NCAA OKs plan to let athletes cash in on fame
NCAA leaders on Monday endorsed a plan to allow college athletes make money off their personal renown soon. The move, one of the last steps toward a groundbreaking shift in the philosophical and financial underpinnings of college sports, comes just before state laws challenging longstanding NCAA rules take effect.
Although athletics executives acted under severe political pressure and settled on their approach only after the Supreme Court last week left the NCAA vulnerable to antitrust challenges, the interim guidelines are poised to offer coasttocoast clearance for students to earn money through autograph signings, personal appearances, endorsements, social media and other kinds of deals.
Taken together, the state laws and relaxed industry rules will open a new era in
college sports and allow players — not just schools, conferences, coaches and the NCAA itself — to look to the marketplace to capitalize on their fame for the first time. Some athletes could earn hundreds of thousands of dollars or more, although most are expected to pull in far smaller sums, if anything at all.
A board mostly filled with university chancellors and presidents must sign off on the plan, but college sports executives ultimately expect the backing of the group.
Under the approach that the Division I Council — a powerful group that includes conference commissioners and athletic directors — supported Monday, students nationwide will generally not face NCAA repercussions for profiting off their names, images or likenesses. Especially in states without laws or executive orders on the subject, schools will be expected to set policies around matters such as whether students may wear a university’s logo in an advertisement.
As in the past, universities will not be allowed to pay players, and athletes will not be permitted to accept money from anyone in exchange for enrolling at one school instead of another.
The interim guidance that advanced Monday would apply to Division I, which has more than 170,000 studentathletes and features the richest and most famous leagues in college sports, including the Power Five conferences: the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac12 and SEC. Officials in Divisions II and III, which together include about 750 schools and more than 320,000 players, could adopt similar plans this week.
In October, the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, which is separate from the NCAA and includes about 77,000 studentathletes, voted to let players earn money for public appearances and endorsements.
Even with the NCAA locked in talks about how to proceed, athletes and companies have been preparing for the coming state laws Thursday. Last week, Jordan Bohannon, a men’s basketball player at Iowa, announced plans for an apparel line that will debut Thursday. And businesses have been making plans to extend offers to players soon after Thursday.
Leaders of the NCAA, the most influential governing body in college sports, insisted for months that they were eager to move forward with new guidelines to allow players greater economic opportunities. And while it is true that many leading figures in athletics have urged the 115yearold association to loosen its longstanding restrictions, the college sports industry is largely acting now because it had very little choice.
Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, New Mexico, Ohio and Texas all have laws or executive orders coming into force Thursday that will allow college athletes to earn money off their names, images and likenesses. More than a dozen other states have passed similar measures with later effective dates. But Congress, in a setback to the NCAA, has not reached an agreement to override the state statutes and write a standard into federal law.
The array of state laws — often maligned by athletics officials as a “patchwork” — threatened to create an immediate imbalance in college sports. Schools in states with legal guarantees that students could cash in, the reasoning went, would be better positioned to recruit players, tilting the greatest future talents toward a handful of schools. The NCAA’s decision to intervene, executives hope, will stave off the worst potential disparities for at least a short time.