NCAA Enforcement Begins Attempted NIL Crackdown With Miami Inquiry

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The NCAA’s plan to explore name, image and likeness deals is no longer an idle threat.

The governing body of college athletics has launched an inquiry into the University of Miami serious enough that enforcement staff members visited the Coral Gables campus last week to conduct interviews, most notably with billionaire UM booster John Ruiz.

NCAA investigators spent at least two days in Miami prying into NIL deals, multiple sources tell Sports Illustrated. Contacted Tuesday morning, Ruiz confirmed that he spoke to NCAA enforcement staff members last week in what he termed a general “interview.”

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“I’m extremely comfortable with what we are doing. I have nothing to hide,” Ruiz tells SI. “It went super well. The NCAA is trying to wrap their hands around this sudden change of environment. They’re trying to figure out how the landscape is working.”

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NCAA staff members interviewed others in Miami as well in what is believed to be the first serious inquiry into a college athletic department since the association lifted rules last July that once prohibited athletes to earn compensation from their likeness. Last fall, several schools received inquiry letters from the NCAA, but this is a new string of more serious examinations from the organization.

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Ruiz, an ardent supporter of UM athletics whose three children attended the school, surged into the national conversation around NIL this spring with public and brazen social media posts regarding a bevy of deals he’s struck with athletes, most of them who compete for Miami. Though he declined to reveal specifics, Ruiz’s time in front of NCAA investigators is believed to have at least centered on his NIL deal with men’s basketball guard Nijel Pack, a Kansas State transfer who signed a two-year, $800K deal to endorse Ruiz’s two companies, LifeWallet, a healthcare application, and the Cigarette (boat) Racing Team.

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He is one of 115 athletes that Ruiz has signed to deals since the inception of NIL, and while he acknowledges that most of them attend Miami, he’s struck deals with players from North Carolina and FIU, he says. Ruiz says his NIL payroll is currently at about $7 million.

He describes the NCAA’s visit to Miami as not an “investigation” but more of an inquiry to learn more about the evolving landscape of NIL.

“A lot of NCAA bylaws are hard to reconcile with the ability and right to enter into NIL deals,” he says. “I think that the NCAA is starting to get a handle on the fact that it’s not capable of navigating within the [state] NIL laws and their own bylaws. There is an internal conflict.

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“I felt the people from the NCAA were extremely pleasant. They are tasked with the job of making sure they gather enough information and create a functioning standard for everybody. There has to be better regulation.”

A Miami spokesperson provided SI with a statement: “Like our peer institutions around the country, the University of Miami communicates with NCAA staff to ensure compliance with applicable NCAA regulations. Per NCAA rules, and in order to maintain the integrity of the review, the university cannot comment on specifics of the matter.”

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