Legislation introduced to address name, image, likeness in College Sports
Legislative push to force the NCAA's hand to get something done to allow athletes to profit off of their likeliness.
It is sad that the NCAA can't do the right thing on their own and it takes Marco Rubio to try and force their hand with a bill.
And it's Marco Rubio so he'll probably fuck it up like he did the ACA
We need a Mod Stalin that sends any political shit stirrer to the mgogulag.
Or just make Vlad a mod.
You changed your pic! What’s the 25 for? Did you just have a birthday?
If you read the article at the link you would realize the legislation came from a bipartisan committee, but why bother with facts.
Sorry double post
I'm surprised the player's haven't used their leverage to push the NCAA to do the right thing. We've seen Missouri threaten to sit out and the school fired the president. Ok. St. and Texas players expressed a willingness to sit out last week. Albeit for non-monetary issues.
I'd bet dollars to donuts that the NCAA would reach down into their pockets and find a little bit of change and pocket lint if the players essentially went on strike.
The Ohio state players wouldn’t threaten to sit out because they are already making bank ?
But they have the Buckeye Pledge...
This is a turd of a bill designed to let the NCAA do the bare minimum and still be in complete control of the players getting money. From the article:
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Under the bill, the NCAA would have the latitude to make rules “as are deemed necessary” to:
►“preserve the amateur status of student athletes.”
►“ensure appropriate recruitment of prospective student athletes”
►“prevent illegitimate activity with respect to any third party seeking to recruit or retain student athletes … including any third party” that has “a prior or existing association, either formally or informally” with a school or that has “a prior or existing financial involvement with respect to” college sports.
It also includes a legal provision that you can't sue the NCAA for any rules they make, and surprise surprise, the NCAA has come out in strong support of this bill.
So basically, fuck the NCAA and fuck this bill.
I guess I don’t share your angst.
Going point by point, the first one would confirm an athlete can’t enter into an employment agreement with the college they attend. In my opinion, this is probably for the best based upon the current landscape. I’m not going to belabor Title IX but there’s absolutely no way for an athlete to enter into an agreement for employment with a college for them getting paid fair market value that doesn’t trigger 3,654 Title IX lawsuits. Seth and I had a little bit back and forth about this on the last article he wrote on athlete compensation - he thinks Title IX concessions to address this issue are on the horizon, I disagree. However, that’s an entirely separate issue.
Number 2 and 3 is simply to address dark money trading hands and to make sure everything is above the table. I don’t see what the big deal about that is. I do find it a bit odd ‘boosters’ wouldn’t be able to orchestrate endorsements but I don’t see that as a huge problem either.
Just my two cents.
For your first point, none of the other State Legislative bills have brought up employment with colleges, so I'm not sure why you're bringing up employment and Title IX?
But more broadly speaking, I have a problem with the NCAA still trying to hold onto this super broad idea of amateurism, where college players are just playing for love of the game. If they really believed that, they'd go back to banning athletic scholarships like they originally did in the very beginning. They're fighting so hard for it because they're a billion dollar organization, and don't want to take a chance at having to share that money.
For your comment about "dark money", and keeping it all "above the table", those are just NCAA terms because of rules they've put in place. The various state legislative bills take care of this problem by just getting rid of these rules. If Zingerman's want to sponsor some 5 star lineman to come to Michigan, then let them. Keeping it above the table should be making sure your taxes are filed correctly, not whether the NCAA likes it or not.
For point 3, and regarding boosters, did you attend Michigan? Ever buy season tickets? Ever buy single game tickets from the athletic office? Did your company sponsor an event the Athletic Department hosted? Are you a member of the alumni association? All of these things, and more, make you an official booster of the University in the eyes of the NCAA, and under this legislation, makes you illegitimate. And I think that's ridiculous, and it's just the NCAA putting arbitrary limits on things that don't need limits.
Okay, can you help me understand how the NCAA / colleges can declare the athletes are no longer ‘amateurs’ without them becoming paid employees of one of the two organizations? I’m assuming you’re not a volunteer worker for your company and they compensate you for it - I would have to imagine it would be the same with athletes, right?
Man, you are arguing against points that I'm not even making.
But ok, I'll play along.
At my job, I have a contract, I do blank work for X amount of money. No I'm not a volunteer. And neither are athletes. In return for playing sports at the University, they get compensated in the form of tuition assistance, housing, books, etc. etc. There's an argument that they're not being compenstated enough, but that's not the discussion at hand. That discussion does involve Title IX....and is not the argument I'm talking about.
What the recent state legislations, and by extension this bill, are intending to address is the ban on athletes profiting off of their own image, aka "Name, Image, and Likeness". Because right now, the NCAA says, no you can't make money off of your name.
