NCAA inquires about NIL deals
Informal probe tries to police activities
As the market for college athletes to earn money off their names, images and likenesses rapidly evolves, NCAA enforcement is faced with the tricky task of trying to police activities currently unregulatedby detailed, uniformrules.
NCAA Vice President of Enforcement Jon Duncan told The Associated Press that letters of inquiry have gone out to multiple schools overthe past few months. He declined to identify the schools but said the letters arenot indicative of a formal investigation and they are frequently used for an assortmentof reasons.
“It’s just dialogue with a school to get more information about whether violations have occurred,” he saidthis week.
The NCAA lifted most restrictions on athletes earning money through sponsorship deals or as paid endorsers last summer after numerous states passed laws that usurped the association’s rules. The NCAA enacted an interim policy that flung open a new market, but with no consistency from state to state. Schools were told to create their own policies, following state laws whereapplicable.
While the NCAA has no NIL-specific bylaws, deals must still adhere to existing rules that prohibit recruiting inducements and athletes being paid solely for playingor for performance.
“We’re not enforcing NIL deals, and we’re not enforcing the interim policy, whichis largely permissive” Duncansaid. “We’re looking at rules that are still on the books and behaviors that are still violations. Or potentially[violations].”
But in the absence of welldefineddos and don’ts, determining what activities cross thelines is a challenge.
“The deals are being done with third parties. And the NCAA obviously has no jurisdiction over those third parties,” aid Mit Winter, a former college basketball player and now a sports law attorney for Kennyhertz Perry. “[The NCAA] can talk to and gather information from schools and the athletes.But any incriminating information is most likelygoing to be among people that either work for or have some involvement withthird parties.”
BYU is the only school that has publicly acknowledged providing the NCAA with information about a NIL deal. BYU officials helped arrange for a Utahbased company to pay the equivalent of tuition to its walk-on football players in exchange for the athletes promoting the company’s products with social media postsand appearances.
A proposed NCAA policy would have prohibited schools from being involved in facilitating NIL deals for their athletes. But legislation was never oted on after a Supreme Court ruling in May left the NCAA vulnerable to future antitrust lawsuits.
State laws in Florida, Alabama and elsewhere restricted schools from facilitating NIL deals for athletes, but that has left schools in those states seemingly at a recruiting disadvantage against those in states that have looser or noNIL laws.