The NCAA’s top governing body said Wednesday that it supports a proposal to allow college athletes to sign endorsement contracts and receive payment for other work, provided that the schools they attend are not involved in any of the payments.
A working group assembled to evaluate a way to modernize the NCAA’s rules about athletes making money from their names, images and likenesses presented its recommendations to the board of governors during its annual April meeting Tuesday afternoon. The recommendations included significant changes to current restrictions while also leaving room for the NCAA and schools to regulate what kind of deal athletes might be allowed to sign in the future and the monetary value of those deals.
“Allowing promotions and third-party endorsements is uncharted territory,” board chairperson Michael Drake said in a release Wednesday morning.
The NCAA’s news release said athletes will be allowed to appear in advertisements and can reference their sport and school, but they would not be able to use any of school logos or branding in those advertisements.
Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith, who co-chaired the working group in charge of evaluating NIL payments, said the proposed changes will move through the NCAA’s regular rulemaking process. Member schools will have a chance to give feedback and input during the next several months. Smith said in a news release that a vote on the proposed changes would likely occur in January.
The working group’s recommendations are not guaranteed to remain the same in the nine months before NCAA leaders are expected to vote on new rules, but they represent the most significant step forward to date in a long debate over college athlete compensation. It is a process that college administrators, critics, athletes and NCAA officials have said took too long to catch up to the modern reality of college sports. The NCAA gradually relaxed limits on what schools were allowed to provide to their athletes in response to lawsuits during the previous decade. The name, image and likeness push in the past year was prompted by politicians who have created state laws challenging the NCAA’s current rules.