Colleges withholding revenue-sharing contract details: How schools can remain tight-lipped on player payments

As of July 1, college athletes are being directly paid by the universities for which they play, but that doesn't mean the schools are divulging the payments on the record.

Through reporting, we know the numbers on the high end are going up. Duke quarterback Darien Mensah will earn $4 million per year for a two-year deal at Duke. Five-star offensive line prospect Felix Ojo has a three-year deal averaging $775,000 a year with a verbal understanding that TTU will renegotiate up to $5 million. Basketball star AJ Dybantsa had an approximate asking price of $5 million before signing with BYU.

But schools do not publicly disclose amounts of revenue-sharing deals voluntarily, and whether they will ever be compelled to do so is unclear. In that way, the post-House v. NCAA settlement world is just like what came before in the era when athletes were being compensated by third-party NIL collectives.

CBS Sports filed more than a dozen freedom of information requests for the revenue-sharing contracts of high-profile college football players across the country. As of publication time, six schools have provided responses -- all of which were denials. Context for the denials runs the gamut.

Alabama responded to a request for QB Ty Simpson and WR Ryan Williams' contracts by simply saying, "there are no public documents responsive to your open records request[.]" Florida declined to disclose QB DJ Lagway's contract, stating that athletic records are exempt from Florida's public records laws. In the past, however, Florida has shared coaching contracts with reporters.

Other schools have different justifications. Clemson denied a request made by The Post and Courier, stating that the agreements are "proprietary," and that releasing them would put the Tigers at a competitive disadvantage. Colorado denied a request by CBS Sports for the contracts of QBs Julian Lewis and Kaden Salter, citing a state law that allows the university to "deny inspection of any name, image, or likeness contract containing personally identifiable information for any of our student athletes." The law was signed in March by governor Jared Polis, and in his signing statement, he expressed reservations about a lack of transparency.

"While I support the bill and its goals, there are issues regarding transparency that were not addressed during the legislative process that I would like to see addressed in the future," Polis wrote. "In particular, I have concerns about the bill's new Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) exception regarding student-athlete contracts. While the bill's exception is narrowly tailored, it follows an unfortunate trend of legislative proposals that ultimately impede access to official records that are arguably within the public's interest to view. These exceptions move transparency in the wrong direction and any other proposals that further prevent or delay public access to information will be carefully reviewed."

The bill's sponsor, state senator Judy Amabile (who represents Boulder), told The Denver Post that the fact that athletes are not employees was the main factor in keeping the deals private.

"They're not being paid with public money," Amabile said. "They're students, and students have protections, and we wanted to preserve that."

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Schools have used FERPA to shield records since NIL payments were allowed in 2021. Utah has an NIL bill with similar shielding from the public, passed in early 2024, and governor Spencer Cox at the time said: "We're at a big competitive disadvantage if other states aren't required to release the terms of those contracts," … "And as much as I'd like to get rid of all this, I do support the bill. I think it's the right thing to do, put us on a level playing field and, especially because it involves young people and minors, I think it's OK."

The law passed after The Deseret News requested athlete NIL agreements in July 2023 via records request. The five state schools denied the request, stating that the contracts are "education records" and saying they are protected by the federal Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). But, in October 2023, a Utah state records committee unanimously ruled that NIL agreements are not education records and should be disclosed due to the public nature of the athletes. The schools appealed to state court, and while the decision was still pending, the state passed the law shielding all deals from the public and a judge. A district court judge found that the law was retroactive and dismissed The Deseret News' case.

UCLA, South Carolina and Florida State each cited FERPA in their denials of CBS Sports' requests for athlete revenue-sharing agreements.

"[I]ndividual students' NIL licensing contracts are confidential and exempt from disclosure pursuant to [FERPA] which defines an "educational record" as a record which is (1) "directly related to a student" and (2) is "maintained by an educational agency or institution or by a party acting for the agency or institution," Florida State stated in its response. "Individual students' NIL licensing agreements fall squarely within the definition of an "educational record" as defined by FERPA, and FSU therefore cannot release revenue sharing contracts for any student to the public without violating FERPA."

But, is the school's interpretation of FERPA too broad? It's a complicated question that may lead to more legal challenges in the future, according to Robert Romano, a sports law professor at St. John's University.

"That'd be up to a judge to decide whether or not it is or it isn't. As of right now, they're using it and are using it successfully," Romano said. "I think what they're scared of is if they release this information and the judge or the Department of Education finds out they did it in violation of the FERPA rules and regulations, they can risk federal funding. And I think that's the issue right now. All the schools are scrambling. With everything that's happening in this new administration, with regards to federal funding, they want to make sure that they're not doing anything that steps over the line or could expose them to the possibility of losing any additional funding that the federal government provides, and if they release some information that could be interpreted as in violation of FERPA, well, they're exposing themselves."

Romano said that it would be "perfectly fine" for a school to send a revenue-sharing agreement without any identifying information, even an athlete's name, but they choose not to do that. An issue with any legal challenge for an athlete's records is the time it would take to fulfill. College athletics is transient, and by the time a case and its appeals work its way through a court system, a football player might be in the transfer portal or in the NFL.

So, for now, as payments to athletes increase, so will the secrecy around what they're being paid.