Divided politicians come together for recruiting
Traditionally, the politicians in our state fight over everything.
They have fought over being “woke.” They have fought over COVID vaccines and masks. They have fought over banning books and diversity initiatives and Critical Race Theory and Don’t Say Gay and Disney’s governing district and abortions and parental rights and election laws and on ... and on ... and on.
But when it comes to the really important stuff — like college football recruiiting — they can git-r-done and git-r-done quickly, efficiently and amicably.
When it comes to college football, Republicans and Democrats get in a big circle, hold hands, close their eyes, sway peacefully and sing Kumbaya.
When the time came earlier this week for state legislators to vote on Florida, Florida State, UCF and our other institutions of higher earning being able to hopefully win more football games and recruit better players, there was not a dissenting opinion to be found in the entire State Capitol.
In the House of Representatives, 113 members voted yes to amend and relax a Florida law surrounding college athletes making money off their name, image and likeness to even the playing field with other states across the country.
Zero voted no.
In the Senate, 34 senators voted to support the bill.
Zero voted no.
The bill, HB7B, was then signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday morning in front of a hugging, high-fiving group of college football coaches and players that included FSU head coach Mike Norvell and UF head coach Billy Napier.
”Two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar,
All for no NIL oversight, stand up and holler!”
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the new law being amended so the Gators, ‘Noles and Knights can now legally cheat and circumvent NCAA rules just like they do in Alabama, Tennessee and other states, but can we at least be honest about this? Can we stop saying that this law was amended for the sake of the “student-athletes”?
“In 2020, we took a commonsense approach to ensure that student athletes could control their name, image and likeness and be paid fairly for it,” DeSantis said after signing the bill Thursday. “Now that the NCAA has taken necessary steps to ensure fairness for student-athletes, we can focus on making sure that those athletes are supported and protected under the law.” Puh-leeze.
This new law is about making sure Florida can better compete with Georgia on the recruiting trail; Florida State can better compete with Clemson; UCF can better compete with Baylor. This is essentially our state politicians telling our state college football coaches and administrators, “Have at it, boys! Make us proud! Go get us some 5-stars and bring a natty back home to the Sunshine State!”
Frankly, what happened this week was more of a photo op than anything else. Yes, the new, amended law relaxes the standards and eliminates the guardrails, but it’s not like the state was enforcing the old NIL law. If the original law had any teeth to begin with, DeSantis would have had the state national guard marching into Gainesville to bust UF and its school-endorsed Gator Collective for offering an insane $13.8 million contract to entice California quarterback recruit Jaden Rashada to sign with the Gators.
Honestly, Florida’s original law was actually a pretty good one in theory. Our state was one of the first to pass an NIL law in 2020 that took effect on July 1, 2021. The original law was meant to give state college athletes the right to make legitimate NIL deals while also following NCAA rules.
However, when it became clear that the NCAA wasn’t enforcing its NIL rules and schools from other states were ignoring them by repealing their NIL laws to allow the universities themselves to become more involved, our state was forced to follow suit.
Of course, it’s no secret that the original concept of NIL has been bastardized to a point where it’s now just a code word for “pay for play.” In fact, from this point forward in this column, I am no longer going to use NIL and will instead use the more accurate “pay-for-play” terminology.
In short, Florida’s new law allows coaches and school administrators to get involved and help facilitate “pay-for-play” deals for players. While it is still technically against NCAA rules for schools/ collectives to induce recruits and transfers with “pay-for-play” deals, it’s happening nationwide and the NCAA doesn’t have the power, desire or staffing to investigate the rampant rulebreaking.
I’m not so sure the new Florida law actually changes things, but at least our universities can legally take control and orchestrate their own “pay-for-play” programs. If the new law had been in effect before perhaps the Rashada fiasco would have been averted if UF coaches and administrators had been more in the loop. I firmly believe that the reason Rashada’s absurd $13.8 million deal collapsed in the first place is because Napier got wind of it late in the process and kiboshed it.
I believe the schools themselves should have to pay their players/employees out of their own athletic budget instead of asking fan/ booster collectives to foot the bill, but that’s another story for another day. Until that day comes, our state schools are now, at the very least, legally allowed to have some oversight on what and how the players are being paid.
Kudos to state legislators and Gov. DeSantis.
The new Florida law is a good one and shows what can happen when Republicans and Democrats work together on such a dire, crucial political concern like college football recruiting.
If only we had more bipartisanship in dealing with less important issues like education, immigration, the economy, race relations and affordable property insurance.