The handoff

SEC leaders lobby for NIL oversight

From sea to shining sea, the challenge with name, image and likeness provisions for collegiate athletes is that the rules are as plentiful and different state to state as all those amber waves of grain.

That’s according to University of Arkansas Athletic Director Hunter Yurachek, who joined other leaders of the Southeastern Conference in the halls of the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday. They were on offense playing defense, hoping to score federal oversight for how NIL works — and in some cases, doesn’t.

Last week, Matt Jones of WholeHogSports.com covered Yurachek speaking at a Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce luncheon in Fayetteville, where the AD previewed the trip to lobby Congress.

“We need some congressional help because what’s happened is states have formed their own state laws around Name, Image and Likeness, so the NCAA has no hope now because state laws trump any type of NCAA bylaws,” Yurachek said. “We need federal intervention to help us get our arms around Name, Image and Likeness.”

NIL is a change in the collegiate athletics scene in 2021 by which student-athletes can be paid by for promotional use of their names, images and likenesses. For example, a player might promote a business, or she might endorse a specific product.

Compensating “amateur” athletes, per se, isn’t the issue. Everyone in the college sports world seems to have gotten comfortable with it, or at least have developed coping mechanisms. But the hodge-podge of rules institution by institution, or state by state, creates a rather uneven playing field. The schools have to go head to head on the field of competition under rules that provide a level of fairness. But off the field, the unevenness of NIL rules and laws creates advantages for some schools and disadvantages for others.

Recruitment of athletes isn’t supposed to be influenced by NIL, according to the NCAA’s guidance. That, of course, is laughable.

And so Mr. Yurachek goes to Washington, assisted by troops of other SEC leaders who put their faith, or appear to, in the concept that collegiate competition should, to the greatest degree, be fair.

SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said it’s his and the others’ understanding that Congress can fix things, which is almost as quaint as the idea of fair competition in recruiting. Ah, but maybe we’re too skeptical. If Congress is really the only place where this can be solved, why not hand’em the ball?