and website, created in conjunction with Teamworks, creates for the first time a public database-like platform where athletes and the public can find the average and median earnings for NIL deals, sortable by conference, sport, position and type of NIL transaction. It can show, for example, what an average SEC quarterback makes for a social media post.

In January, the Division I Council adopted new rules requiring athletes to disclose to their schools any NIL agreement exceeding $600, including terms of the deal, services rendered and payment. The schools then must share the information, stripped of names, to the NCAA at least twice per year. More than 20 states already require similar disclosures.

“We’ve heard from coaches, student-athletes, their families, they want some information about what the market is yielding, and we think if we do it publicly, that’s the best way to do it,” NCAA vice president of academic and membership affairs David Schnase said. “There are going to be some who want way more information than this is going to…

John and Tracy Sellers arrived in Lubbock, Texas, the evening of Monday, July 22, with dinner reservations and an intention: to woo the best college softball player in the world to play for Texas Tech.

The dinner was at Las Brisas, a white-tablecloth steakhouse just south of Texas Tech’s campus that serves up lobster guacamole and a 25-ounce bone-in ribeye. The player was NiJaree Canady, USA Softball’s Collegiate Player of the Year.

There were six seats at the table: the Sellers, Marc McDougal (a board member of the Matador Club, a Texas Tech-affiliated name, image and likeness collective), Canady and her parents. No coaches or university administrators. Just a few well-connected Tech supporters and a family with a menu full of options. The group made fast friends over a nearly three-hour meal.

Canady, a 6-foot pitching phenom from Topeka, Kan., was visiting Lubbock for the first time. She was less than two months removed from leading Stanford to the Women’s College World Series semifinals as a sophomore, garnering mainstream headlines in the process. A few weeks later, she entered the transfer portal, the biggest star of a burgeoning sport hitting the open market.

The youngest person at the table that night, Canady held all the power. But she also had a tough decision…

New documents were filed in the historic House v. NCAA case on Friday, the next step in formalizing the settlement agreement that will reshape college sports. They provide additional details on the previously announced $2.8 billion in back-pay damages to be paid out over 10 years to former Division-I athletes dating back to 2016, as well as a 10-year revenue-sharing model that could distribute money directly from athletic departments to college athletes starting in 2025. The documents also detail other aspects of the settlement agreement, including the institution of roster limits and potential establishment of an oversight program for future NIL deals.

Judge Claudia Wilken still needs to approve the settlement.

The terms were agreed to in principle in May. Filed in the Northern District Court of California, the settlement is an effort to resolve multiple class-action antitrust lawsuits against the NCAA and Power 5 conferences: House v. NCAA, Hubbard v. NCAA and Carter v. NCAA.

“This is another important step in the ongoing effort to provide increased benefits to student athletes while creating a stable and sustainable model for the future of college sports,” NCAA president Charlie Baker and the P5 commissioners said in a joint statement. “While there is still much work to…

The effective scholarship limits for football and other college sports are about to go way up. And that’s about to lead to more questions for schools and how many hard financial decisions have to be made.

The power conference commissioners have decided on roster limits that will be filed this week as part of the settlement in the House vs. NCAA case, which has to be approved by the court. Scholarship limits are being eliminated as part of the settlement, replaced by a roster limit system in which each team can choose to scholarship as many or as few athletes as it wants.

The football roster limit, as reported last week, will be 105, two sources briefed on the numbers confirmed. That’s an increase from the 85-player scholarship limit that has existed for decades but below the previous roster limit, which was 120 as of the start of the season.

The limit will be effective for the 2025-26 season, along with other aspects of the settlement, including revenue sharing, expected to be around $20 million per school to each school’s athletes.

Baseball, meanwhile, is seeing its number essentially triple: 34 will be the roster/scholarship limit, up from the 11.7 scholarship limit that has existed for decades. But the roster limit had been 40 during the season, so with the freedom to…

Welcome to the 38th Media Mailbag for The Athletic. Thanks for sending in your questions via the website and app. There were more than 170 questions, so this is Part 1 of a two-parter. (Note: Questions have been edited for clarity and length.)

---

Does hiring guys like Tom Brady to broadcast football games REALLY move the needle for viewership? Are there people out there who will say, “Yeah, let’s watch that game because ____ is calling it?” Don’t most fans prefer their own homer broadcasters anyway? Am I way off on this? — Kris A.

It’s an interesting question, Kris, and one that’s discussed within the industry all the time given the extraordinary salaries of the NFL analysts who call the top games for their respective networks. The core answer is that viewers watch games for the game itself; the viewership number would likely be close to the same if you and I were calling it.

