“There’s a clock ticking.”

On the eve of the NCAA board of governors adopting recommendations from an NIL working group, this deep dive into where things stand on the political front is a must read, if you’re interested.

If all you want is the tl;dr version, well, let’s just say that if this really is the current framing of things, the NCAA has royally screwed the pooch.

Sports Illustrated met with more than a dozen members of Congress this spring, many of them the primary drivers of this issue on Capitol Hill. While consensus is rare in Congress, legislators agree that sweeping athlete compensation reform is necessary. The debate in D.C. is two-pronged: (1) what a new athlete compensation framework should look like and (2) who should have control in formalizing such a system, the NCAA or Congress? In short, the future of athlete pay is in the controls of two of the most unpopular entities in the nation. [Emphasis added.]

Even more so, when you add in this:

Rep. Donna Shalala (D., Fla.) might have the most experience with the issue. Shalala was president at two major universities, Wisconsin and Miami. She has received a great deal of questions from Republican lawmakers who are SEC fans. While they want to be helpful, she says, they are both wary and ill-informed on NCAA matters. They agree, however, on one thing. “They have nothing but negative feelings about the NCAA,” she says.

Who says bipartisanship is dead?

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