When College Sports Commission was initially created, the number we were told of collective-created NIL deals that would have been approved was around 30 percent.
A couple months into this new era of the House settlement, the CSC and its Deloitte-run NIL Go system -- "guardrails," in other words -- the actual number is closer to 96 percent, or 6.5 percent, depending on where you stand.
The CSC released its first Deal Flow Report on Thursday, covering all activity within its NIL Go system from June 11 through Aug. 31, and it showed that 8,359 NIL deals had been approved by its system during that time compared to just 332 denials. We don't have a specific breakdown of how many of those deals were brokered by collectives and how many were "true" NIL -- think Arch Manning pitching glasses and/or chicken fingers during every commercial break in last week's Texas-Ohio State game -- but thus far the number of denials have been miniscule. Seventy-five deals have been re-submitted, and none were in arbitration as of Aug. 31.
The most common reasons for denial, per the CSC, are:
- Delay in attesting to or providing required information
- Contradictory deal terms, misreporting of deal terms and/or mistakes made in entering deal terms
- Deal does not satisfy valid business purpose requirement
In total, 28,342 student-athletes have created accounts within the NIL Go system, 1,227 "institutional users" have joined, and 3,160 representatives and agents. The largest deal approved by NIL Go thus far was worth $1.6 million. Nearly $80 million has been "legally" transferred from businesses to student-athletes.
However, the Collective Association released its own set of numbers on Thursday that paint a different picture. Of the 384 deals that its member organizations have submitted, only 25 have been approved thus far. One-hundred twenty have been rejected, 47 were kicked back for further examination and, most troubling for the Association, 192 have received no response. That's fully half of all deals so far, with an approval rate to date of 6.5 percent -- well below the advertised number of 30 percent.
And while the average NIL deal approved by NIL Go thus far ranges around $9,500 ($79.8 million divided by 8,359), the average deal size of contracts submitted by the Collective Association is $29,000.
— The Collective Association (@TCA_NIL) September 4, 2025
While the future remains unwritten, calls of a professionalized system harkening the end of college athletics as we know it were premature, if not completely incorrect.
The aforementioned Texas-Ohio State game drew 16.6 million viewers, the most-watched Week 1 game in college football history. According to Fox Sports research executive Michael Mulvihill, the 2023 season was the most-watched in college football history, a record that was immediately broken by the 2024 season. While the 2025 campaign remains in its infancy, last weekend was the first Week 1 to feature four games with at least 10 million viewers and, encouragingly showcasing the depth of interest across the sport, scored as the most-watched Week 1 in college football history. More than 20 billion minutes of college football were consumed across Labor Day weekend, far surpassing the previous record of 14.5 billion minutes in 2023.