quote:

Such contracts cannot be legally enforced, currently. It is illegal to insert a clause in an NIL contract to demand any participation whatsoever. It cannot in any way be tied to participation.

I get that. I wasn't clear, but I meant contracts with individual companies that had clauses requiring players to either live within a certain radius of the school or to make appearances or do commercials through a certain date that would practically function as "pay for play," with the wording not specifying it. Which, to my point, would be restrictive. And why would a player with options sign that with an individual company tied to school A, when an individual company tied with school B wouldn't require the same restrictions.

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Once college football goes to a player association with employment status, that will all change. But right now you can't give anyone a penny and demand anything related to participation in any form.

Believe me, I understand this. It's why I laugh at the notions of, like OP's, any sort of demand to finish out the season. Could not be enforced currently. And if the players do ever become employees, there will have to be new legislation concerning anti-trust laws specific to college football. Or maybe they can operate under the current ones.

But, like you said, a CFBPA would have to be created, and there is zero chance they would agree to anything that would require players to play in a certain amount of games or have to pay back money they've already received. That's absurd, and nobody, in any industry, would agree to that. The best they could do would be to get paid for each game played (or eligible to play). So bowl opt-outs just wouldn't get paid for a 13th game (14th if they played in a CCG). But I don't think that 1-game amount would be significant enough to incentivize playing for the guys opting out to focus on preparing for the NFL Draft.