Tag: nil collectives

In recruiting, Lincoln Riley says USC isn’t bringing a knife to a gunfight

Lincoln Riley thinks USC has made a lot of progress in its recruiting operation.

USC recruiting has not been what one would call “bad,” but it’s hasn’t been at the level of Ohio State or Oregon or other programs which have assembled better rosters for 2024. USC’s conservative approach to NCAA compliance with NIL has put it at a major disadvantage to programs that have pushed the interpretation of recruiting rules and regulations in regards to high school prospects when compared to Oregon, Ohio State — or extreme cases like Tennessee.

Riley recently discussed USC’s new tack in recruiting high school prospects.

“Our NIL and how it’s evolved, certainly we’re able to be more aggressive with high school guys than we’ve ever been with it. A lot of that’s because our NIL has gotten a whole lot better and House of Victory and all those have done a phenomenal job.”

Recently J.K. McKay and Jeff McKay, formerly of another USC collective (The Conquest Collective), joined forces with House of Victory to work on consolidating the NIL strategy.  A new vison and direction within the USC collective space, along with changes to the conservative Trojan interpretation and adherence to NCAA guidelines will open things up to make recruiting against Ohio State and Oregon.

“You know you don’t want to be going to a gunfight with a knife,” Riley said. “In the beginning we were going to a gunfight with a toy sword, so definitely we’ve made a lot of progress. Those folks have done a great job. I think our strategy — I know I’ve talked about this — on how many high school guys we’re targeting has changed drastically. We have really shifted as I’ve told you — not completely away from the portal.  I don’t think we’ll ever be completely away from it, but you can just look at the numbers, right? We’re headed to becoming the developmental program that we want to be long-term for the next 10 or 15 years.”

“There’s been more high school recruiting. There’s going to continue to be more; the high school recruiting takes longer. It’s not as fast and furious as portal recruiting, and so a lot of times you’ve got to have relationships that are developed for multiple years. Having some of the consistency we’ve had on on certain parts of our staff for a long time now makes a difference on that as well. It’s become a bigger part of what we’re doing each and every year here. That’s going to continue to happen, and obviously as long as our NIL continues to climb, then you know we’ll continue to be as aggressive there as we need to be.”

USC is currently climbing up the team recruiting rankings. The hope is that with the progress expected on the defensive side of the ball, the impressive list of blue chip players, especially on defense, will continue to grow. USC is currently No. 5 in the 247Sports 2026 recruiting rankings.

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USC changes NIL policy, will now work without one hand tied behind its back

USC’s NIL approach will now be bolder and more expansive, something Lincoln Riley alluded to earlier this week.

Since the advent of NIL, the NCAA displayed a flexible approach in defining permissible activities. College programs such as USC received general guidelines and were tasked with interpreting how to operate within this emerging landscape, leaving room for varied interpretations.

The primary safeguard in place was to prevent programs from luring potential student-athletes to their school by offering money or benefits from NIL as an incentive. That was the clear guideline: NIL could not be used as an inducement to have players join a program; no pay for play. The types of collective deals and when they could be provided varied from program to program.

Regarding the interpretation of NIL guidelines, some schools opted for a literal approach, maintaining a conservative stance toward collectives working with high school and college prospects. In contrast, institutions such as Tennessee, Texas A&M, Oregon, and Miami adopted a more liberal and proactive approach by fostering collaborative relationships with collectives. 

Earlier this week, Trojans Wire reported Lincoln Riley’s comments that the Trojans’ collective strategy has “taken some monster leaps” since he arrived at USC.

“You have to have it,” Riley explained. “Last year was great outside of the whole collective world. Our guys were able to obviously, being in L.A., get more outside deals than anybody in the country, which is awesome, but we need the support to be right there with it too from our donors and from our collectives. That has taken some massive, massive jumps here in the last several months as our people get educated on what that really means, but it’s got to continue.”

This afternoon, Fight On Rusty (Arrogant Nation on X, formerly known as Twitter) shared a letter from the House of Victory (HOV), one of USC’s donor collectives. The letter explains that due to its NIL policy, “House of Victory has only provided NIL opportunities to current student athletes enrolled at USC.”

