The commissioners of the Power Five conferences sent a joint letter to Congress Friday requesting federal legislation on the issue of athlete compensation for the use of their own name, image and likeness.
The NCAA should have addressed it years ago.
Now, instead of trusting the NCAA to come up with a solution of its own, the commissioners of the conferences that will be most impacted by NIL are asking Washington to do the non-profit’s job for it. The country is busy facing bigger issues at the moment.
That’s not to say addressing NIL isn’t important, it’s well past due. Just remember, beggars can’t be choosers.
In their letter to Congress, the Power Five commissioners are doing exactly that. Not just a plea for immediate action, the letter attempts to influence what such legislation would look like.
The three-page letter, addressed to party leaders of the House of Representatives and the Senate, outlines a need for federal legislation along with a nine-point list of the commissioners' "consensus principles on NIL." Their principles don't differ much from the NCAA's.
They’re not gently suggesting either. According to the Associated Press, the Power Five conferences spent a combined $350,000 on lobbying in the first three months of 2020. In 2019, the NCAA itself spent at least $750,000 on similar endeavors.
That’s a lot of dough to influence how college athletes make theirs.
It displays how much the power brokers of collegiate athletics see NIL as a threat to their own bottom lines. After maintaining control of the college sports market for several decades, the last-second lobbying comes as a reaction to the dozens of NIL bills being introduced and passed at the state level.
While the legislative momentum was the catalyst behind the NCAA’s change of tune on NIL, it also presents a major challenge to the existing collegiate model. The specifics of each bill vary state-to-state and as the passed laws become effective as early as 2021, they would produce an uneven playing field for different institutions in different states.
"In the absence of federal NIL legislation, we expect most if not all states to pass their own disparate NIL laws in early 2021, to take effect in the summer of 2021 if not sooner," said the letter. "Time is of the essence."
It’s why the Power Five commissioners took out their quills and ink this past week. Not because they actually care about athlete compensation, but because they’re threatened by the prospect of having to navigate through varying state legislation.
Most importantly, the call-to-action from the Power Five displays a complete lack of trust in the NCAA process from the five most powerful conference commissioners.
When the NCAA announced in 2019 it would allow college athletes to receive compensation for the use of their own name, image and likeness, it came with the stipulation that the change wouldn’t come until 2021. Since then, the organization has brainstormed and released the parameters of which third-party income sources will and won’t be acceptable. Spoiler alert, the rules are rather restrictive.
The NCAA has never been interested in allowing players to receive compensation. The only reason the non-profit’s tune changed last year was because of the existential threat posed by the initial legislation at the state level.
Good on the Power Five commissioners for realizing that the NCAA is not going to get this done on their own. After all, their member institutions would be the ones that suffer the most from a gradual rollout of conflicting state laws.
They should just be careful about what they wish for. Once a law is passed in Washington, there’s no turning back. Who’s to say that lawmakers will take the suggestions made by the NCAA and the Power Five conferences, even if the collective spent millions in lobbying.
After all, beggars can’t be choosers.
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