The college athletics landscape shifted significantly following the settlement in the landmark House v. NCAA litigation, which led to the creation of the College Sports Commission (CSC), an enforcement body tasked with overseeing compliance with the settlement's terms. The CSC now faces its first meaningful test: a pending arbitration involving the University of Nebraska and 18 of its football players. The outcome of that arbitration may extend beyond the parties involved. If the CSC prevails and seeks to enforce its decision, Nebraska's attorney general could respond with a legal challenge under Nebraska state law governing NIL restrictions, raising broader questions about the interaction between national NIL enforcement mechanisms and state NIL laws.
The Nebraska NIL Dispute and the Risk of State-Level Pushback
In March 2026, the University of Nebraska and 18 of its football players initiated arbitration against the CSC after it rejected a series of NIL agreements, each reportedly valued at more than $1 million per player. The agreements were arranged through Playfly Sports, the university's multimedia rights partner. The CSC rejected the arrangements on the ground that they constituted impermissible "warehousing" transactions, i.e., agreements that compensate players for future, undefined NIL opportunities rather than for specific, present-tense deliverables. According to the CSC, such agreements fail to satisfy its requirements that NIL deals serve a valid business purpose and reflect fair market value.
If Nebraska and its players prevail, they may proceed with the agreements. If the CSC prevails, it could require the players to forgo the agreements or risk loss of eligibility. But even then, the dispute may not end. Any effort by the CSC to enforce a favorable arbitration decision could prompt a challenge by the Nebraska attorney general under Nebraska Revised Statute Section 48-3603, which prohibits the NCAA from penalizing student-athletes or institutions for engaging in lawful NIL activity. And Nebraska is not the only state with its own NIL law. States including California, Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, and New Jersey have enacted similar statutes limiting the NCAA's ability to take adverse action based on NIL activity. As a result, even if Nebraska declines to pursue litigation, the CSC may face comparable challenges from other states in the near term.
Using NCAA v. Miller to Defend National NIL Enforcement Under the Dormant Commerce Clause
If the CSC faces a challenge from a state attorney general seeking to enforce a state NIL law, a likely defense will be the Ninth Circuit's decision in National Collegiate Athletic Ass'n v. Miller, 10 F.3d 633 (9th Cir. 1993), applying the dormant Commerce Clause.
Miller involved a 1991 Nevada statute requiring any national collegiate athletic association to provide a Nevada institution, employee, student-athlete, or booster accused of a rules violation with specified procedural protections during enforcement proceedings, many of which exceeded those afforded under the NCAA's existing framework. The statute also authorized Nevada state courts to enjoin any NCAA proceeding that failed to comply with those requirements.
After the statute's enactment, individuals under investigation at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas invoked its protections and sought to require the NCAA to conduct its proceedings in accordance with state law. The NCAA challenged the statute, including on Commerce Clause grounds. The Commerce Clause not only empowers Congress to regulate interstate commerce, but also limits state action that unduly burdens or interferes with interstate commerce.
The Ninth Circuit held that Nevada's statute violated the dormant Commerce Clause because it attempted to impose Nevada's regulatory regime on a national athletic association, thereby exposing the NCAA to inconsistent obligations across multiple states. The court concluded that such a patchwork of requirements would undermine the NCAA's ability to maintain a uniform system of governance and enforcement, and that this burden outweighed Nevada's interest in providing additional procedural protections.
Here, the CSC could rely on Miller to raise a similar challenge in response to any attempt to enforce state NIL laws. Courts have consistently recognized that the NCAA engages in interstate commerce, including through the marketing of interstate athletic competitions and the ownership, control, and distribution of media rights. A suit seeking to prevent the CSC from enforcing national NIL standards can be framed as an effort by a single state to reshape the governance of a national system. As in Miller, such laws risk creating a patchwork of regulatory obligations, effectively preventing the NCAA "from establishing uniform rules to govern and enforce interstate collegiate practices associated with intercollegiate athletics."
Reliance on Miller, however, is not without limits. It is a Ninth Circuit decision, and that court has ruled against the NCAA in more recent significant cases. It also predates the modern NIL era, including the House settlement and the current athlete-compensation landscape. In addition, Miller addressed a statute that directly regulated NCAA enforcement procedures, whereas Nebraska is likely to characterize Section 48-3603 as a generally applicable measure designed to protect student-athletes. For these reasons, Miller may not provide a complete answer, and the CSC may look for additional support in analogous lines of authority.
Early Internet Cases and the Case for National Uniformity in NIL Regulation
In the late 1990s, the internet evolved into a national network before lawmakers had resolved how a borderless system could be governed on a state-by-state basis. The NIL landscape presents similar features. The market expanded rapidly, with collectives, multimedia-rights partners, national brands, and schools creating a multistate compensation ecosystem without a clear line between legitimate endorsement activity and disguised pay-for-play. The CSC's efforts can thus be understood as an attempt to impose structure on a market that has already scaled beyond existing regulatory boundaries.
Courts confronting early efforts to regulate the internet frequently invalidated state laws on dormant Commerce Clause grounds. In American Libraries Association v. Pataki, the Southern District of New York struck down a statute criminalizing the online dissemination of material harmful to minors, holding that it impermissibly subjected interstate internet activity to inconsistent regulation. The court emphasized that effective regulation would require national coordination and warned that inconsistent state regimes could "paralyze the development of the internet altogether." The Tenth Circuit reached a similar conclusion in ACLU v. Johnson, holding that the internet requires "a cohesive national scheme of regulation so that users are reasonably able to determine their obligations."
These cases reflect the same concern presented here. State statutes such as Nebraska's risk imposing piecemeal requirements on what has become a national NIL market. The CSC's compliance platform, NIL Go, functions as a centralized mechanism for administering that market. A state-law override therefore looks less like a targeted athlete-protection measure and more like an effort by a single state to alter the rules governing a nationwide system. If Nebraska can exempt its institutions and athletes from CSC review, other states are likely to follow, resulting in a fragmented regulatory landscape.
Some may argue that NIL does not fall within a category of commerce requiring nationally uniform treatment. But courts have long recognized that sports leagues operate differently from many other forms of commerce. Their ability to regulate competition, eligibility, and compensation across state lines depends on maintaining consistent, nationwide standards rather than navigating divergent state-by-state requirements.
Framing the issue in terms of regulatory fragmentation also carries a strategic advantage. It avoids the more demanding analysis reflected in National Pork Producers Council v. Ross, 598 U.S. 356 (2023), where the Supreme Court emphasized the need to show discrimination against out-of-state economic interests in certain dormant Commerce Clause challenges. In the NIL context, establishing such discrimination may prove difficult. By contrast, focusing on the structural problem of inconsistent state regulation aligns more directly with Miller and the internet cases.
Conclusion: The Future of CSC NIL Enforcement and State Law Challenges
If the CSC prevails in its arbitration against Nebraska and its football players, it may still face litigation challenging its enforcement authority under state NIL laws. In that event, the dormant Commerce Clause will be a central defense, where the CSC's strongest argument may be that state-by-state regulation would impose a patchwork of inconsistent requirements on a national system that depends on uniform rules to function effectively.
If you or your company would like to discuss how state NIL laws may affect the CSC's enforcement authority, please contact the authors or visit the Venable Sports Law team's web page and subscribe to Chalk Talk.