There’s more from the House of Victory note:

“Last month, Tennessee filed a lawsuit against the NCAA resulting in a federal judge granting an injunction blocking the NCAA from enforcing their NIL rules around recruiting.

“Consequently, House of Victory ahs now received full clearance from USC to support recruits with paid NIL opportunities before they enroll at USC.”

Prior to a recent policy shift, programs with a more flexible interpretation of NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness) guidelines had a significant financial advantage over programs such as USC in recruiting. USC’s recent impressive haul of defensive recruits could mark the beginning of a new era for the program, potentially leveling the playing field in recruiting.

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Lincoln Riley says USC football NIL operation has ‘taken some monster leaps’

Lincoln Riley has expressed fresh confidence in USC football’s NIL approach and resources.

Many college football programs had taken a very liberal interpretation of the role collectives could play in the nascent years of the NIL game. USC football appeared to have taken a very conservative and cautious approach to anything that might resemble an “inducement” to lure a prospective athlete to the program. 

The NCAA’s recent balk at enforcing its NIL rules against the University of Tennessee, combined with recent successes in the 2025 high school recruiting class, have fans and the media asking if USC changed its NIL stance and competitiveness. USC head coach Lincoln Riley was asked about the big recruiting weekend and NIL after practice on Tuesday.

“NIL has taken some monster leaps since we have been here,” he began. “It’s taken some monster leaps in the last several months, which has been really positive. It’s great to see (for) our fan base and our supporters, for everybody. It’s just been gaining an understanding of what is imperative. You have to have it. Last year was great outside of the whole collective world. Our guys were able to obviously, being in L.A., get more outside deals than anybody in the country, which is awesome, but we need the support to be right there with it too from our donors and from our collectives. That has taken some massive, massive jumps here in the last several months as our people get educated on what that really means, but it’s got to continue. Like any part of this, you know you have to do something about it. Behaviors have to change. You have to tear down things and build new facilities. You have to bring more money in. You have to bring in great, great coaches. You have to raise more NIL. You got to keep pushing the issue. We’re trying to do it and we are asking all our people outside to continue to do that as well.”

It will be interesting to see if this trend continues or if this recruiting success was based solely on the impressions that USC’s secondary coach, Doug Belk, and new defensive line coach, Eric Henderson, and not an improved NIL setup. While the coaches are impactful, the words of Riley are encouraging for fans who have been asking for a more aggressive and competitive NIL operation.

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Three free tax and legal services for college athletes

The NCAA prohibits what services athletes can receive, but some universities are providing the services in unique and exciting ways.

Tax season is upon us and many college athletes will be filing their taxes for the first time as individuals. There are many things to consider when filing your taxes including dependency status, self-employment status, state tax obligations, financial aid implications, and more. However, there are many free tax preparation services available to college athletes.

There are free tax preparation services offered by the IRS, but they do have some requirements in order to participate in them. Many athletes will qualify for these sorts of free services. Be mindful, however, that you should discuss what is best for your tax situation with a qualified tax professional in your area. This article is for educational purposes only and not intended as legal or tax advice and should not be construed as such.

1. The IRS’s Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program offer free basic tax return preparation to qualified individuals. This program offers help to:

  • People who generally make $60,000 or less
  • Persons with disabilities; and
  • Limited English-speaking taxpayers

2. IRS Free File lets you prepare and file your federal income tax online using guided tax preparation, at an IRS partner site or Free File Fillable Forms. There are two services available under this program. One program allows you to have guided tax help through free software if your adjusted gross income is less than $73,000. The other part of the program allows those who make over $73,000 the use of the IRS’ free fillable forms.

3. The NCAA provided guidance on what services the athletes’ institution can provide them and in some instances prohibited the athletes from receiving services like tax preparation unless all students had access to the services.

It is impermissible, under the Interim Policy/NCAA Rules, to “provide services (other than education) to support NIL activity (e.g., graphics designer, tax preparation, contract review, etc.) unless the same benefit is generally available to the institution’s students.” However, with programs such as VITA and IRS Free File, these services are public program that are available not only to students, but also to the population as a whole.

