Navigating NIL: What you should know about the NCAA’s hottest topic
What is the NCAA’s NIL policy and who does it impact?
INDIANAPOLIS (BVM) – If one is a fan of college athletics, it is likely that they’ve heard the argument of NCAA athletes being paid for their play while the NCAA held the strict belief that their student-athletes were amateurs and students first, thus, didn’t have to be paid for their performance. While this idea of paying college athletes for what they do in the field of play still holds true, the NCAA passed a landmark ruling on June 30, 2021, where college athletes could profit from their own name, image and likeness (NIL), using their own celebrity to garner profits and endorsements from companies and other third parties. Today, this interim policy by the NCAA has already changed the way colleges, businesses, student-athletes and fans view the collegiate sports industry. This article will look into the new NIL policy, its history, its intricacies and most importantly, its impact on the college sports world as a whole.
How it all began
When looking at the history of amateurism and the NCAA, there are two key moments in how the organization went from not having to pay its student-athletes anything to now adopting its interim NIL policy. The first is when former UCLA men’s basketball player Ed O’Bannon sued the NCAA for its use of O’Bannon’s name, image and likeness in its joint college basketball video game with Electronic Arts: “EA Sports NCAA Basketball” (formerly “NCAA March Madness”).
Back then, the NCAA had a defined rule of amateurism listed as, “someone who does not have a written or verbal agreement with an agent, has not profited above his/her actual and necessary expenses or gained a competitive advantage in his/her sport.”
The NCAA has changed its definition in recent years to match its current policies.
“For a really long time, that was the way the NCAA rules were set up because there’s always been this concern about pay-for-play and amateurism,” University of Illinois Athletics NIL Director Kameron Cox said.
O’Bannon alleged the NCAA used his name, image and likeness to promote its video game without his consent since there was a UCLA athlete in the game designed to look like him, wearing his name and number, and O’Bannon received no profit from the NCAA’s use of his NIL.
In 2009, O’Bannon took the case to court, arguing the NCAA’s amateurism policy violated federal antitrust laws as student-athletes were prevented from profiting off their own NIL.
In 2015, the court agreed with O’Bannon, ruling, “NCAA rules barring compensation to student-athletes for the use of their names, images and likenesses were subject to antitrust laws since the amateurism rules were not categorically valid, involved commercial activity in which the student-athletes and the users anticipated economic gain, and had a significant anticompetitive effect on the college education market.”
The next big legal move for the NCAA came in 2019 when the state of California approved Bill SB-206 which “would prohibit California postsecondary educational institutions except community colleges, and every athletic association, conference, or other group or organization with authority over intercollegiate athletics, from providing a prospective intercollegiate student-athlete with compensation in relation to the athlete’s name, image, or likeness, or preventing a student participating in intercollegiate athletics from earning compensation as a result of the use of the student’s name, image, or likeness or obtaining professional representation relating to the student’s participation in intercollegiate athletics.” The Bill was not set to go into effect until 2023, but set the standard for the future of NIL policies.
“What that meant was that student-athletes were going to have the same rights as everybody else,” Cox said. “They were able to go out and have autograph sessions, they could go out and make social media endorsements, they could go out and have sports camps, they were able to go out and make appearances and all those things where they could leverage their celebrity to make money.”
This law, being a statewide bill, superseded any of the NCAA’s rules and regulations regarding NIL for college athletes in the state. California was the first state to adopt such legislation and slowly were joined by other states, specifically Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Mississippi, New Mexico and Texas, who had their bills set to go into effect on July 1, 2021.
At the time, the NCAA agreed with the ruling, though it believed it could still cause an issue with competitive balance within the organization.
“As more states consider their own specific legislation related to this topic, it is clear that a patchwork of different laws from different states will make unattainable the goal of providing a fair and level playing field for 1,100 campuses and nearly half a million student-athletes nationwide,” the NCAA wrote in a Sept. 30, 2019 statement.
With there being no federal law to provide uniformity, the NCAA was either forced to comply with the states by creating its own policy on NIL or would be forced to potentially lose any institutions from those states, as the student-athletes would violate NCAA rules and be declared ineligible based on its policies. The NCAA quickly came up with the NIL policy fans recognize today.
According to a joint study conducted by Opendorse, a sports technology company that maximizes endorsement value for athletes, and media company Front Office Sports, there are currently 28 states that have legislation or an executive order regarding NIL in place, 23 of which are currently active and five of which will go into effect by Aug. 1, 2025. It is clear that NIL is here to stay for a while.
What is the NCAA’s policy and who does it impact? (Click “Next” to continue reading)
