LEXINGTON, Ky. — It may not be long before you’re driving on New Circle Road and see a billboard featuring the Kentucky quarterback imploring you to buy a car from a local dealer.
It may not be long before you see the UK starting point guard on the basketball team featured in a television commercial for a local insurance company. Or a bank. Or a retail store.
We are one step closer to that reality now that the NCAA’s Board of Governors announced Wednesday it supports “rule changes to allow student-athletes to receive compensation for third-party endorsements both related to and separate from athletics.”
Yes, players will be paid. Not by the schools, mind you. Instead, they will be compensated for their name, image and likeness by business interests outside the school as well as, according to the press release, “social media business they have started and personal appearances.”
Is it the right thing to do? Absolutely. And let’s make one thing clear: The NCAA did not willingly do the right thing, it got pushed into doing the right thing.
State legislators put the ball into play, proposing and passing laws that would allow student-athletes to enjoy income opportunities off their name, image and likeness, just like the rest of us. The NCAA responded by lobbying Congress for help. Failing to find relief there, the NCAA was forced to take its medicine.
Per usual, bureaucratic wheels turned slowly. A working group/committee was formed. Per usual, the working group/committee took its sweet time making recommendations. Wednesday morning, the group finally released its conclusions, which will be fine-tuned in the fall, presented for a vote of the membership in January, then placed into practice for the 2021-22 school year.
There are guidelines. Of course, there are guidelines. For example, athletes cannot use conference and school logos or trademarks in endorsements. Athletes won’t be allow to pitch for alcohol or tobacco companies. Athletes won’t be allowed to accept money for anything other than their name, image and likeness and payments must be reasonable.
What’s reasonable? How will that be determined? And who will keep track of that? That’s the messy part. And there will be plenty of messy parts, from implementation, to oversight to what effect this will have on the college landscape. Or, more accurately, the professional sports at the college level landscape.
It also comes at an interesting time, especially for college football. We are in the middle of a coronavirus pandemic that has crippled economic activity and called into question the viability of a 2020 season. Already feeling the financial effects of spring cancellations, no football in the fall would be devastating to most athletic programs.
As for college basketball, the NBA has convinced three top prep prospects (Jalen Green, Isaiah Todd and Daishen Nix) to skip the college game in favor of the G League’s pathway program. It’s a pathway program that pays. Value of the contracts: up to $500,000. Chances are this is a path that will attract more prospects.
That’s not to say the G League will kill college basketball, but it doesn’t help. Allowing athletes to earn money on the side for endorsements, etc., might not compete with a $500,000 contract, but it doesn’t hurt.
Plus, it’s the right thing to do. The world has changed. College athletics is corporate business. Coaches make millions. Schools make millions. It was past time for the athletes involved to get what they were worth on the market, as well, besides just the cost of a scholarship.
The Olympic model works. To retain the viability of amateurism, athletes aren’t paid for being athletes, but neither are they restricted from earning outside income for being recognizable athletes. “Modernize” is the word the NCAA used in its press release.
Modern is not the approach we associate with the NCAA. Having been pushed, however, it is reluctantly headed in the right direction. And who knows, it might just get where it needs to be.
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