USC incoming linebacker Talanoa Ili joins lawsuit seeking to upend new NIL system
USC leaves the tunnel to play Georgia Southern, coached by none other than Clay Helton, on Sept. 6. (Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)
Ryan Kartje (LA Times) — The first serious legal challenge to the House settlement will come courtesy of a USC freshman linebacker.
Talanoa Ili, a 6-3, 225-pound linebacker/top-100 recruit in the Trojans’ vaunted 2026 class, joins Stanford quarterback Charlie Mirer as one of two lead plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit that takes aim at the system implemented since the settlement ushered in a new era of direct payment from universities to athletes.
The suit, which was filed last week, accuses the NCAA, the Power Four conferences and the enforcement arm they created — the College Sports Commission — of participating in a “conspiracy” by creating a system of policies that have “direct anti-competitive effects, including the suppression of [name, image and likeness] compensation below competitive levels.”
Those policies, their attorneys argue, violate state laws in California that prohibit restrictions on NIL rights, as well as federal antitrust statutes. They’re seeking monetary damages, as well as an injunction that would upend the enforcement structure created to determine whether individual NIL deals over $2,500 meet criteria, including whether they have “a valid business purpose” or fall within a reasonable range of market value.
by the way — USC paid Lincoln Riley nearly $12 mil for the 2024 season when the Trojans finished a disappointing 7-6.
The clearinghouse, NIL Go, was created with the hope of eliminating an influx of booster-funded NIL deals that were basically direct payments from donors to the program. But since its inception, the system has been more restrictive and worked less efficiently than some schools and athletes might have hoped. As of last month, according to Yahoo Sports, more than $125 million worth of NIL compensation that had been promised to athletes had been rejected by the clearinghouse or was still under review.
In Ili’s case, the complaint states that he received a “substantial multi-year offer” from USC’s House of Victory collective in 2024 that led him to commit to the Trojans, only to have the offer disappear after approval of the House settlement. Ili chose USC over UCLA.
“Absent the NIL Restrictions on Direct Pay NIL Compensation, Ili would have received more for his NIL rights than he now receives,” the complaint states. “The Agreement has thus injured Ili.”
Mirer, meanwhile, claims that he has received no NIL compensation from Stanford’s collective or revenue-sharing money from the university since 2024 as a result of the settlement.
“The [CSC agreement] has suppressed, deterred, and effectively terminated the economic relationships that had produced his prior NIL compensation,” the lawsuit says.
Even the plaintiffs in the House settlement, which created the CSC, are in the process of challenging the current system. On Wednesday, plaintiff attorney Jeffrey Kessler will argue in a hearing that school-affiliated businesses such as multimedia rights holders or corporate sponsors, should not be subject to the CSC’s rigorous criteria for NIL deals. That decision could also open the floodgates, with schools using those entities to circumvent the cap.
Two U.S. senators are hoping to pass legislation they believe would bring more stability to college athletics and thwart legal challenges. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Maria Cantwell (D-Texas) spoke with presidents and chancellors from the Big Ten Conference on Tuesday about a bipartisan bill, the Protect College Sports Act, which would codify some of the CSC’s policies into federal law.
latimes.com
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Who’s impressed with Gary Patterson?
“Don’t let those shoulders come up.“
Time may force me to eat these words, but as of now, I am all in on Hall of Fame coach Patterson. Lincoln Riley, not so much
Ya, I’m with you. Lincoln has shown his stripes many times over. His USC record is along the lines of blah and meh. But he’s ours and that’s that for now. At this stage, USC football looks better than ever before under LR in terms of overall program balance, asst coaches and coords, as well as talent. These are all now well-supported by what is a fully revamped admin and SI staff led by Chad Bowden and a well-funded NIL. I also think Jen Cohen is a winner who has given Riley everything any coach could want to be successful.… Read more »
Definitely Patterson has the edge in experience and the ability to get the most out of his players. Also better marks in building a program.
But Riley….
My thinking is Patterson is the ingredient for success in two areas, the football teams play on the field, and the maturity and wisdom to be gained by Riley. I hope Patterson enjoys it here are USC and plans to stay around for a while.
We are now back home, my wife is recuperating from 6 weeks of intensive radiation at Loma Linda and Long Beach Memorial. Great programs fighting cancer together.
🙏
We remember seeing him as a HC rumbling up & down the sidelines pushing overachievers and being successful. We haven’t seen him as just a DC in a different program dealing a different player mentality in today’s CFB. All we have seen/heard is what every coach does & says this time of the year. Can we really be objective before even the beginning of season?
We hope he is a draw the line in the sand-take no prisoner DC that demands tesults or you are on the bench “period”. When & if that time comes, I answer your question Allen.
Dylan Wafle committed to SC. Hopefully he turns out to be a Matt Groodegood type sleeper.
