NCAA moves to allow athletes to profit off endorsements
An NCAA legislative body voted to support allowing its athletes to profit off endorsements and still maintain their eligibility beginning next year.
The Board of Governors voted to approve the rules changes Tuesday and the results were announced by the NCAA on Wednesday morning.
“Member schools have embraced very real change,” NCAA president Mark Emmert said during a conference call with media members Thursday morning.
The change in policy comes after numerous state legislatures, most notably California, passed laws in their states allowing athletes to profit from endorsements. The NCAA formed a working group to study the subject as a result of the states’ moves.
The new rules must be approved by the NCAA’s three divisions. A January 2021 deadline has been set for that approval, which would allow the new rules to take effect for the 2021-22 school year.
“Today is either the day that a wall of injustice around student-athletes started to crumble, or the day the NCAA used more tactics to bait and switch young men and women from some of America’s most vulnerable communities,” said Rep. Mark Walker, R-North Carolina, who has previously introduced legislation into the U.S. House of Representatives on the name, image and likeness question in college athletics. “My hope is the former and that the proposal on name, image, and likeness is genuine. If enacted in good faith, this move will save the college sports we love by creating equity, transparency, and opportunity.”
College athletes will be allowed to receive compensation for endorsing products or services as well as make money off their social media accounts and personal appearances. They can also be paid for their talents outside their sport, such as musical or other artistic abilities.
“Throughout our efforts to enhance support for college athletes, the NCAA has relied upon considerable feedback from and the engagement of our members, including numerous student-athletes, from all three divisions,” Michael V. Drake, chair of the board and president of Ohio State, said in a statement released by the NCAA. “Allowing promotions and third-party endorsements is uncharted territory.”
Athletes will only be allowed to identify themselves by their name and sport. They will not be allowed to use school or conference logos as part of their endorsements.
Payments from schools to athletes for endorsements will continue to not be permitted.
“The payments are to come from third-parties only,” Val Ackerman, Big East commissioner and co-chair of a working group tackling the name, image and likeness question, said Thursday.
Details about how boosters will be regulated to ensure payments are not being made as a recruiting inducement will still have to be worked out before the rules take effect, Ackerman said.
“This is one of the most pressing problems we have and will require intense focus,” Ackerman said.
The Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics had already come out in favor of the NCAA allowing athletes to profit off endorsements.
“It’s good to see the NCAA advancing principles similar to those proposed earlier this month by the Knight Commission’s experts of college presidents and athletes,” Knight Commission head Amy Perko said in an emailed statement. “This is the start of a new era for college sports — one that provides even greater opportunity to college athletes than ever before. Athletes will learn that with opportunity comes responsibility, bringing yet another important educational experience.”
While voting on this change, the NCAA also wants Congress to make a blanket national law to cover endorsement rules for college athletes that will bring uniformity for all schools.
The areas the NCAA asked Congress to address include:
— Ensuring federal preemption over state name, image and likeness laws.
— Establishing a “safe harbor” for the NCAA to provide protection against lawsuits filed for — name, image and likeness rules.
— Safeguarding the nonemployment status of student-athletes.
— Maintaining the distinction between college athletes and professional athletes.
— Upholding the NCAA’s values, including diversity, inclusion and gender equity.
“The evolving legal and legislative landscape around these issues not only could undermine college sports as a part of higher education but also significantly limit the NCAA’s ability to meet the needs of college athletes moving forward,” Drake said in a statement. “We must continue to engage with Congress in order to secure the appropriate legal and legislative framework to modernize our rules around name, image and likeness. We will do so in a way that underscores the Association’s mission to oversee and protect college athletics and college athletes on a national scale.”
Walker said argued that Congressional involvement isn’t a necessity.
“While congressional focus was paramount to getting here,” Walker said, “the working group’s final report has some reason for pause at the implied request for the NCAA to have anti-trust exemptions. The NCAA has spent decades using their lawyers to keep young men and women from receiving basic constitutional rights, even as they grew to a billion-dollar-a-year organization. I am sure those same lawyers can help them navigate this action without congressional intervention.”
Staff writer Brian Murphy contributed to this article
This story was originally published April 29, 2020 at 9:43 AM.