Coach Tubs and the “King of the Senate” join forces.
Photo: Allison Bailey/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
If you’re a college football fan, you probably know that the three letters that make up the word NIL (which stands for name, image and likeness) are among the developments that are reshaping the tradition-bound sport you love in previously unimaginable ways. You may be encouraged or alarmed by the news that US Senators Tommy Tuberville and Joe Manchin are offering to lead congressional efforts to bring some national uniformity to a legal landscape often compared to the Wild West.
Long story short, after decades of fighting to maintain college athletics as a low-budget business that generates ever-increasing revenue, last year the National Collegiate Athletic Association (which represents college presidents, athletic directors and conferences) lost a landmark case (NCAA v. Alston) in which the Supreme a US court unanimously found that amateur college and sports restrictions on education-related benefits violated federal antitrust laws. Even more ominous was Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion, which warned the NCAA that it would not win future legal battles:
The NCAA makes its case for not paying student-athletes in innocuous labels. But labels can’t mask the reality: The NCAA’s business model would be outright illegal in almost any other industry in America.
Seeing the handwriting on the wall, the NCAA backed away from banning any type of player compensation. States have rushed through a raft of laws allowing and (to some extent) regulating NIL compensation as a way to allow players to take advantage of the billions they generate without involving the schools themselves in the payouts, which the NCAA has still opposed. Soon, local businesses in or near college towns began signing up football (and, in some cases, basketball) players, sometimes simply asking for promotion of their wares on the players’ popular social media sites. But in the end, neighboring team “NIL collectives” appeared, gathering donations from fans to distribute NIL funds more widely to the players. An estimated 450,000 college athletes have benefited in some way from the NIL contract, though most not in a very lucrative way.
While everyone involved pretended (and perhaps hoped) that NIL incentives would not become part of college football and basketball recruiting, it is now abundantly clear that high school students can enter college and do much better financially at some schools than others. We’re talking thousands and possibly tens of thousands of dollars for any old college football player, and hundreds of thousands or even millions for the real stars. Such deals affect the economics of college athletics far beyond high-revenue sports, though they have a ripple effect on athletic department budgets and donor patterns. And there is a growing terror that the NIL will upset the competitive balance of big-money sports and/or create bidding wars enabled by eager college coaches and boosters and their allies in state legislatures.
It’s really the kind of situation that calls for federal intervention to standardize the rules of the road since the paralyzed NCAA won’t take on the task alone; Kavanaugh’s warning had the desired effect. One remedy offered in 2020 by Senator Cory Booker (himself a former high school player at Stanford), was called the College Athletes Bill of Rights. Probably because it provides benefits beyond NIL compensation (especially health insurance) and limits the prerogatives of coaches, the bill has attracted support only from Democrats. And that’s probably why, on the same day Booker and his colleagues reintroduced a new version of his bill, Tuberville and Manchin offered up their bipartisan efforts to get the bill to consensus, as ESPN first reported:
Sens. Tommy Tuberville and Joe Manchin asked the Southeastern Conference on Wednesday for feedback and ideas on how to regulate how college athletes are billed for their names, images and pictures…
“The lack of meaningful leadership and lack of clarity in this area as a result of Alston (the Supreme Court decision) means that the US Congress must act to set clear ground rules for student-athletes and institutions,” the senators wrote in a letter to SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey. . “Like you, we share the goals of protecting student-athletes, ensuring fair competition and compensation, and preserving the valuable tradition of college sports.”
The SEC and Big Ten are the big brokers in college football right now, so the participation of one or both of these conferences is natural. But it won’t go unnoticed that Tuberville coached football at SEC school Auburn University for a decade or that Mancina is friends with perennial national and SEC championship challenger University of Alabama coach Nick Saban (a West Virginia native). Undoubtedly, the duo is assumed to place a high value on the interests of the college coaching profession, whose sharply escalating salary levels in recent years helped spark the NIL crisis.
In addition, there are specific questions about Tuberville’s motivation and problem-solving skills. His public comment about his legislative efforts was that he “talked to all my [coaching] friends. It’s a mess. It’s a free for all.” One astute college football blogger barely commented:
You have to admit that the man who famously jumped ship from school during recruit lunch should be an expert on free-for-alls.
Yes, this will end well.
This was a reference to Tuberville suddenly leaving the head coaching job at Texas Tech to go to the University of Cincinnati for a big pay raise, literally stranding Texas Tech recruits in the middle of a meal.