Is Dylan any relation to Charlie Waffles?
Charlie Waffles? Never heard of him
Pop culture reference. See “Two And A Half Men” and Charlie Sheen.
I have a life outside of football and teeth🤣.
I used to watch all these TV shows. The last one I watched on a regular basis was Miami Vice. I still watch reruns of that sometimes. That was a great show. Other than that, I’m really not interested. But to each his own.
Looks like a package deal for the Wafle brothers. Hope Dylan has a good HS senior season down at the Avon Old Farms (CT) and comes in to USC as a 4-5 star.
I saw a picture of the 2 standing next to each other. If Luke is 6’5″ 1/2 then Dylan is about 6’1″. May 6’1″ 1/2. They say he made around 100 tackles his junior year. If he could get up to 225 to 230 he might be a sleeper. Jacob Rodriquez, the All-American LB from Texas Tech was only a 3 star in high school
The USC baseball team landed one of the best pitching coaches in the nation just recently
The USC women’s 4x100m relay team of Dajaz DeFrand, Madison Whyte, Mia Brahe-Pedersen and Brianna Selby brought home the national title at the NCAA Championships at Hayward Field (Eugene, OR) for the second year in a row with a time of 41.58, just .03 seconds off the collegiate record set by TEXAS in 2023.
Fantastic! Way to go, ladies! Fight On!
Add this Natty to the Women’s Water Polo Natty for 25-26. Lady Trojans are doing their part. When are the men gonna step up! FTFO! 😎 ✌
The USC women finished 5th overall:
Georgia — 50 points
Florida — 43 points
Arkansas — 38 points
Oregon — 36 points
USC — 32 points
Iowa State — 30 points
Washington — 28 points
Illinois — 27 points
Nebraska — 27 points
LSU — 24 points
Highly anticipated Brazil (the most successful team in the history of the World Cup, but haven’t won it since 2002) v Morocco (2022 World Cup semifinalist) about to start in New York (Fox)
Not a futbol fan. All football. Played, coached, kids played. CFB nut. NFL follower . So wife has a position that requires facetime with upper echelon executives and the like. Last year she was to bring them to BMO stadium for a LAFC match. They had to cancel. I was offered to go, but I wasn’t crazy about going even though the stadium is cool inside and out. So I went with a buddy out of guilt. Well, it was way way better than I thought. Fast, quick, skills, and more goals than I expected. The stadium sang throughout the… Read more »
World Cup 2026 is here! Entering the 2026 World Cup, the AI consensus top five teams in the world are Argentina, Spain, France, England, and Brazil, though Portugal and Colombia are also in there. The USA ranks 12th, in their group D is 21 Turkey, 36 Australia and tonight’s opponent 26 Paraguay. The final match is July 19. That should take us just about to start of real football training camp! 🏈 ⚽
I couldn’t care less about soccer. What a boring game. They run up and down the field and hardly anyone ever scores. No wonder they yell out a loud long yell until they run out of breath when somebody does score. Hockey is the same way…..skate up and down the ring and stop only to punch someone out then skate up and down some more until the next pugilist outbreak and hardly anyone scores. If I want to see a fist fight I’ll go to a boxing match. I’m not crazy about Futbol but I do love football. JMHO.
I don’t usually ever watch soccer or follow it in the least. I don’t think many of us do. But it’s not every day the USA hosts a World Cup.
And I did happen to catch the first half of the USA vs Paraguay match and it just may have been the greatest half of soccer the Americans have ever played. We were perfect and lead 3-0 with another goal disallowed. Sofi Stadium is packed and so is the Coliseum which is hosting an official FIFA Fan Festival.
To each his own. Go for it. As for myself, I could never compare futbol with football. That’s like comparing watching paint dry with watching Ali fight Smoking Joe. Football is a great game. Futbol is a good sleep aide. I better shut up. There I go offending people and we all know that we can’t do that anymore here in free america.
Hi Allen, I was just wondering how much of that first half did you nap through?🤣
I’m as surprised by myself as the next guy. I have never been a soccer fan. But the World Cup being in the USA and with the USA men being so much more dangerous and skillful, I have become a big fan of this tournament. Our match against Paraguay was a real eye-opener. The USA is a much more athletic and speedy team than the American public is used to. Scoring three goals in a half is a phenomenal performance. I was literally shocked to see the Americans creating some opportunities and making some shots that I thought only the… Read more »
Friday should be an exciting match. I will be watching also.
Tell us how you really feel, 007. 🤣
But, I pretty much agree with you!
“Pundant” has a take on everything. Lots of word use to say little.
Just my opinion. It’s still a free country even if we’re losing that freedom more everyday. Maybe I’m just an old fogey.
