Why the NCAA’s move toward athlete endorsement money is good — and scary — at same time
Well, here we go.
Get ready for storms, choppier water and strong wind gusts. There’s no telling where this ship’s going.
The NCAA on Tuesday paved the way for college athletes to begin profiting from their name, image and likeness. The decision — unanimously approved by NCAA board members — comes after several states either passed laws or created bills to tip the NCAA’s hand on allowing athletes to make money.
Now, the question really is whether it will be a good thing? Or the right thing?
As this pay-college-athletes debate has always been, the answer is complicated. Still to be determined is what restrictions — if any — will be placed on athletes’ ability to make money through endorsements.
State legislators have pushed for more free-market-type rights for the athletes, while it appears as of now the NCAA is looking for uniform rules and the ability to govern business practices.
With that being said, it’s hard to determine if this Pandora’s box is going to be a positive or negative in the long run. The NCAA could completely water it down or it could fold and in mere years we’ll see athletes earning paychecks. Both of those are the extremes at this point, but it explains why this has been so hotly debated.
But what’s clear now is that athletes have their foot in the door.
Personally, I’m against players outright being paid when you consider many are getting a free education. Yes, some of them never finish off a degree while moving on to professional sports. However, many jump-start their “real lives” by way of the degree they earned while being an average offensive lineman at X University.
I like where this is headed now. Open the free market to where athletes have the opportunity to make money off their likeness — Trevor Lawrence autographed helmet, anyone? — just as the university does. It likely will affect only a handful of athletes who have the marketability, but it doesn’t restrict any of them who believe in themselves and their “brand.”
I just hope this ship doesn’t keep going forward and hit a glacier.
My only real gripe with players earning money from their likeness was a selfish one. Boy do I miss playing NCAA Football video games where the college players were modeled just like the real ones and then you could draft them into the Madden games (Thanks, Ed O’Bannon).
But in all seriousness this is a slippery slope, one that we’ve known has been coming for a long time. No one really knows where it will go from here, and that’s OK for now.
I’m just glad to see some sort of action. There’s certainly been enough talk.
