NIL deals replacing NCAA servitude
A dozen years ago, NCAA investigators were in hot pursuit of University of Miami athletes suspected of accepting forbidden swag from a rogue booster.
Their case was based on allegations made by that same booster, Nevin Shapiro, who figured that if he provided the NCAA enough info to incriminate UM players, albeit for the very infractions he had instigated, federal prosecutors might go easy on his unrelated Ponzi scheme conviction.
Sure, Shapiro had defrauded investors out of $930 million, but these diabolical college jocks had violated the NCAA’s sacred doctrine of amateurism. When Shapiro slipped hundred-dollar bills to athletes from South Florida’s poorest ZIP codes, they pocketed the money. They should have known that only adults associated with collegiate sports were allowed to cash in.
To buttress accusations that these college athletes had accepted “impermissible benefits,” the NCAA happily accepted the word of an infamous fraudster whose deceptions had cost retirees their life savings. The NCAA demonstrated just how low it would go to protect a business plan based on unpaid labor.
But a decade later, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that NCAA’s usurpation of athletes’ economic rights was no more legal than Nevin Shapiro’s Ponzi.
Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh delivered the shocking news. “The NCAA is not above the law.”
In an opinion that upended the NCAA’s longheld assumption that its charter trumped the U.S. Constitution, Justice Kavanaugh wrote, “The NCAA couches its arguments for not paying student athletes in innocuous labels. But the labels cannot disguise the reality: The NCAA’s business model would be flatly illegal in almost any other industry in America.”
Of course, colleges still don’t pay athletes whose brawn and artistry generate $12 billion a year in TV contracts and ticket sales. But, with the lawsuits looming, the NCAA finally conceded that athletes at least have a right to revenue generated by their own personal renown.
The Florida Legislature made our state the second in the nation to codify those rights — with certain restrictions. Unhappily, other states either passed more permissive laws or left the rules for NIL (name, image and likeness) contracts up to individual schools.
And the specter of “impermissible benefits” has been replaced by “competitive disadvantages.” Florida’s college football and basketball coaches complain that the state’s NIL law has given rival colleges in less restrictive states a recruiting advantage. (Which may be true, but it’s hard to fathom after the Florida sports media reported last week that a prized football recruit from California might not honor his commitment to the University of Florida despite an $11 million NIL marketing deal. This is the same kid who walked away from a $9.5 million agreement with a NIL consortium aligned with the University of Miami two months ago.)
On Tuesday, Rep. Chip LaMarca introduced a bill that would loosen restrictions, allowing colleges and their respective booster “collectives” to both advise and help athletes negotiate NIL deals. Last year, college athletes collected $917 million from endorsements and paid personal appearances and as social media influencers. (About 37% of the money went to women athletes.)
Seems like a mighty change. But maybe not. “There was a lot of NIL deals going on before all this was going on,” Texas A&M (and former Florida State) football coach Jimbo Fisher told ESPN broadcaster Paul Finebaum in 2021. “They just weren’t legal. No one told nobody.”
The NCAA’s continued opposition to outright pay for athletes creates another complication in the NIL era. What about the hard-working non-stars on college teams who’ve not been offered deals? The inequities can’t be great for team morale.
One thing for sure: The modern-day, utterly ineffectual NCAA won’t solve the compensation problems. No more than it will stop the dismantling of athletic conferences as big money schools abandon traditional rivalries in pursuit of even bigger money. In retrospect, the transgressions that the NCAA hung on UM in 2011 seem downright petty compared to the NIL deals brokered by modern-day athletes. Nevin Shapiro reportedly had lavished about $170,000 in gifts and money on 72 UM athletes, hoping to entice them into signing on with his fledging sports agency. Nowadays, that amounts to chump change. By the way, the judge presiding over Shapiro’s Ponzi case wasn’t much impressed by the NCAA investigator who testified on his behalf in federal court. Not even when she suggested that once he’s out of prison, the grateful NCAA might hire Shapiro as a motivational speaker.
He was sentenced to 20 years but was granted early release in 2020 amid the pandemic. Just in time. Lately, the NCAA seems in dire need of motivation.