In 2019, college football and basketball coaches were categorized as the highest-paid public employees in 40 states (Hruby, 2020). According to USA Today, Nick Saban, Ed Orgeron and Dabo Swinney are the three highest paid coaches in college football. Together, their earning top 26.5 million dollars.
Up until July 1, 2021, the student-athletes who are physically doing the hard work, were not allowed to earn compensation on their own name, image and likeness.
The ruling went back-and-forth between the federal government, individual state’s governments and the NCAA. Not to mention, the fans who have no stake in the game whatsoever, had plenty to say.
There has been a very distinct split of people for and against this new name, image and likeness ruling. Despite coaches getting paid the big bucks, student-athletes did not get a chance to receive anything more than the value of their scholarships and a little cost-of-living change (Hruby, 2020).
One side says…student-athletes are already spoiled and don’t deserve to make more. They don’t recognize the worth of their scholarships.
On the other hand, there are those who agree with Pulitzer-Prize winning civil rights historian Taylor Branch who argued that NCAA amateurism was vastly unjust.
“…a bill attainder, stripping from college athletes the rights of American citizenship.” -Taylor Brand in “The Shame of College Sports” from The Atlantic
Over the course of 15 years, the collegiate sport industry’s revenue rose from $4 billion to $14 billion, and in the end, student-athletes don’t benefit from the earnings at all (Hruby, 2020). Brand explains in his 2011 story for The Atlantic that, yes, student-athletes are taking money and benefits under the table, but the real scandal is within the structure of NCAA amateurism and college sports in general.
“…a bill attainder, stripping from college athletes the rights of American citizenship.” -Taylor Brand in “The Shame of College Sports” from The Atlantic
Breaking down the revenue generated from the Southeastern Conference (SEC), which was the first conference to crack a billion-dollar earning mark in 2010, you have numerous aspects of a gameday experience that bring in wheelbarrows of money. The money conferences earn together come from concession sales, ticket sales, merchandise, licensing fees and other sources. The bulk comes from television contracts (Brand, 2011).
Outrage comes when schools and student-athletes are found to have violated NCAA rules. The institutions lose Bowl and post-season eligibly, student-athletes can lose out on their future seasons and a dark cloud of shame is posted over those institutions for years to come.
“For all the outrage, the real scandal is not that students are getting illegally paid or recruited.” Branch said. “It’s that two of the noble principles on which the NCAA justifies its existence—“amateurism” and the “student-athlete”—are cynical hoaxes, legalistic confections propagated by the universities so they can exploit the skills and fame of young athletes.”
-Taylor Branch, The Atlantic
On June 4, 2020, I sat down (virtually, of course) to talk to a few student-athletes of whom I work with every day in a normal week at Quinnipiac. They were all female and all play on the same team. I was curious to know what they already knew about the name, image and likeness rules and how I could take the information they gave me to apply it to my NCAA NIL Student-Athlete Toolkit.
A few things I discovered:
-The student-athletes knew the basics of what exactly name, image and likeness means.
-They knew the very basics of the old name, image and likeness rules. If approached by an outside party/sponsor about promoting a brand, they all knew to double-check with myself or our compliance office before taking any action. They knew they were not allowed to post anything on social media that promoted a brand that was not Quinnipiac.
-One student-athlete brought up California being the first state to bring up legislation about student-athletes being able to compensate off their NIL before the NCAA.
-When asked if they would be open to taking advantage of opportunities that may come to them in a year, they said they would be open but “wouldn’t go out looking for them” and “would not want the added distraction during competition season”.
-They did not know about the new rule about institutions not being allowed to be involved in these new opportunities.
-They mentioned that they don’t follow the NCAA on social media, and they normally get the new information from teammates or coaches.
From the information I gathered, I created the Table of Contents for the Toolkit:
Section 1: What is Name, Image and Likeness?
This section will explain the basics of what NIL is and how it pertains to student-athletes.
Section 2: Old Ways: What Were the Rules?
Section 2 will briefly explain what the old rules were, and how the new legislation came to fruition, including the California law.
Section 3: What Are the New Rules?
This section will be two pages (leaving room for the new rules that are added down the line) and will explain in easy-to-understand language what the new rules entail.
Section 4: What Does the Timeline Look Like?
This section will explain the voting timeline and when student-athletes would actually be able to being compensating off their NIL.
Section 5: What Opportunities Do I Have?
Section 5 will give examples for student-athletes to think about how they could profit off their NIL. From Instagram posts to signing autographs, there are many different ways student-athletes can earn money.
Section 6: What Will These Opportunities Involve?
How exactly will student-athletes make relationships, money and how will they deal with contracts? Will they need third parties’ involvement? This section will go into what is needed to make an opportunity happen.
Section 7: Differences for Male and Female Athletes?
There is no difference in the rulings for male and female student-athletes. But, this section can help female athletes understand the opportunities they have due to not having the same professional career opportunities that male student-athletes have after school.
Section 8: How Much Money Could I Realistically Make?
This section breaks down a chart from FiveThirtyEight that explains how much money student-athletes could potentially make based on their school, sport and following.
There is a lot of information to break down, but after hearing what student-athletes had to say about this ruling, I think it is essential to make the language easy to read. Breaking down the rules and the timeline will help student-athletes learn what is possible for them.
During this week of organization, I also created a Production Journal on Adobe InDesign. The Production Journal acts like a check list for each week in the remaining four weeks of the class.
MAGGIE PRUITT 