1 NCAA: Announces plans to allow college athletes to earn money from endorsements.
For more than 60 years, NCAA leaders have insisted college athletes had to be amateurs and to be amateurs, they could not be paid for being athletes — by anybody.
That no longer will be the case. The NCAA announced Wednesday it is moving forward with a plan to allow college athletes to earn money for endorsements and a host of other activities involving personal appearances and socialmedia content.
It’s a big deal — “unprecedented,” Ohio State President and NCAA Board of Governors chairman Michael Drake called it. But there are important details to be sorted out before NCAA membership votes on legislation and there is plenty of skepticism from critics.
Though athletes will be able to cash in on their names, images and likenesses as never before, the money won’t come from the NCAA, schools or conferences. The broad plan is to allow athletes to strike deals with third parties, but require them to disclose those agreements. The NCAA and schools want to regulate for improprieties so payments aren’t actually recruiting inducements or payforplay schemes.
Guardrails is the word college sports leaders are using to describe those regulations.
There will be no cap on what the athletes can earn, said Ohio State athletic director Gene
Smith, who led the group that produced the recommendations approved by the Board of Governors.
That’s important because the NCAA is still fighting the appeal of an antitrust case in which the plaintiffs claimed the association and its member schools and conferences have been illegally capping compensation to athletes at the value of a scholarship. Jeffrey Kessler, the lead attorney in that antitrust case, said the NCAA’s move toward NIL compensation for athletes “completely destroys every argument they’ve made in the past.”
Boosters, those who support schools with donations, likely won’t be immediately disqualified from working with athletes. But the NCAA fears individuals and companies using relationships with athletes as cover for paying prospects to attend a particular school.
The NCAA also has to figure out how to assess the fairmarket value for an athlete appearing in a television commercial for a local business, signing autographs at a memorabilia shop or promoting a product or event on social media.
Big East Commissioner Val Ackerman, cochair of the working group with Smith, said there has been discussion about creating a third party to make those assessments and manage disclosure.