Oklahoma Sooners: NCAA student-athletes getting closer to cashing in

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the world we live in in unprecedented ways, including the stoppage of all live sports events, amateur and professional, and we can expect more changes to come stemming from all of this when Oklahoma Sooners sports activities resume at some uncertain time in the future.

But continued health and safety precautions as we begin to rebound from stay-in-place restrictions won’t be the only changes we will soon see in the college sports landscape.

The NCAA this past week moved a step closer to allowing student-athletes to cash in on their name, image or likeness (NIL) and receive compensation from sponsorships and individual endorsement deals with third parties and businesses.

The NCAA Board of Governors voiced its support for rules recommendations proposed by an association working group that will allow college athletes to receive compensation for their name, image and/or likeness in certain instances, but not in all.

If the NCAA accepts the recommendations and goes forward with formal legislation on this controversial issue, it would not go into effect until the 2021-22 academic year.

Although this is an issue that has received plenty of lip service for a number of years, it was California legislation late last year that will allow student-athletes in that state to be paid for their name, image and likeness that finally nudged the teetering rock over the edge and hurtling downhill. With several other states ready to follow suit, the NCAA found itself backed into a corner.

“We have to hold their feet to the fire to ensure student-athletes get the rights they deserve,” said California state senator Nancy Skinner, who sponsored the California bill.

Recognizing the elephant that is in the room, NCAA president Mark Emmert had this to say about the issue:

"“The member schools have embraced very real change that is necessary to modernize our name, image and likeness rules.”"

This may sound like a soon-to-be giant windfall for college athletes who for years have lamented the fact that while they were the ones putting all the people in the stands and bringing in big revenue dollars to their colleges and universities, they were receiving nothing while others inside and outside of the college sports universe were profiting off of the players’ names, and in the case of video and computer sports game companies, their image and likeness.

What might seem like a giant leap forward and rules change by the NCAA in reality will be just a small step forward — but progress nevertheless — in how the majority of student-athletes may ultimately benefit from the NIL movement.

While college athletes inevitably will soon be able to earn money in ways they were never able to before, there will be restrictions.

To begin with, the recommendations supported by the NCAA Board of Governors allow for student-athletes at member schools like Oklahoma to make money on such things as autograph signings, memorabilia sales and commercial endorsement deals, but the athletes will not be allowed to use their school’s logos or representation of any kind in participating in such deals or activities.

There will also be what some NCAA representatives are calling “guardrails” in place to ensure that athletes are being compensated at an appropriate rate for the services rendered.

The recommendations also allow for the athletes to sign with agents for the sole purpose of finding them marketing deals.

What isn’t being widely publicized in the breakdown of how these rules changes will work and who it will affect is that when the dust finally settles and all the uncertainties are ultimately ironed out, not all college athletes will actually benefit from the NIL provisions. The new NIL rules will definitely benefit the big-name star athletes, but the backups and the players who make up the majority of the athletic rosters will realize little if any monetary benefit.

There are a lot of details to be further discussed and worked out before official NCAA legislation will be ready for an approval vote. If the new rules are to go into effect in 2021-22, it would seem this will be a hot agenda item at the next NCAA convention in January 2021.