When Colorado athletic director Rick George was named to the NCAA’s working group to explore the possibility of student-athletes profiting on their name, image and likeness, he figured the assignment would last four months.
About a year later, the 18-member working group submitted its recommendations, and on Wednesday, the NCAA board of governors supported those recommendations.
While plenty of work still needs to be done to clarify how name, image and likeness (NIL) changes will be made, this week was a major step for the NCAA, which has long opposed NIL compensation for athletes.
“I’m excited that they have the ability to monetize their name, image and likeness and glad that I was a part of it,” George said Thursday during a conference call with media. “It was a privilege to serve on that committee.
“I was excited to see the board of governors accept the report and that we’re able to keep moving forward with recommendations and guidelines.”
The NCAA formed the working group in response to pressure from several states that have proposed legislation allowing NIL compensation for student-athletes. California and Colorado have already passed bills, while several other states are in the process.
To avoid each state having different NIL laws, the NCAA is asking the U.S. Congress to step in and enact federal law to override the state laws. The NCAA developing its own framework for NIL rules was considered vital for getting Congress involved.
“When we signed up for that, it was going to be four months and it turned into a year, but I think to make that presentation was important,” George said.
“There’s still a lot of work to be done by the divisions and conferences to draft legislation and flesh out the details of those recommendations, but it was great to work on that. We’ve got the guiding principles, we’ve got the framework and now we’ve got to put a lot of work in ensuring that name, image and likeness is a positive for our student-athletes.”
The basic framework of the working group’s report is that student-athletes will be allowed to profit from endorsements, social media, autograph signings, etc. Student-athletes would be allowed to use an agent to help them in those endeavors, but the NCAA, conferences and schools would not be involved in facilitating those opportunities.
The governing bodies of Division I, Division II and Division III have until Oct. 31 to finalize NIL legislation proposals. A vote on the proposals would take place in January, with an eye toward putting new rules into effect for the 2021-22 school year.
While schools won’t be involved in helping athletes obtain endorsement opportunities, Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith, the co-chair of the working group, said the NCAA wants to include “guardrails” to make sure the compensation is fair market value. The NCAA is hoping to avoid situations where big-money boosters lure recruits to certain schools with promises of lucrative endorsement deals.
For each school, that will mean some extra work by the compliance department – and possibly even adding staff members simply to handle NIL issues.
With much work to be done on the NIL issue, George said CU is still developing a plan for handling NIL with its student-athletes.
“Certainly our compliance office will have some additional work to do, but we’re trying to flesh out what that framework looks like, what the guardrails are,” he said. “I would certainly think that there will be more work to do from a compliance standpoint, an enforcement standpoint and also an education standpoint. We’ve got great leadership and career development, so we can do a good job of educating our student athletes on their brand and what that means for them and opportunities that they may have. There will be some addition work; we know that.”