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Name, image and likeness continues to ravage college sports, and the commissioners of the NCAA’s Power Four conferences are desperate.
Greg Sankey, Jim Phillips, Tony Petitti and Brett Yormark have all been on Capitol Hill to discuss with Congress how it can help regulate NIL and the transfer portal, the latter of which continues to be a hit among college athletes looking to score more money.
More than 1,000 Division I college basketball players have entered the portal since it opened March 24.
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An NCAA logo on the field before a game between the South Dakota State Jackrabbits and the North Dakota State Bison in the Division I FCS football championship at Toyota Stadium Jan. 8, 2023, in Frisco, Texas. (C. Morgan Engel/NCAA Photos via Getty Images)
One player even said he was entering the portal just 13 minutes after his team lost in March Madness.
It’s becoming clear the situation is getting out of control, and Yormark, the Big 12 commissioner, bluntly admitted to Bret Baier on “Special Report” Thursday, “We need help from Congress.”
“From where I sit today, federal preemption, having a standardized platform that oversees and governs NIL is critically important,” Yormark said. “Today, 34 states see it very differently, and it’s relatively unruly.”
“The volume of laws that are being passed on a state level are making it really difficult for us to regulate and compete nationally,” added Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti. Every single time someone doesn’t like a ruling, or something comes from the NCAA, we end up in litigation. Those rules then get aggregated, and we’re back to the start.
“We’re hopeful that the combination of what we’ve done in the settlement will give us an opportunity, with some help from Congress, to really put a system in a place that has some stability.
“We’ve crossed the bridge of being willing to provide revenue … but we need to have some structure. We can’t have a system that has complete unregulated movement.”
The NCAA logo at the NCAA Headquarters Feb. 28, 2023, in Indianapolis. (Mitchell Layton/Getty Images)
The settlement Petitti referred to is the $2.8 billion deal that allowed schools to pay 22% of their revenue from media rights, ticket sales and sponsorships directly to college athletes. Payments from outside sources would still be allowed.
NOLA.com noted that the settlement would offer more than $2.5 billion to athletes who could not earn NIL money before the NCAA changed its rules in 2021. The report also noted that most of the damage would be paid out to former football and men’s basketball players of power conference schools because their sports bring in the most revenue.
The settlement also called for a clearinghouse to ensure any NIL deal worth more than $600 is pegged at fair market value in an attempt to thwart supposed pay-for-play deals.
“We absolutely understand the responsibility we have. Five hundred thousand student athletes have benefited $4 billion annually for scholarships,” Philips, the ACC commissioner, said. “This is the heartbeat of Americana, the Olympic movement and the Olympic team. We feel like there’s a better destination and a stabilization coming forward, but we need help with Congress and national legislation.”
Added Sankey, who runs the SEC, “To have a College World Series, to have a College Football Playoff, to have national championships, you have to have national standards.”
The NCAA logo on a basket pad before a second-round men’s NCAA Tournament game between the Marquette Golden Eagles and the Colorado Buffaloes at Gainbridge Fieldhouse March 24, 2024, in Indianapolis. (Mitchell Layton/Getty Images)
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Sankey and Phillips also cited lower grade point averages by those who transfer, and Phillips said it will be “sobering” when they acquire enough data to show that’s the case.
“When you look at transfer GPAs prior to transfer versus after, historically, there’s been a diminishment. The quality of that education can suffer, as credits are lost, because transferring multiple times starts to inhibit the ability to select the academic program that may have the most value and meaning to someone.”
Fox News’ Ryan Gaydos contributed to this report.
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