A New Age Opens For College Athletes

July 1, 2021 3:05 PM

July 1st, 2021 marks a sea change in college athletics, as the NCAA functionally removes their regulations on the exploitation of name, image, and likeness (NIL) rights, allowing players to finally make money on their own image without risking their eligibility.

The push for allowing college athletes to exploit their NIL rights started with the O'Bannon case, where it was found that the NCAA was illegally forcing students to surrender their NIL rights. The movement picked up momentum when California passed the first law explicitly protecting athletes' NIL rights. While California's law currently doesn't take effect until 2023, its passage caused other states to pass their own NIL laws, and several - such as Florida and Pennsylvania - set them to be effective 7/1/21. The NCAA in response tried to push Congress to enact a federal NIL law to supercede state laws, but the current state of the body has blocked such a bill.

The NCAA also had planned on instituting restrictive NIL rules in place to cover athletes in states with no active NIL laws, until the Supreme Court's unanimous ruling in Alston stripped away the "exemption" the NCAA had been claiming from Board of Regents, exposing them to significant liability if they proceeded with the proposed rules. As a result, the NCAA instead has effectively gutted the portion of their rules governing NIL rights, leaving matters to either the states or individual schools.

The response has been quick, as many athletes had been preparing for today for some time, and there has been a flurry of deals being signed all over, by all sorts of athletes in different sports.

posted by NoxAeternum (9 comments total)

My alma mater, Louisiana State University, already has a professionally produced hype video featuring many famous alumni all over social media. I support this because I'm tired of all the under-the-table shenanigans and above-the-line nonsense. It was somehow ethically OK for LSU to sell a Joe Burrow replica jersey for $120 on the strength of his performance, but he couldn't take a sandwich from a booster? Ridiculous. I can tell you that there are going to be some hilarious disasters come out of all this, though, the Southeastern Conference being what it is. Geaux Tigers?
posted by wintermind at 3:31 PM on July 1, 2021 [4 favorites]

I have started to wonder whether the NCAA plus big state schools could be a way to effectively nationalize big ticket sports.

Just totally separate the athletics from the education and you’ve got a product that is way more competitive to the NFL than the XFL ever was…
posted by The Ted at 7:11 PM on July 1, 2021 [2 favorites]

wintermind: LSU aired a video in Times Square outright showing that they are using NIL flexibility to recruit.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:48 PM on July 1, 2021

Coach O wants another trophy, and a new era is dawning in Tigers baseball, so Times Square it is! That "NILSU" thing is crass, for sure, but LSU is on TV a lot and that's going to make some kids rich. (Imagine what Tyrann Mathieu's haul would have been after he beat Oregon almost single-handedly...) I'm really curious, though, how our amazing women's gymnasts are going to make out. They're fantastic year after year after year and the team is well-known in Baton Rouge. I hope they get a share.

I think that a lot of casual fans don't really know just how money was already flowing through the dark economy of college athletics. This SB Nation article by Steven Godfrey about Mississippi football is just one example of how the NCAA's rules are more about the NCAA's business model than the needs or welfare of college athletics. As usual, follow the money. The thing about all of this that most makes me hate the NCAA with the fury of a thousand suns is that I found myself in agreement with alleged rapist Bret Kavanaugh, of all people, about the ridiculousness of the NCAA's claims. Amazing.
posted by wintermind at 5:38 AM on July 2, 2021 [2 favorites]

You mention the LSU women’s gymnastics team. And - Olivia Dunne is someone who experts say may get more than anyone via NIL. Not only is she really good in the gymnastics field, she also has over 5 million followers on social media. Obviously visibility between the lines is a big deal, but there’s a lot more than that which factors into who is getting NIL deals. There’s a lot of athletes in the less visible sports, and even at smaller, lower division schools, who are going to be able to get money they weren’t before. NIL deals aren’t always - or even often - be life changing money, but it’s money that a lot of these players should have been allowed to earn a long time ago. Imagine the softball player being able to run a camp, or the track star getting an endorsement deal with the local running shoe shop, or any of a number of niche things. There’s a lot more there than “big football star gets a huge ad contract.”
posted by azpenguin at 7:20 AM on July 2, 2021 [5 favorites]

As an Ole Miss bag man, I can finally come out of the shadows and pay my recruits like god intended, funneled through a shady business venture.

Seriously, this is going to be good. Players were already getting paid, now its above the board. No more sacks of cash. NCAA can go suck an egg.
posted by GreatValhalla at 8:53 AM on July 2, 2021 [1 favorite]

One of the bigger stories that came out of this in my opinion was Marshall OL Will Ulmer being able to perform at local bars under his own name. The fact that he had been unable to do so prior just showed how utterly shit the NCAA rules were.
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:11 AM on July 2, 2021 [1 favorite]

azpenguin, yes, I agree 100%. The notion of the star QB or running making a million dollars is overshadowing the discussion a little.
posted by wintermind at 5:13 PM on July 2, 2021

Is too much to hope that this is a first step in the professionalization of this level of athletics and the big leagues finally have to step up and run their own feeder leagues instead of shifting the costs and burden to colleges?

If athletes can profit from their image and, likely, eventually get paid for their time, why are they do they need to be enrolled in an academic institution?
Just let them play minor league professional sport and have done with it.
posted by madajb at 11:52 PM on July 2, 2021