They would claim sovereign immunity and then Bilbo would roll out the receipts on their recruiting shenanigans. If you think that little hobbit looking fucker doesn’t have a safety deposit box full of shit just in case, I got a bridge to sell you.
Cut off his cash and he will list who paid what to whom and raise a huge stink for it to become an issue with the IRS. He could potentially drag it far enough that he could argue that his firing was retaliation for threatening to expose A&M, their alumni, and the AD in a long running fraud to help facilitate tax fraud.
I am really curious how that would actually work out from a federal standpoint after the various other sports related payment cases. Could you charge all the parties involved in a conspiracy to commit tax fraud by paying players in crypto and what not now since NIL made it legal for such transactions to occur? In the past the feds were leery to go after the players/families, but now with a legal option for them to get paid there is no legitimate reason to pay them under the table….