Another area college athletes need guidance and help is with the review and negotiation of their NIL contracts. The NCAA also considers this an impermissible activity and institutions can be found to have violated the NCAA rules and regulations if they provide this service solely to athletes and not to the student population as a whole. However, it doesn’t apply to institutions who are not NCAA system members.

For instance New York Law School (NYLS) does not have an undergraduate program connected with its school that has an intercollegiate athletics program. Therefore, they are able to provide pro bono legal services to athletes across the country, they currently focus on New York athletes due to licensing requirements varying through the country, without violating any NCAA rules and without jeopardizing the athletes’ eligibility.

The NYLS Pro Bono Project was born on July 18, 2022 to “to provide free legal assistance to athletes regarding their NIL activities.”

The NCAA released the NCAA Student-Athlete Well-Being Study – May 2022 which showed, among other things, athletes want to receive more educational resources.

“Fifty percent of the women’s sports participants and 49% of the male sports participants wanted more resources on tax literacy and education. In regard to navigating NIL opportunities, 42% of the men’s sports participants and 39% of the women sports participants said they wanted more educational resources.”

Athletes are humans first and the more the NCAA and other entities recognize that, the easier it will be to provide the resources these athlete so desperately want.

**Editor’s Note: This is not tax or legal advice and should not be taken as such. It is merely for educational purposes.**

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How to find how much money your favorite NIL Collective generated in 2022

A Step-by-step breakdown to view how much your favorite NIL collective is raising.

Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) Collectives seem to be big businesses in the college sports ecosystem. Some are even forming tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organizations. These tax-exempt organizations have certain filing requirements depending on the gross receipts they generate. Most of these organizations must file a Form 990 with the IRS. See more about this here.

This is a step-by-step guide on how to search for these forms once they have been filed and made public.

For this example, let’s use the West Texas Matador Club, Inc., which is a Texas nonprofit corporation doing business as The Matador Club. Their mission is “helping Texas Tech student-athletes make a positive impact with their name, image, and likeness.”

Step 1: Head to the IRS website and search the legal name of the collective.

In this case, while the collective does business as The Matador Club, their website indicates their legal name is West Texas Matador Club, Inc.

Step 2: Click on the correct entity you want to review.

Step 3: Once the entity has filed their documentation, it should be available for download.

Step 4: For now, you can review the determination letters of collectives.

These letters indicate whether or not the collectives was approved for 501(c)(3) status and informs you which of the 11 deductibility codes they applied. The Matador Club was given the code of a public charity and approved for tax-exempt status. However, these organizations can easily lose their status, read more here.

Deductibility Code In general, an individual who itemizes deductions may deduct contributions to most charitable organizations up to 50% (60% for cash contributions) of his or her adjusted gross income computed without regard to net operating loss carrybacks. Individuals generally may deduct charitable contributions to other organizations up to 30% of their adjusted gross income (computed without regard to net operating loss carrybacks). These limitations (and organizational status) are indicated as follows: Code Type of organization and use of contribution. Deductibility Limitation PC A public charity. 50% (60% for cash contributions)

They are also required to file either a Form 990, 990 E-Z, or a 990-N depending on the amount of their gross receipts.

As Form 990s start rolling in, it will be interesting to follow along and see which collectives are bringing big donor money and which are merely scraping by with donations.

**Disclaimer: This is not tax or legal advice and should not be taken as such. It is merely for educational purposes.**

6 ways NIL Collectives can lose their tax-exempt status

Alex Sinatra breaks six ways that NIL collectives could lose their tax-exempt status.

It is not difficult to maintain tax-exempt status, but it is not difficult to lose it either. Many name, image, and likeness (NIL) collectives are forming as 501(c)(3), examples include Texas Tech’s The Matador Club and Northwestern University’s TrueNU. In this structure, donors to the collective are receiving a tax write-off while the athletes being paid by the collectives, must pay taxes on the money they receive.

While some states like Texas require athletes to take financial literacy workshops during their first and third years at university, not all states have this requirement, so with tax season approaching they might find themselves in trouble. If you are a college athlete, please see this article and the free tax and legal services available to you.

The IRS put out an article entitled: “How to lose your 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status (without really trying)” which lays out the six areas 501(c)(3) organizations should be mindful of when operating.