College sports received one of the most consequential rulings in its history on Friday — and the man charged with enforcing the rules laid out by it has also come into the public sphere.
Longtime MLB exec Bryan Seeley is expected to become CEO of the College Sports Commission, the new governance body created in the wake of the approval of the House settlement, a spokesperson for the Power conferences confirmed to SBJ.
The CDC was expected to be operational July 1, but the organization launched a website and social media feed late Friday night. Its first post on X used the phrase, “Starting today.”
Seeley, an SBJ Power Player in 2019, has spent nearly 11 years in baseball, working most recently as the league’s EVP of legal and operations.
Seeley’s MLB tenure began as VP, Investigations and Deputy General Counsel in 2014 and he rose to SVP, and later added compliance and security to his portfolio. As EVP, he oversaw five departments; among them the areas of state government relations and sports betting.
As state legislators debated legalized sports betting, he pressed hard for regulators to require sportsbooks to share betting records with the leagues as a deterrent to illegal activity.
The Princeton grad and Harvard J.D. was initially tasked with overseeing MLB’s Department of Investigations in 2014. The DOI was created in January 2008 following the release of the Mitchell Report — ex-Sen. George Mitchell’s probe into steroid use and doping in professional baseball. He also led the investigations into the sign stealing allegations against the Astros and Red Sox.
Seeley notably overlapped at MLB with Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti, who worked as the league’s COO. Seeley will report to a board that includes Petitti and the commissioners of the SEC, ACC and Big 12.
Prior to his time in sports, he worked as an assistant U.S. attorney for the better part of a decade.
What does Seeley’s new role entail?
Seeley will be charged with handling perhaps the most crucial piece to the eventual success of the rules laid out by the House Settlement in overseeing the College Sports Commission.
The Settlement Implementation Committee — a collection of two athletic directors from each of the Power Four conferences and Pac-12 — had been assembled to create a governing body that would be charged with enforcing rules related to the cap spelled out in the settlement.
Sources with knowledge of the committee’s dealings previously told Sports Business Journal their efforts centered on related to varying arms of the House settlement: 1) Cap management; 2) an NIL clearinghouse; 3) rules and guidelines; and 4) enforcement.
The cap spelled out in the settlement was designed to create a maximum threshold up to which athletic departments can share revenue directly with athletes. The first year of the settlement projects that cap to be around $20.5 million, though it will grow incrementally on an annual basis.
As part of managing the cap, Deloitte has been hired to oversee the NIL clearinghouse portion of the settlement in vetting deals worth $600-plus. The idea is to curb payment activity that is functionally pay-for-play being passed off as NIL deals.
A source with knowledge of the committee’s thinking explained the clearinghouse is a structured system with two primary objectives: 1) vetting the range of compensation on varying deals; and 2) evaluating whether those agreements have a valid business purpose.
It’s not yet clear what penalties and/or enforcement will exactly look like. However, sources involved in the creation of the College Sports Commission noted the general sentiment will be shifting away from the NCAA’s longstanding crack downs on athletes and focusing penalties toward schools.
It’s now on Seeley and the staff he’ll ultimately build around him to enforce those rules whenever transgressions — like what happens if/when a school attempts to circumvent the proposed cap limitations or if an NIL deal doesn’t pass muster through the Deloitte clearinghouse — arise.
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