Arkansas' wishes for financial parity dealt huge blow with change

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Less than a week ago, Arkansas coach Sam Pittman shared a confidence that there would be a more level playing field in college sports now that the House v. NCAA settlement has passed and each school is allowed $20.5 million to pay directly towards athletes.

"We're back on even keel with everybody," Pittman said. "Which we weren't [before revenue sharing].

“When we were even, we went 4-20 to top 20 in two years. I think the program has a chance to get back up to around those nine-plus wins than where we were before just simply because we have the finances to back that.”

Pittman also expressed that one of his biggest roadblocks to success since his nine-win season in 2021 is the lack of financial support relative to the SEC since the start of 2023, when Arkansas Edge, the Hogs NIL collective. Since his nine-win season, Pittman is 18-20 in the three subsequent years.

"If I was going to make an excuse it would be financially is why we haven't done quite as well as where we were projected my first two years," Pittman said. "Now with it being even, I look out that the Razorbacks are coming on."

The parity that Pittman was talking about may be over before a game even gets played on the gridiron.

According to a report by Yahoo Sports' Ross Dellenger, the College Sports Commission's new enforcement arm, CSC GO, is already changing its approach when handling collectives.

Just two weeks ago, the clearinghouse said that it had denied dozens of NIL deals because they were "holding collectives to a higher threshold". Being just a collective did not meet the definiton of a valid business purpose.

Now, a collective will be treated just like the car dealership down the road.

Moving forward the clearinghouse is expected to treat collectives "in a similar fashion as other businesses when determining the legitimacy of third-party NIL deals." It sets the stage for collectives to continue to have significant influence over the sport.

Teams with a strong collective will surely stand to benefit from the new change. Arkansas is still looking for a permanent executive director after Kyle May left the director post in February to become senior director of corporate partnerships at the Walmart AMP.

May held the position for less than 8 months after replacing Chris Bauer. Marcus Madlock has been serving as interim director since May left his post for over 5 months, while maintaining his role at Blueprint Sports as vice president of client partnerships, the third-party arm that was brought in to run the collective.

Arkansas did launch the first two drawings of the Razorback Raffle, a 50/50 drawing intended to raise funds for NIL.

The first two jackpots raised approximately $237,000 after the winners of the raffle were paid, but it remains unclear if the collective received any of those funds.

As the legislation is currently written, the money can be used to fund the operations of the athletic department, instead of just the NIL collective.

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