States hands off when it comes to NCAA athelete compensation NCAA
The NCAA
AUSTIN, TEXAS — waited nearly a year to issue a warning that there are still rules to follow now that college athletes can earn money off their fame, sparking speculation that a crackdown could be coming for schools and boosters that break them.
But the NCAA isn’t the only enforcement organization that stayed quiet as millions of dollars started flying around college athletes.
Nearly half the states, 24 in all, have laws regarding athlete compensation, all passed since 2019. Several specifically ban the sort of pay-for-play and recruiting enticement deals the NCAA still outlaws and critics of the new system worry about.
Yet those states have shown no appetite to question or investigate the schools, the contracts or the third-party groups orchestrating them. Even if they did, there is little legal framework for how they would do it.
Texas and Florida, two states with major college football and basketball programs, ban pay-forplay contracts and using deals to lure recruits to campus. But nei
ther state set up mechanisms to investigate or punish a school,
organization or agent caught breaking the rules.
“A lot of people are referencing the NCAA not taking action, but the same can be said about states,” said Darren Heitner, an attorney who helped craft the Florida law.
The unenforced state bans on pay-for-play and recruiting
deals calmed lawmakers who worried that college sports they love were changing, said Heitner, an advocate for athletes’ rights to earn money. But there has been no indication a state attorney general or local prosecutor will go after a big university, coach and wealthy donors if the team is bringing in top players and winning.
Alabama was one state that did have specific punishment in its law: Anyone providing compensation to an athlete that caused them to lose eligibility faced a potential Class C felony, which carried up to 10 years in prison.
But Alabama lawmakers repealed the state’s entire college athlete compensation law earlier this year. The law’s original author called for the repeal because he worried it left Alabama schools at a recruiting disadvantage compared with rival schools in other states that didn’t have similar restrictions.
Arkansas gives some legal power to the athletes in that state. They can sue their agent or another third party that offers or sets up a deal later deemed improper and they are declared ineligible to play.
Half the states don’t have athlete compensation laws. Schools there have been left to navigate the general parameters the NCAA provided in June 2021 on the eve of the NIL era and to wait to see what would be enforced. Pay-for-play and “improper inducements” were still off the table, the NCAA said then, but there were few details and NIL deals were struck by the hundreds in the weeks that followed.
The NCAA finally stepped back into its enforcement role with new guidance that sought to clarify the types of contracts and booster involvement that should be considered improper.
Few expect a massive crackdown and the Division I Board of Governors noted that its focus was on the future. There’s simply too many athletes and too many contracts for NCAA enforcement to look at them all.
“The enforcement is going to fall on the NCAA, (but) there’s no way they’ll try to look at thousands of deals,” said Mit Winter, a sports law attorney in Kansas City, Missouri.