Year delay in Florida college athletes controlling their own marketing is reversed.
Lawmakers reverse course on 1-year delay, file last-minute amendment
The yearlong delay in giving college athletes control over their own marketing, put into a separate bill as an amendment at the last minute, was abruptly reversed Friday thanks to another amendment slipped into yet another bill.
Sen. Travis Hutson, R-St. Augustine, who defended the delay Thursday as “an abundance of caution” to make sure student-athletes don’t lose their NCAA eligibility, filed a new amendment Friday following an uproar from athletes, coaches and even fellow Republicans.
The amendment overrides the one passed Thursday and returns the effective date when college athletes could control their names, images and likenesses from July 1, 2022, back to July 1 of this year.
The delay was tucked into a bill on charter schools that already featured a surprise amendment banning transgender girls and women from women’s sports in public schools and colleges.
The House debate, despite an eventual 114-2 vote in favor, was heated.
State Rep. David Smith, R-Winter Springs, called the original amendment a “glitch” that had to be fixed, a description House Democrats criticized as ignoring House members’ responsibility to understand what was in the bills on which they voted.
“Why didn’t we address [the provision] when it was ... under our noses on Wednesday?” state Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, D-Orlando. “It’s because Republican members were busy high-fiving each other and celebrating the passage of a law expelling and humiliating [transgender] students.”
The Senate had to approve the amendment with added language from the House that would prevent state funds from being used to “join or maintain membership in an association” that makes any decisions in response to legislative proposals, an obvious shot across the bow at the NCAA and any potential boycott of the state over the transgender sports ban.
Senators, after debating whether to remove the provision, ultimately decided it wouldn’t actually affect any colleges or universities, as they could use other funds for NCAA membership. So they left it in.
Former UCF and current Florida State quarterback McKenzie Milton was the first and most prominent critic of the athlete delay, highlighting on Thursday the section of the bill that crossed off “2021” and replaced it with “2022.”
“Are we serious right now??” Milton wrote on Twitter. “That little black line in a bill with more than 70 pages to continue to screw all these athletes?? Make it make sense. #NotNCAAProperty”
The football coaches for Florida State University, the University of Florida and University of Miami also later weighed in on Twitter, with UM coach Manny Diaz openly calling for a veto from Gov. Ron DeSantis.
David Smith said Milton’s opposition wasn’t the reason for the reversal, saying it “wasn’t in reply to anything on Twitter.” He later added shouldn’t have used the term “glitch,” explaining he didn’t want to blame the Senate. He said coaches told him that athletes recruited to Florida universities this year might transfer if the effective date were changed.
“College and university officials came up to us and said this was a problem,” Smith said. “If we don’t make this change, we’re hurting student-athletes.”
Smith echoed Hutson in saying the Legislature had received more clarity about NCAA policies. According to the News Service of Florida, Hurston spoke with FSU President John Thrasher on Thursday in order to reach out to NCAA President Mark Emmert.
“He has assured us that the NCAA does not want to punish players on their name, image and likeness and wants to protect the players,” Hutson told News Service.
The bill giving college athletes control over their name, image and likeness, or NIL, passed last year after getting support from DeSantis.
Its effective date is again among the earliest in the country, with California’s law only taking effect in 2023.
The delay would have given the NCAA extra time to tweak its rules regarding compensation for athletes, a process now bogged down in the courts.