Jeff Manning, a competent business-side reporter, has been following the Avenatti saga for The O. he wrote a fairly extensive piece on Tuesday, when the judge shut down Avenatti's attempt to call Nike peeps as witnesses and take the trial far off-track.
the most important para in Manning's story was buried about 2/3 of the way down . . . 
Nike attorney Peter Skinner fired back: “I have to respond to that. We never took the position that there were no payments to players. We said -- and we still stand by it -- that we have never uncovered evidence of a payment to a player to send them to a particular college.”
in other words, there was never a quid pro quo as in the adidas case, where a prospect was paid by adidas peeps to attend an adidas school.
still not a good look for Nike here, and the Swoosh still might face some civil action from the SEC. but trolls like Looger, Janitor Jimmie B, Nebby, and the rest of that cru, who lost dozens of accts and saw hundreds of libelous comments disabled, got embarrassed today. but they're prob not smart enough to figure that out.