You should try what I do, record the game/match, and speed watch till something happens. If you watch the 7 top teams I mentioned above play in these early rounds against teams that aren’t nearly as good, you will see more scoring and great playmaking. You are right once you get to the quarterfinals and beyond, the teams are all good. Then it is a lot of up and down, back and forth without much action. Speed watch is a must. Especially with stoppage time and if it goes to 30 minute overtime period and then penalty shootout. Be sure… Read more »
I’ve never been a really good sleeper. Maybe what I should do is tape the whole game and then put a TV near my bed and turn on the game when I go to sleep. The game itself will put me to sleep better than any sleep aide. The problem is when they finally do score, the announcers long loud yell will wake me up. But them the game will continue and I’ll go right back to sleep again. So I’ll sleep in spurts.
Turn the sound off. 0-0 after 2 hours, regular time + extra time, will put you out for sure! 😴✌
Awe yes….soccer….the worlds best sleep aide. Who needs Relaxium…..
Lucky for 007 and the rest of us……this year USC after its first three games will have one great game after another. A season for the ages. Let’s just hope Fresno St does not turn that game into a game.
The big game is Oregon. It’s a must win. They’ve won 6 out of the last 7. The one game we won, we were ahead 38-14 in the 4th quarter(if I remember right). The final score was 38-35. They came back and almost won. We can’t afford to lose to them again….especially in our house.
007…..its preseason and its fun to speculate. After all…..that is what this sport is all about for fans. Your view is as valid as any. My take…….the big game for us is against Penn St if we beat who we should during the season. Penn St does not play Oregon, Ohio State or Indiana. They also have three OOC games against very weak teams. If we don’t beat them they should win at least 9 maybe 10. That probably puts them in. Leaving us to struggle against Oregon, O State and Indiana. Can we beat any of the three…..tough…..I will… Read more »
PSU will probably be good. Campbell is a great coach. This guy won pretty big with not great players. It’s hard to get great black players to go to a school where there are probably not too many other blacks and the best entertainment in the city is to take an afternoon walk through the cornfields.
USC could have had Matt Campbell. Would we have been better off? An eternal USC football question for sure.
At the time LR looked like a better coach than Campbell. Is he? We’ll find out on Oct. 10th
I thought he said he would want to stay in the midwest? Or was that someone else?
It was my understanding that Campbell would have for sure taken the USC job if ever offered. They guy who backed off was Luke Fickell, which was fortunate for USC if you talk with WIS fans.
Now I remember. We dodged a bullet there for sure.
but…..think of all the hogs. They can keep anybody laughing for days!
True….and that can be a good recruiting tool…..“come to ISU for a 3-4 year laugh-in”
Wrong show, it’s Hee Haw not Laugh-In! 😆 🐷
Junior: Boy, is my dog stupid.
Roy: Why, what does he do?
Junior: He plays poker with me.
Roy: Why that’s not stupid! That’s smart!
Junior: No that’s stupid. Every time he gets a good hand, he starts wagging his tail.
My mistake. I thought it was SNL
Lindy’s stuff on USC Scouting Report — “Jayden Maiava is the key to all of it. This is the year he’s got to show something real — not flashes, not a couple of explosive drives. I mean command. Command of the offense, command of the moment. Right now, I’m in the ‘wait and see’ mode with him… Defensively, I do think that bringing in Gary Patterson changes the temperature a bit. You’re talking about a guy who’s seen every offensive system you can throw at him. That alone should help them get more structurally sound. … They’ve got players. They’ve… Read more »
A sign of things to come?
Lindy’s didn’t name one single USC player to its Pre-Season AA teams, and neither did Athlon. USC was totally shut from each of the national 1st, 2nd and 3rd AA teams.
The Trojans also got pretty much dumped on big-time in the All-B1G teams, with absolutely no first team picks, only two 2nd teamers (PK Ryon Sayeri and DL Kameryn Crawford), and three 3rd teamers (QB Jayden Maiava, RB King Miller and LB Desmond Stephens).
Athlon didn’t select any Trojans to its 29-man All-B1G team and projects USC to finish 5th in the B1G.
Riley, thanks to our wunderkind general manager, gets good players, but they don’t get better while they are at SC. That’s at least partly LR’s fault.
I can understand Ili’s suit, it was agreed to before the House settlement came about. But it creates strange bedfellows. If ili’s suit was against USC as co-defendant, This would just be icing on the cake in the mess college football is in. What is on my mind, with this bill before Congress runs into party politics in senators demanding favors/perks for their support, it adds to how selfish and corrupt Congress is that ignores what is right thing to do. This Texas Tech judgement on a player maintaining his player status and the University claiming they are doing the… Read more »
Agree Jam.
College Football is looking less like college football everyday. Just wait the “Betting Quarterback” from TX will probably be placing a bet on the outcome of this latest NCAA debacle. Which begs the question; Why is there even an NCAA?
(Unless it stands for Neutered College Athletics Ability)