The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced on Wednesday it has rescinded the nine-page Title IX guidance on Name, Image, Likeness (NIL) issued in the final days of the Biden administration.

This is a big win for schools such as Clemson and its NIL competitiveness with some of the elite programs in college football.

“The NIL guidance, rammed through by the Biden Administration in its final days, is overly burdensome, profoundly unfair, and it goes well beyond what agency guidance is intended to achieve,” said Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor in a press release. 

On Jan. 16, The OCR issued a memo for guidance regarding student NIL.

The memo stated that colleges need to ensure their male and female student athletes receive proportionate NIL opportunities and resources.  The memo considered NIL as athletic financial assistance, which would impact NIL provided by third parties.

In a nine-page memo, the OCR clarified, under Title IX, NIL money paid to student athletes should be held to the same gender-equity standards as athletic scholarships. Specifically, it says the amounts paid to student athletes through NIL deals should be considered part of a school’s athletic financial assistance.

This news came two weeks before settlement objections were due in the House v. NCAA case. Last summer, the two parties reached an agreement by allocating billions in future revenue sharing for student athletes, which most schools plan to use for their revenue drivers — football and men’s basketball.

The Biden Administration’s OCR memo could have played a role in how the revenue share money could have been allocated. In other words, schools planning to give these dollars to mostly football and men’s basketball could’ve been forced to distribute the money based on Title IX equity laws.

“Without a credible legal justification, the Biden Administration claimed that NIL agreements between schools and student athletes are akin to financial aid and must, therefore, be proportionately distributed between male and female athletes under Title IX,” Trainor said in the release. “Enacted over 50 years ago, Title IX says nothing about how revenue-generating athletics programs should allocate compensation among student athletes.

“The claim that Title IX forces schools and colleges to distribute student-athlete revenues proportionately based on gender equity considerations is sweeping and would require clear legal authority to support it. That does not exist. Accordingly, the Biden NIL guidance is rescinded.”

Once the rev share goes into effect on July 1, schools in Power 4 Conferences are expected to share up to $22 million in revenue with their student athletes each year.

As The Clemson Insider reported previously, Clemson plans to give a high percentage of its revenue dollars to its football program, which is expected to be as high as anyone in the country.