The University of Maryland is refusing to disclose substantive portions of its agreement with Blueprint Sports, the NIL collective operator-turned-consulting firm that has come under controversy after Sportico reported in September the terms of its agreement with Oregon State.
Maryland signed a nine-page services agreement with Blueprint on April 29. But the contents of that contract, including the financial or revenue-share terms, remain secret. In response to a public records request, the Big Ten school turned over a heavily redacted copy of the agreement, marked “privileged and confidential,” obscuring nearly all of its language, including that which addresses the financial terms or duration of the agreement.
In releasing the redacted document, the university’s public records custodian cited an exemption in the Maryland Public Information Act for documents considered a trade secret, confidential information, or confidential financial information.
“The redacted portions of the attached records are considered confidential commercial information and treated as such by Blueprint Sports,” the records custodian wrote.
Maryland became the first school to engage Blueprint—which has operated the One Maryland Collective—in its new, post-House v. NCAA initiative providing NIL advisory and deal-sourcing services to athletic departments. Oregon State followed suit in August, with Blueprint later telling Sportico that its deal with OSU, which the school provided without redactions, had a similar structure to Maryland’s.
The company said it was engaged in discussions with a number of other schools as it repositioned itself for the post-House landscape, where universities can help facilitate athlete NIL deals.
However, Sportico’s reporting triggered swift backlash among Beavers fans, who took to social media, fan-site message boards and sports talk radio to condemn what many viewed as a lopsided arrangement that advantaged the company at the expense of the Oregon State and its athletes. Of particular concern was the revenue-sharing part of the deal, which entitled Blueprint to half of any NIL revenue it generated or processed over $1.5 million, including from contributions made to OSU by donors. Fan frustration deepened amid concurrent news that Blueprint’s acquisition of rival collective operator SANIL, announced in February, had fallen through.
In the aftermath, OSU deputy athletic director Brent Blaylock, considered the point person on the deal, resigned, while the school reportedly moved to extricate itself from Blueprint. The university has yet to publicly confirm that decision.
The controversy in Corvallis prompted Arkansas to publicly announce it would soon be cutting ties with Blueprint, which had operated the Razorbacks-dedicated collective, Arkansas Edge, since November 2023. Since then, Blueprint has not announced any additional agreements for its on-campus services and has instead removed from its homepage a number of universities it once highlighted as partners.
Among the few un-redacted provisions in the Maryland-Blueprint agreement is a clause governing the parties’ handling of “confidential information,” which specifies that confidentiality obligations survive for two years after the agreement’s termination. That survival clause does not appear in Oregon State’s agreement.
A Maryland spokesperson and the school’s office of general counsel did not respond to emails seeking clarification or comment.
“In this matter, both parties have fully complied with Maryland state law concerning contracts and redactions,” Blueprint CEO Rob Sine said in an email.