Notre Dame officials call for NIL regulation across NCAA

Beyond the excitement of the NCAA men's and women's tournaments, college athletics is “in crisis,” according to an op-ed by Notre Dame President John Jenkins and AD Jack Swarbrick in the N.Y. TIMES. College athletics faces "threats on a number of fronts," including the "growing patchwork of contradictory and confusing state laws regulating it." There also are the "specter of crippling lawsuits, the profusion of dubious" NIL deals and the "misguided attempts to classify student-athletes as employees.” Underlying all that is the “widespread belief that college athletics is simply a lucrative business disguised as a branch of educational institutions.” The new NIL rules have “proven to be easy to abuse.” To avoid the NCAA prohibition against directly paying athletic recruits, many schools “funnel money to recruits under the guise of a supposed third-party licensing deal -- regardless of whether a player’s NIL have any market value whatsoever.” Jenkins & Swarbrick write, "We must establish and enforce regulations that allow legitimate transactions while barring those that are recruiting enticements or pay-for-play” (N.Y. TIMES, 3/23).

YES WE CAN: SI’s Ross Dellenger notes Swarbrick is “calling for more unified changes around NIL regulations.” Swarbrick said, “If we can’t start to get ourselves to where we can make rational decisions like those and enforce them, the future will be more than one athletic association. I can tell you that.” Swarbrick: “We’ve got to get our act together as college athletics and do the things we can do. We keep sort of implying we can’t address name, image and likeness. Of course we can. We can do it in ways requiring reporting on transactions, requiring that there be transactions. We have to take that on as opposed to looking to others to fix it for us” (SI, 3/23).

CLEAN UP THE ACT: Swarbrick said, “We’ve got to get our act together as college athletics and do the things we can do. We keep implying that we can’t address Name, Image and Likeness, for example. Of course, we can … (and) take that on as opposed to looking to others to fix if for us.” Swarbrick said it is a "mistake to look” at Congress as the only option for NIL legislation, but as “these cases come down ... that will be the call to action that will get (Congress) engaged.” Swarbrick said of legislating against using NIL as a recruiting tool and then enforcing it, “If we can’t start to get ourselves to where we can make rational decisions like those and enforce them, I don’t know what the future is. The future is going to be more than one athletic association.” Swarbrick: “I believe strongly that the single athletic association isn’t viable in the long-term.” Swarbrick did note he is “very encouraged” by NCAA President Charlie Baker and “I’m going to bet on him to help us make some changes" (“College Football Enquirer: College Basketball Edition,” Yahoo Sports, 3/23).