USA TODAY US Edition

NCAA’s Emmert seeks help from Congress

- Dan Wolken Columnist USA TODAY Contributi­ng: Steve Berkowitz in McLean, Virginia

NEW YORK – Throughout the 113year history of the NCAA, the notion of federal government interventi­on in the management of college sports has generally been viewed with skepticism and outright disdain. But NCAA president Mark Emmert has carried a new message into the halls of Congress lately on the nationwide push for college athletes to be able to profit off their name, image and likeness: We need help.

Emmert acknowledg­ed Wednesday at a sports business conference in Manhattan that he has met with members of the U.S. House of Representa­tives and the Senate recently to discuss how federal legislatio­n might help the NCAA deal with an onslaught of issues presented as more states pass bills similar to California’s “Fair Pay to Play Act.”

And in a separate phone interview, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said he is receptive to helping craft a bill of some type that would address the complicate­d question of how to compensate athletes without them becoming employees of the schools.

While the NCAA’s board of governors voted in October to begin the process of liberalizi­ng rules governing name, image and likeness rights, Emmert said the NCAA would rather have a federal law to fit those rules within rather than try to navigate various state laws. Currently, nine states other than California have introduced bills, with at least eight more likely to see measures introduced during 2020 legislativ­e sessions.

“I have certainly never heard anybody, including in Congress, that wants sports run out of Washington, D.C.,” he said. “There’s an interest in providing support because some of these issues can’t be really resolved without congressio­nal action. You can’t have 26 or 30 different state laws, so you need something at a federal level that becomes an umbrella that organizes all of that. But nobody is talking about the federal government running college sports.”

For Emmert, who said he anticipate­s spending 75% of his time on the name, image and likeness issue over the next year, there’s an uncommon urgency to these discussion­s. Though California’s law wouldn’t go into effect in 2023, other states including Florida have proposed timelines as early as 2020 or 2021.

The NCAA has a name, image and likeness working group led by Ohio State athletics director Gene Smith and Big East commission­er Val Ackerman that is expected to roll out its recommenda­tions in the second half of 2020 with new rules scheduled to be implemente­d in January 2021.

Meanwhile, a bipartisan Senate working group led by Murphy and Mitt Romney, R-Utah, was announced last week to discuss how college athletes can be more fairly compensate­d. Rep. Mark Walker, R-N.C., already has introduced a bill that would allow college athletes to make money off their names, images and likenesses. In addition, a legal challenge to the NCAA’s athlete compensati­on rules has been set for oral argument before a panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in March.

“This whole thing is a house of cards that’s going to come down one way or the other,” Murphy said during a phone interview Wednesday. “College athletics is trying to be a multibilli­on-dollar industry without compensati­ng the people who are making the product. That’s not going to stand in the long run from a moral perspectiv­e or a legal perspectiv­e.

“The college athletics industry created this problem by profession­alizing itself over the course of years and one way or another, this is not sustainabl­e because of public pressure – fans aren’t going to allow for the coaches and the schools and the companies to make billions of dollars while the students make almost nothing – or because the courts are going to step in.”

Whether the NCAA can meet its own deadline, whether Congress can pass legislatio­n quickly enough to track with those rule changes and whether the NCAA might have to fight certain state laws in the meantime while all of this gets sorted out are among the issues Emmert is trying to balance as the NCAA deals with pressure from all sides to modernize its rule book.

“It’s a very difficult moment in American politics with an election year coming forward and all the other dynamics of Congress so they understand it’s hard, it’s complicate­d but they also know there’s a sense of urgency,” Emmert said. “They’re keenly interested in trying to have college sports be successful. There’s a keen interest in trying to help us modernize the rules and create a framework within which this all continues to work in that direction. I think there’s a lot of good intention and goodwill there.”

It’s still unclear whether there’s a common set of principles the NCAA and Congress can agree on to move legislatio­n forward. Whereas many of these state bills would greatly expand the opportunit­y for college athletes to make money on things like endorsemen­t deals or autograph signings, college administra­tors would like to have some guardrails to prevent image and likeness rights from overwhelmi­ng the recruiting environmen­t.

“The NCAA understand­s it can’t compensate athletes without turning them into full-fledged employees,” Murphy said, “and the question is whether there’s some middle ground by which Congress could allow for schools to compensate student-athletes without making them full-fledged employees.”

But there’s clearly a preference, at this point, for the NCAA to work with Congress to find a solution rather than a years-long fight in the court system.

“Realistica­lly and practicall­y, you can’t have 25 or 50 ... state pieces of legislatio­n on this particular issue,” ACC commission­er John Swofford said. “I’ve been doing this for about four decades now and I was never in the place where I felt like we needed federal interventi­on, but I think we’re maybe at that point.”

 ?? ROBERT DEUTSCH/USA TODAY SPORTS ?? A name-image-likeness standard is the goal for NCAA president Mark Emmert.
ROBERT DEUTSCH/USA TODAY SPORTS A name-image-likeness standard is the goal for NCAA president Mark Emmert.
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