One reason the NCAA is faring so poorly right now in the face of numerous state legislatures moving to protect college athletes’ NIL rights is because amateurism is a tougher sell when you’re not talking about putting them on a straight salary paid by the schools. I mean, how convincing is yelling “student-athlete!” at the top of your lungs when this is the argument the other side is making?
“At first we got crushed. They beat us in every avenue and we kind of anticipated that,” said Walker, the North Carolina congressman. “But with some of these states taking a look at it, we’ve been able to push back a little bit on what the truth of this legislation is and we believe it’s starting to shift to our side with people saying, ‘Yeah, a 20 year old male or female busted their rear end 40 hours a week on a volleyball court or gymnasium or football field and to tell them they have no access to their name, image or likeness isn’t right.’ Look, Nike isn’t coming in and signing 450,000 college athletes but somewhere the backup quarterback at some university can go back home and pick up 100 bucks for an appearance fee at a restaurant or a car wash or whatever, that individual should have access to be able to do so and not be the only people in this country that are banned from having that access.”
Sadly, I feel pretty sure the NCAA won’t be able to come up with an effective answer until it gets its ass kicked a few more times in the political arena.
Get The Picture 
When the highest paid employees of a university are the head FB coach, head men’s basketball coach, offensive coordinator and defensive coordinator and the NCAA’S message is that athletics are just a part of the educational experience, it is going to lose the message war.
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Sen. Blutarsky, your relentless obsession has paid off – you won. Give it a rest dude.
Now you and your comrades should be working day and night figuring out how this “right” will be implemented, so it doesn’t negatively impact other sports and the institutions giving these student athletes these opportunities.
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Seriously, how hard would it be for you to simply skip over these posts? Every single one of your comments on this topic is a complete waste of bandwidth.
By the way, it’s the NCAA that should be working day and night on what you suggest, not me.
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Amen
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What it will do is eliminate the $100 handshake and under the table $$. The current system actually makes young men criminals in the eyes of those in power.
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Seriously, how hard is it for you to label your posts? If it involves a NCAA rant, just title it “NCAA Rant XXXVII or Social Justice Warrior High Horse Rant XXVI”. Every single one of your obsessive posts about the NCAA and Pay for Play is a waste of cloud storage space and clogs bandwidth for more important topics.
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Nice try. 😉
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As your therapist I’m doing the best I can to help you! 😉
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I need all the help I can get. 😉
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Since when should economic freedom not be considered a right? Crony capitalism is killing the goose that laid the golden egg. It is way past time for the government to start enforcing our anti-trust laws, and to do so against more than just the NCAA.
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“Economic freedom”… hmmm so that’s how you social justice warriors are couching it these days. LOL!!! Everything is a “right” with you people. How about my right not to have you jam your ill-advised, naive, unimplementable, cost prohibitive and utterly ridiculous proposals on society. FWIW, you’re incorrectly using the term ‘crony capitalism’, which indicates you’re a Snowflake and product of our hideously inadequate education system.
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You’re just fucking with us, right?
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Serious question – how will this “negatively impact” college sports?
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In all of this back and forth, you haven’t presented a single cogent argument to support your point of view.
Marketing of NIL … aka the Olympic model … won’t cost the revered members of the NCAA one dime, impact Title IX, or given a student-athlete anything that any other student on campus doesn’t already have.
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In fairness, he’s been consistent about not wanting to pay the players, period. I can respect his POV there, while trashing his mischaracterizations of the other side’s position.
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You know I’m not a supporter of a full pay-for-play model. I don’t want student-athletes to become employees of the university, but I understand the arguments of those that do. I do think the Olympic model is an excellent middle ground that benefits the student-athlete while still keeping the universities somewhat in the education business (I know, I know).
The romanticism of the amateur and the name on the front of the jersey is what counts was lost in realignment, the chase for cash, the overpaid coaches, the $10,000 lockers, the $30,000,000 indoor practice facilities, etc.
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So does this mean there will be no more picture day? Or will there be an admission fee? Or will fans just right a check directly to their favorite player?
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Appearance at a fan picture day would be required as part of the scholarship, but it wouldn’t preclude the same player from accepting an invitation to make an appearance at a sports memorabilia store to sign autographs for cash.
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Should be write a check obviously.
