Navigating NIL: What you should know about the NCAA’s hottest topic
What is the NCAA’s new NIL policy really?
The new policy adopted by the NCAA is described by the organization as such: “NCAA college athletes now have the opportunity to benefit from their name, image and likeness. All three divisions have adopted a uniform, interim policy suspending NCAA name, image and likeness rules for all incoming and current student-athletes in all sports.”
The NCAA also lists that individuals can engage in NIL activities that follow the law of the state where the school is located. They can partake in NIL activities in states without any NIL legislation without violating the NCAA’s NIL policy and they can use a professional services provider (agents, websites and other forms of service) for NIL activities.
However, this does not equate to pay-for-play. The understanding in the NCAA’s new policy is that the student-athletes will be compensated for a service rendered towards the organization the individual has an agreement with, such as a sponsored social media ad, being a brand ambassador for the company or producing a deliverable for the company, not for the athlete’s performance on the field or agreeing to come to the institution based on money gained from an organization.
While this does give an overarching coverage for NCAA athletes to use NIL while covering the NCAA from violating state legislation, the issue that arises from this is that now each school, conference and state can be run differently. There is no precise uniformity in permitting these rules. As such, an institution in one location can have completely different NIL rules than an institution in another location.
“That’s been a big gray area in the NIL because different schools have interpreted legislation a little bit differently,” Cox said. “We wanted to get broad enough to capture what we wanted to capture but we didn’t want to get so narrow to leave anything out. We were kind of guessing at a moving target…No one really knew what we were getting into and there’s a gray area about where we’re allowed to help and where we have to stop.”
For example, the NCAA has no rules on the use of a university or team’s trademarks, logos or names and as such the usage is determined by either the conference or the schools. In many cases, it goes to the schools. For San Diego State University, the school explicitly prohibits the use of any SDSU logos/marks for any NIL activities.
However, for University of Wisconsin-Madison, the rule changes as the school states, “Student-athletes will only be allowed to use University trademarks, logos, symbols, phrases, slogans, or any other University intellectual property to further the student-athlete’s opportunities to earn compensation for use of her or his name, image, and/or likeness, if those rights have been secured through existing channels and in connection with a valid agreement granting those specified rights.” Remarkably, this doesn’t mean that all schools in Wisconsin follow this rule, as University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, a school roughly 85 miles away and in the same state, states the school “retains the rights and discretion to all University trademarks.”
“The truth is the NIL is a really weird space,” Cox said. “All of it comes from state law; the NCAA doesn’t have a command of every state law out there. There’s a big question if the NCAA can even enforce a state law or if it’s up to the attorney general’s office to do that. Fortunately, we have not had any sort of inquiry or problem where that has been tested, but what we try to do is ask questions and understand in order to give and receive grace.”
What are issues surrounding NIL and their implications? (Click “Next” to continue reading)
