Bryan Seeley became one of the most influential leaders for the future of college sports this month. @PeteThamel and I spoke to Seeley during his first day on the job to learn how he views his new role as the CEO of the College Sports Commission: .

Nearly half of a billion dollars. Yet many USOPC and college sports officials would have you believe that if college football players don't cover the cost of America's athlete development pipeline the country's Olympic prowess will collapse.

And if you really want to get into the weeds on the employment questions raised with these new contracts, we wrote about them in much more detail a few months ago: .

Wisconsin v. Miami might help us answer that question.

It remains an open question whether a judge will think it's fair for a school to include this clause in a player's contract. Or is it a semantics game to have the control you'd normally have over an employee without giving the athlete all the benefits of being an employee?.

Schools try to get around this by including a clause in the contract that argues even though they techincally aren't paying the athlete to play for the school, the athlete's NIL rights are only valuable to them if the athlete is playing for their school.

Instead, schools are technically paying athletes for the rights to use their name, image and likeness in promotions. So, technically an athlete might argue that the school he's leaving is still free to use his NIL rights even if he's going to play somewhere else.

The school can enforce a buy-out clause for a coach because the coach's contract states clearly that he is being paid to coach the team. Most of the deals players are signing with their schools explicitly say the athlete is NOT being paid to play on the team.

Schools are now signing contracts directly with their players. They're hoping to use these contracts to slow down the transfer market. But they want to do that without making the athletes into employees. They really, really don't want athletes to be employees.

Wisconsin filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit Friday to try to punish Miami's football team for allegedly tampering with one of its former players. Short thread on why this is a potentially really interesting test for the new college football business model:.

The first appeal to the NCAA House settlement was just filed, claiming the deal violates Title IX law. An appeal will not stop payments from schools to their current athletes starting July 1. It will pause back damages payments for a process that will likely take many months.

RT @DanWetzel: College sports has always been a business, but the House settlement just made it even more of a business. Who gets the mone….

It's official. Colleges will start paying their players directly in less than a month thanks to a major legal settlement approved last night. Some details on how we got here and the battles that still lay ahead: .

Sedona Prince, co-lead plaintiff in the House case who just finished her college career, said she's been celebrating tonight. "It seemed like this crazy idea of what college athletics could be like and should be like . It’s going to change millions of lives for the better.".

Statements tonight from the commissioners of all five conferences who were defendants in the lawsuit:

RT @PeteThamel: Charlie Baker on the settlement: “a new beginning for Division I student-athletes and for the NCAA.”.

Schools are now free to pay players directly, a new era for college sports brought about by a multi-billion dollar legal settlement approved tonight.

Big congrats to @ChristopherHine on publish day for his new biography of Anthony Edwards! Chris is an awesome storyteller and has been covering Ant throughout his pro career. Just ordered my copy, can't wait to dig in.

Greek swimmer Kristian Gkolomeev outraced the world record in the 50m freestyle last month after weeks of taking PEDs. He and others will compete in the first annual Enhanced Games next May in Las Vegas. More on what the game will look like:.

"This kind of institutional courage is rare." . -Rachael Denhollander on Michigan State's new leadership as she and other survivors revive a 2018 plan to assess the university's culture toward sexual violence today. A lot has changed in seven years, Dan sums it up well here:.