NCAA rushing a name, image, likeness rule as its power over college athletics is quickly diminishing
Now more than ever, the NCAA is vulnerable of becoming irrelevant as an administrative body
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Now more than ever, the NCAA is vulnerable of becoming irrelevant as an administrative body
By Dennis Dodd
NCAA president Mark Emmert once again sent college sports administrators scrambling over the weekend when he told the New York Times that he will recommend membership approve name, image and likeness legislation for college athletes before July 1. That's also the day NIL laws go into effect in five states setting off possible recruiting disparities and benefits for athletes beyond anything NCAA legislation has proposed.
If this is how NIL is finally implemented, it's become obvious that it won't fully be the NCAA's call. Whatever strategy the NCAA employed, it has waited too long to have anything resembling full control over possibly the biggest rule change in the association's history.
We're watching the NCAA's influence, power and leverage diminish before our eyes. It needs federal help to implement NIL. Whether or not it gets it, states' NIL laws will supersede whatever the NCAA has in place -- at least for a period of time.
In essence, the NCAA is losing its grip on what made it the NCAA: oversight of the collegiate amateurism model.
"That's where we are," one high-ranking source involved in NCAA governance told CBS Sports. "We've not taken care of business. The participants have gotten more litigious. You throw that all together and the only way you get answers is through federally-mandated standards."
Emmert's words are more proof of the NCAA's desperation. With Congress not to due to act anytime soon, the NCAA must do something. It needs at least a limited antitrust exemption from Congress with NIL implementation to keep it from being sued.
That's because any hint of the NCAA limiting athletes' NIL compensation could bring more legal action.
"The problem is we have a reasonably large legal exposure if we implement a rule without having an antitrust exemption to cover us," one FBS commissioner said under the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue. "That's what people aren't getting, why this has taken so long. We've got to figure out a way to get that. If we don't get that, we're a dead association walking."
There is no concrete evidence Congress will provide help by July 1 -- or even by the end of the year. Meanwhile, every major decision the NCAA makes these days is based on that legal exposure.
The one-time transfer rule is the latest example. The longtime legislation was finally passed last month because, well, it was fair and administrators thought lawsuits were inevitable with athletes in only the five "revenue" sports being forced to sit out a year-in-residence when changing schools as undergraduates.
An NIL working group last year developed concepts, but in December, the U.S. Department of Justice had antitrust questions for the NCAA about NIL. That immediately delayed NCAA legislation that was expected to be legislation passed at its January convention. Emmert made his latest statements without an update on whether the DOJ had those questions resolved.
The NCAA could have solved this years ago, specifically in 2009, the moment Ed O'Bannon sued the NCAA for antitrust violations for putting his image on the cover of a video game. The NCAA's official strategy: litigate, litigate, litigate. Since then, it has lost at almost every key turn.
"Too little, too late," said David Ridpath, an Ohio University assistant professor and president of The Drake Group, an organization focused on reform. "The membership could have solved [NIL] months ago."
One Power Five administrator asked about the possibly of a national NIL standard by July 1 called it, "Fleeting."
The head of the nation's most powerful amateur body calling for transformative change is less about his words and more about how it eventually happens. It's not clear how quickly NIL legislation could be passed if it moves in the traditional manner.
The NCAA Council is the association's policy-making board. It next meets May 19 and then again in late June. However, in this age of Zoom, it's unclear whether the Board of Governors -- the presidents responsible for running the NCAA -- could take up the issue on its own immediately.