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The Blackshear Spot Free Shine and Rinse just paged the mailman.
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I grew up in Blackshear, proud to see it represented here on the blog.
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Not many would reasonably object to someone getting paid $100 for an appearance fee. That’s the hypothetical for those in favor of the proposal.
What about some booster business owner for a promise to pay $250,000 for an appearance fee for a football/basketball recruit when there is no real financial benefit for the booster’s business? That’s they NCAA’s hypothetical.
Do any of these legislative proposals address any negative scenarios or do they just say that an athlete can benefit without restriction?
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Your last sentence is why the NCAA should be negotiating with legislators right now instead of doing its usual thing.
By the way, instead of asking about something you’re concerned with, why not take the time to read the law and the bills themselves to find out?
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One more thing, Bill — how many boosters can routinely afford to shell out a quarter of a million dollars to recruits on a regular basis?
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Prolly not many, but I bet there are more than a few who could shell out 5-10K every time they want to.
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Let ’em.
The funny thing about this discussion is the wilful abandonment by some of seeing the sausage made. If you don’t think those kinds of payments aren’t already a standard part of the college landscape, I’ve still got that oceanfront property in Hahira I can let you have at a good price.
It’s not the money that upsets some; it’s knowing about the money that does.
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I’d prefer to see the sausage made. At least then we can hopefully see the pros and cons of the actual policy, instead of the histrionics from virtue signallers on both sides.
I agree that its a corrupt system spoiled by money, but is the right solution to flood more money into it and take all the power away from the governing body? It seems like it may be better to allow some $100 scenario reform, but strengthen/reform the watchdog at the same time.
You can take a bad situation and make it a lot worse. When you don’t want to consider downsides, you get proposals like the Green New Deal and “Build the Wall and Have Mexico Pay for it”.
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When the governing body is breaking the law? Yes.
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You think 10K payments to athletes are already a standard part of the college landscape? What makes you think that?
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Have you missed the FBI deep dive into shoe payments? That’s just for the high profile kids.
How about the BS in Mississippi?
It’s not like I haven’t posted about stuff here before.
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Adidas corruption not a “standard part of the college landscape” and the individuals involved face charges of wire fraud and conspiracy.
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And you know this how, exactly?
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If said booster pays the appropriate gift tax or player pays the income taxes due, what difference does it make?
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That booster is funneling his cash to the Texas AD right now to build $10,000 lockers in hopes of influencing multiple recruits. The UT swim team gets zero benefit. So your problem is the money going to just one athlete?? Trust me, that booster will spread the money around again to hedge his bet with several star athletes. So your beef is it won’t benefit the entire football team? Doesn’t having a handful of star recruits create a winning and thus better team environment? Won’t the AD then be able to leverage that for more donations to build…IDK…fancier locker rooms? These absurd economic hypotheticals some of you throw out there are truly ridiculous. Let’s stick to what we know has happened…Gurley and Green tried to earn some walking around money and got burned. Doesn’t seem like boosters want to throw millions around to individual players. That money is still going to be better leveraged by funneling into facilities that benefit the many instead of the few. Star athletes will just earn some “sweetener” deals above board and likely proportional to their value in the market. The NCAA is absolutely in a position to get off their asses and put guidelines around this train before it leaves the station, but seem incapable of grasping the economics of this any better than some of you.
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I’m fine with the NCAA putting guidelines around this train. I see nothing wrong with a system modeled after the NAIA’s, which states in part:
“A student may receive compensation for working for summer camps, recreation programs, municipal centers and private clubs, but the student must be paid a reasonable wage and only paid for the time the student has worked.
A student may receive compensation for coaching an amateur, recreational or interscholastic level team as long as their wage is reasonable.
A student may receive compensation for the use of their name or picture to promote a commercial product or enterprise as long as there is no reference to the student’s intercollegiate athletic participation, institution’s logo, name, or marks. Finally, the student must receive the same wage amount as anybody else being used for this type of promotion.”
All that sounds reasonable to me, but I don’t think it would satisfy the totally-free-and-open-marketeers among us.
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As long as both sides freely enter into an agreement, I’m cool. My problem is with the NCAA illegally fixing the labor market.