But the presentation of the game and how viewers process the game matters greatly to leagues and broadcasters because they want you to leave the broadcast wanting to come back. With leagues specifically, they want people in the booth who they believe represent their product — and leagues have some veto power on broadcast hires, even if the networks don’t publicly admit that.

Now for Brady…

Andy Coats loves telling his classes about it. It’s one thing to teach antitrust law. It’s quite another to tell his Oklahoma students there once was a case, one that went all the way to the Supreme Court, that involved the school they attend — and it was about football.

Then Coats, almost 90 years old and still sounding as sharp as he was half his life ago, looks at his students and makes the big reveal.

“I’m the guy who screwed up college football,” he says.

Oklahoma, where the law school building is named after Coats, officially joined the SEC with Texas on Monday. When announced three years ago, SEC expansion set off a wave of realignment that changed the complexion of college athletics.

It was about the chase for television money. And it happened because nobody is in charge: The NCAA is powerless to tell conferences what to do. The conferences and schools are free to chase all the TV dollars, and in turn the courts and lawyers are free to demand the players get their fair share, their name, image and likeness money, their unlimited transferring.

It all stems from one lawsuit, 40 years ago, when Oklahoma — joined by Georgia, long before they became conference mates — teamed up against the NCAA to challenge its stranglehold on television rights. When it ended,…

Houston Christian University filed a motion to intervene in the House v. NCAA lawsuit on Thursday, arguing that HCU’s financial interests were not adequately represented by the proposed terms of the House settlement agreed to last month.

The motion, if granted, could signify the first of many objections from smaller universities that felt they did not have a sufficient voice in a potentially historic reshaping of college sports.

HCU’s motion to intervene stems from dissension that arose in the weeks before the proposed settlement, with smaller Division I schools and conferences arguing a lack of input in the settlement negotiations and disproportionate financial responsibility. The House settlement terms, which have yet to be submitted to the judge for preliminary approval, include a future revenue-sharing model directly from schools to athletes as well as $2.75 billion in back-pay damages the NCAA will owe to former Division I athletes who were previously barred from earning name, image and likeness (NIL) compensation. An overwhelming portion of those damages are expected to be distributed to former power-conference athletes, according to sources briefed on the settlement.

“We’re in a position where we believe this raises some issues of fiduciary responsibility,” HCU…

Countless stadiums, arenas, golf tournaments and bowl games have sponsors in their titles. The world’s most prestigious soccer league was named the Barclays Premier League until 2016. Private equity firms currently hold ownership stakes in more than 60 North American sports franchises, according to Pitchbook, as well as many of the top soccer clubs in Europe.

But when news broke Thursday that the Big 12 is entertaining both a potential title sponsorship deal with insurance giant Allstate and a $1 billion private equity partnership, you could almost hear the collective reaction: “How dare they?!”

GO DEEPER

Big 12 discussing PE investment, sale of naming rights to Allstate

Kirk Wakefield, a Baylor University marketing professor, had a much different reaction to the possible title sponsorship.

“You wonder why people haven’t done that already,” said Wakefield, who runs a research firm that studies sponsorship impacts for sports leagues and brands. “It’s such an obvious opportunity.”

USC sports business professor David Carter looks at the plight of the Big 12, which lags hundreds of millions a year in revenue behind the Big Ten and SEC, and sees private equity as a matter of Darwinian survival. To win national championships, Big 12 schools need to be able to spend like…

On Jan. 19, two days after he became the most coveted football player in the NCAA’s transfer portal, and mere hours after he welcomed Ohio State coaches for a recruiting visit, Caleb Downs announced his change-of-address plans. The freshman safety who’d earned second-team All-America honors at Alabama committed to the Buckeyes. Not long after, Downs and his father began relocating to Columbus.

Getting there was simple enough. Getting around was another matter.

Some wheels needed to be put in motion.

“I get a call from someone on the coaching staff and they said, ‘Hey, I’m here with Caleb and his dad now. Are you looking to add somebody else to your team?’” says Rick Ricart, the CEO and owner of Ricart Automotive Group in Columbus. “Would you be willing to do a car deal for him?’”

For decades, these were shifty conversations. Local car dealerships had long been conduits for the whispered inducements coaches or boosters promised talented players. When discovered, scandal erupted. Repercussions were often stark. Then came the seismic summer of 2021, when changes to Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) rules allowed college athletes to earn money without fear of NCAA sanctions.

Car dealers nationwide quickly exchanged leases and keys for players boasting about their new…