Quick Takes (v60): The Times Are Surely Changing

Happy pay day, college athletes! Get your money while you're hot!

I'm torn on the whole Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) changes in college athletics. New NIL rules allowing student-athletes to profit off their 'brand' through sponsorships or corporate partnerships went into effect yesterday.

The NCAA adopted what they're calling an interim NIL policy, after several states passed legislation allowing this kind of benefit for athletes. According to NCAA president Mark Emmert,

This is an important day for college athletes since they all are now able to take advantage of name, image, and likeness opportunities. With the variety of state laws adopted across the country, we will continue to work with Congress to develop a solution that will provide clarity on a national level. The current environment — both legal and legislative — prevents us from providing a more permanent solution and the level of detail student-athletes deserve.

Some student-athletes jumped into NIL deals right away; for example, here's the story of Hanna and Haley Cavinder, twin basketball players for Fresno State. They'll be part of a national campaign for Boost Mobile - a company that's going whole-hog on deals with college stars. CEO Stephen Stokols explains that it's not just national deals, there's more.

... he's interested in the appeal that many college athletes have on a local level. He said deals could range from annual contracts worth large sums of money to in-kind deals where Boost provides athletes with free cellphones and service plans in exchange for promoting the company on social media.

A lot of these guys are local heroes... We think it's a big opportunity to get regional and local with relevant names in those markets. ...We want to be one of the biggest companies embracing [the college-athlete marketplace] early. We hope to play a role in helping to shape it. There is a lot of gray area that will hopefully be more defined a year from now.

In my neck of the woods, Syracuse University has rolled out a new program, called ACCELERATE, for kids. The program expands upon one started last year, which provided "every student-athlete with real-time multimedia content access from Syracuse Athletics' communications and creative services teams" which they could share on social media. Now, 

...Syracuse Athletics will offer an intensive bootcamp to all student-athletes beginning in September 2021. This bootcamp will allow for subject matter experts from Syracuse University and the corporate world to deliver practical knowledge to student-athletes on entrepreneurship, brand building, creating a business, finance, accounting, contracts, and agents. The bootcamp sessions will help student-athletes further develop their own personal brands and prepare them for the real-world implications of starting their own personal business.

Other schools will surely offer similar programs, which is great for the athletes. All of them - whether they're in school primarily to enhance their brand and create opportunities to go to the next level, or if they're in school to get a degree and move on to a career outside athletics, this is knowledge that will help.

And, good for the kids to have the chance to make money, instead of their schools making money off them. And let's not forget the coaches, too, some of whom are raking in millions in salary, shoe-and-apparel deals, and other sponsorships. That the student-athletes are the only ones not making money for their services is wrong, and has been for a long time. 

But the NCAA's insistence on prohibiting the kids to be paid for the work they put in - often a full work-week (or more) during the season - in order to preserve the 'amateur' status of the kids? That's nuts. 

I'd rather see all the athletes, in both revenue-earning and non-revenue earning sports, get a salary for the hours they put in, instead of giving them free reign to rake in outside money. And they'd get paid for all their time - games, at practice, in the weight room, traveling, watching film - the whole nine yards, as it were. A salary would ensure that all students on a team, whether they get a lot of playing time or not, will benefit. 

And how about some revenue sharing? Could a small percentage of conference money, TV revenue, ticket income, and the like could be divided up among all athletes, based on some formula that people smarter than me could develop? I bet it could.

An added benefit? With athletes being paid by the school, not by corporate interests, you won't see players competing against each other for the same NIL sponsorships, or worse, bad blood spilling over onto the field if one player gets a better deal than a teammate. 

I don't know what the perfect solution is, but there are good ways to do things, and bad ones. This NIL thing seems like a bad way to do a good thing.