May 29, 2020 · 1:10 PM

P5 power play

Well, now… this is interesting.

After stalling all this time through the antitrust litigation and sitting back watching state legislatures react, now, suddenly, time is of the essence.  Right.  It’s not exactly a vote of confidence in the NCAA getting the job done.  (And wouldn’t you love to hear the conversation when the P5 commissioners speak with Emmert about this?)

Here’s their shopping list:

Screenshot_2020-05-29 Brett McMurphy on Twitter In 3-page letter, obtained by Stadium, Power 5 league commissioners ask Con[...]

Some of this is fairly anodyne.  Some of this has the potential to be troubling — “prohibiting the use of NIL as an inducement to enroll or remain enrolled” sounds like a worthwhile goal, but prohibiting how, exactly?  If we’re talking about criminalizing the NCAA rule book, that’s a cure that could be worse than the disease.

But the real wants are two:  “Prohibit Pay-For-Play” is an attempt to make it illegal for schools to compensate college athletes directly, while “Provide Safe Harbor” is an antitrust exemption for doing so.  All that in return for allowing less than what the emerging state laws would permit.  Such a deal, in other words.

Based on their public comments, I can’t imagine there are too many members of Congress that are ready to jump on an offer like that.  On the other hand, the chance to bypass Mark Emmert might be tempting.  It’ll be interesting to see if this has any legs.

2 Comments

Filed under Political Wankery, The NCAA

2 responses to “P5 power play”

  1. Dylan Dreyer's Booty
    May 29, 2020 at 2:09 PM

    Precisely what the terms should be is clearly a problem, and Congress doesn’t have a great track record in actually solving problems. But I do think that a mix of a variety of state laws is likely to be a real nightmare. To me, that is what makes ‘time of the essence’.

    It says a lot about the leadership abilities of Emmert and the NCAA that the commissioners have more confidence in Congress, in this political climate, than it has in the NCAA.

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    • Senator Blutarsky
      May 29, 2020 at 2:14 PM

      But I do think that a mix of a variety of state laws is likely to be a real nightmare.

      Two things: One, the NCAA and its member schools deal with a variety of state laws on a number of things — the coronavirus, most recently — and manage to handle that just fine. Two, if it’s really that big a deal, somebody can draft a uniform law that can be adopted on a state by state basis. Nightmare solved!

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