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Well I’ve always been your quintessential amateurism romantic, but if the kids could make some bucks off third parties through NIL, then maybe it could be done without disrupting the amateurism model. You would need 2 safeguards though:
1. No use of the schools name, uniform or logo while earning NIL money.
2. All earnings must be bonafide. No boosters using NIL to funnel money to athletes without a legitimate commercial purpose. Will be hard to enforce, but not much harder than it is now.
What this should not become, however, is a slippery slope leading to full professionalism, with salary disputes, a union, and an NFL-like quality to the game. I don’t watch the NFL. I don’t like it. It seems soulless to me. Hopefully NIL can be a compromise that will satisfy all parties.
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Problem you’re going to have with your slippery slope is how to efficiently address across-the-board payments, like NCAA 2020. Who negotiates for the college athletes?
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Jimmy Sexton, I hope. BOHICA NCAA
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College FB coach to 5-star recruit, 2019: Come to our school, you’ll be a great fit in our system, we’ve got new $60 million invested in new facilities with more on the way, we’ve got 34 former players in the NFL right now.
College FB coach, 2023: Come to our school, Bubba at Bubba’s Barbeque Barn will give you $10K just to be in his radio commercials.
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More likely coach in 2023 is saying all the same things the 2019 coach is saying but just adds in the booster network for images fees.
You are still going to need a DJ booth, 10k locker, and 60million in facilities. This isnt going to change that.
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Bingo.
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I just read the California bill. It’s a blanket allowance for athletes to profit and prohibits NCAA sanction for doing so.
The point about the NCAA negotiating with 50 legislatures is unrealisitic. Ignoring that the NCAA is not set up to negotiate with 1000s of legislators in 50 states, even if it did, how is it going to reach the exact same terms with every legislature, especially if these legislatures presume that the NCAA dosen’t have any authority to even govern the issue? If the NCAA can’t restrict athletes rights as a matter of law under the CA statute, then it can’t modify its bylaws to allow some allowance for the $100 scenario.
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There are exceptions and limitations in the Cali law. It’s not a “blanket allowance”.
The “50 states” thing is one of my favorite objections — as if the NCAA doesn’t already operate just fine in that environment on a number of other fronts. Not to mention that not all 50 states have such bills on the books… or that Congress is looking at a national approach. But you keep on fretting.
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What are the exceptions? The California legislature clearly says that the NCAA has no authority to limit compensation, to wit:
“The bill also would prohibit an athletic association, conference, or other group or organization with authority over intercollegiate athletics from preventing a postsecondary educational institution other than a community college from participating in intercollegiate athletics as a result of the compensation of a student athlete for the use of the student’s name, image, or likeness.”
How is the NCAA supposed to negotiate with the legislatures that deny the NCAA has any power or authority over the issue?
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Off the top of my head, one I know of is that if a school has a contract with an apparel company, an athlete can’t negotiate a deal with another one.
Your last question is really stupid, by the way. The Cali law isn’t designed to go into effect until 2023 and the bill’s author and the governor have said several times they hope the NCAA works with them to craft a solution both sides can deal with.
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Maybe the Georgia legislature should bypass this middle-man rule making and declare no institution or conference shall declare a national champion other than UGA. That might get some folks to the negotiating table.. 🙂
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ESPN tried that with Alabama, Clemson and LSU still kicked their asses. Row Tahd!
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Pass a law that’s “so important” it won’t go into effect for … 4 years! As a “prelude” to negotiations. Next everyone will be surprised when men with guns enforce that law, and put people who break it in jail!
If it is so “right” that the athletes get paid, why isn’t it “right” that they be paid now??? More politicians interested in making it seem like they are “doing something” or creating “their brand”, than fixing a “problem.”
Nope, this method of “making law” doesn’t resemble a banana republic at all….
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Apparently Florida agrees with you. That legislation is scheduled to go into effect in 2020.
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I don’t really GAS if Florida “agrees” with me or not, but I believe you are incorrect – my understanding is that there isn’t an actual law in Florida yet, only a proposed bill…. Nice pivot/dodge though!
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Didn’t call it “an actual law”.
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The high-profile skilled players will make tons of money on the backs of the lesser lights (rest of the team) who make it all possible. When the dollars start flowing, there will be an “I” in “team.” The only fair way this will work is if the money is pooled. How about 25% to the earning player, 50% into a team pool and 25% to the school?
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