This rules applies to no other groups of students. If you're on a music scholarship, the University can't tell you to shut down your YouTube channel that has ads on it. They can't tell you to stop playing at the Blind Pig on weekends. A gifted CS student isn't being told he can't design websites in his freetime. Going with your job analogy, my employer can't stop me from doing freelance work off business hours.
None of these extras, whether it be a YouTube channel, or a local business endorsment, or freelance work (coaching), have anything to do with the original "contract" (the athletic scholarship), so there doesn't need to be a change in their "employment status", and there's absolutely no good reason to ban them.
Which is why 19 states (and counting) have either passed or introduced legislation to stop the NCAA from banning it. In comparison, this bill, is designed to let the NCAA keep power of the whole situation, when they have no reason to be involved.
That's why this bill is a turd
This would be the perfect time for football players to say fuck it, we’ll come back when you’re ready to give us some of the money.
Good luck keeping the lights on without them.
Is Marco Rubio an NCAA Football video game fan? Can someone nudge him into adding EA Sports friendly language into the proposal?
"When someone who is wrong A LOT makes a good point" would be a more appropriate title for this post, but otherwise I agree with Rubio and this bill. It's insane to me we're still having a discussion about rights in 2020.
EDIT: Nevermind, I just read a bit more of the bill and, yeah, it's dumb. I incorrectly assumed everything in the article was what it covered when, in fact, the language is the same type of mealy-mouthed non-binding BS that you see from these types of lawmakers. I'm glad that I can go back to disliking him for being consistently awful.
Listen, I’m all for letting players profit off their image and likeness but some posters here seems to be under this delusion that It’s some great solution. It fixes some problems but I promise you it’s also going to create problems elsewhere. There will be Title IX lawsuits. There will be people that try to game the system. There will be problems that none of us can even imagine.
You know, if the NCAA operates at say 80% of ideal overall effectiveness, it’s a lot easier to make sweeping changes that result in it operating at 50% effectiveness than it is to increase it to 85%. These are very difficult and complex issues to deal with and for anyone to act like they can boil a solution down to a few sentences while completely disregarding these complexities is just hubristic.
“You’re going to pay a price for every bloody thing you do and everything you don’t do. You don’t get to choose to not pay a price. You get to choose which poison you’re going to take. That’s it.”
I think the idea that letting players profit off their image and likeness will lead to Title IX lawsuits is a misconception. Titles IX applies to the treatment of women by universities (and other public institutions), essentially stating that women must be treated the same as men. As long as both men's and women's athletes are granted the ability the profit on their NIL there is no violation of Title IX.
So long as there are attorneys there will be lawsuits. Doesn’t mean they’ll win them but there will be those that bring them forward because there’s virtually no consequence of doing so.
So wait, your argument is that we shouldn't try to make the lives of college athletes better because of the threat of a lawsuit? By this logic, virtually no legislation should ever be passed because someone, somewhere will file a lawsuit challenging it.
Also, it's been shown numerous times that Title IX practices by HS and university athletic departments are not equal and yet few lawsuits are filed because of it. If you don't want athletes to be able to profit from their likeness just say that and stick to your guns; don't try to concern troll about how Title IX might be used in some nefarious way despite evidence it hasn't.
Yeah, I'm disappointed with his follow-up. My (admittedly un-expert) understanding is that Title IX has nothing to do with this, because the schools wouldn't be paying the athletes. If your local tattoo parlor owner wants to give large sums of money to football players, and the NCAA and the school are prohibited by law from doing anything about such a transaction, it's kinda hard to see how anyone can sue any interested parties here.
#1 I didn’t say student athletes shouldn’t be able to profit off their image and likeness. On the contrary, I explicitly stated that I’m on board that they should. I just said there will be other problems that arise because of it, which there assuredly will.
#2 I find your first sentence of, “So wait, your argument is that we shouldn't try to make the lives of college athletes better because of the threat of a lawsuit?” to be interesting. It’s an explicit example of what my original post criticizes. There is no reflection on any negative aspects of allowing this to occur. There’s only the implication that if someone doesn’t blindingly adhere to your thought process then they’re to be dismissed. In my opinion it’s an unsophisticated position to take. You do realize that there a real possibility that it could hurt them more than it helps in some way. I’m not saying it will but to not even entertain the possibility is a mistake.
I wish they would hurry so we can start spraying the money cannon.
The NCAA keeps harping on precluding boosters, and disassociating payment from what school the player plays for.
Yet the whole reason anyone wants to pay a player for NIL rights is directly related to the sport, position, and school. Keep the person the same and change sport to synchronized swimming, or position to water boy, or school to Central Hinterland Community College, and the value of NIL rights vanishes.
Anytime regulation tries to stop an action that would happen a lot in a free market, a black market appears for that aspect. Disallow people paying players to go to a particular school, and you have bag men.
That's how it is now. The NCAA seems intent on that not changing.
I pooped