NCAA Moves Closer to Allowing Athletes to Earn Money

If there is college football on time this fall or even later on, student-athletes could finally be compensated for their name and likeness. The NCAA has been discussing this since last April when a working group recommended a proposition that allows athletes to earn a profit from their name and likeness. That group, led by Big East Commissioner Val Ackerman and Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith has sent a recommended set of rules changes to the NCAA Board of Governors, which meets either Monday or Tuesday of next week.

This is a stunning development in terms of timing, but regulating how this occurs could be a major stumbling block. If this is adopted by the NCAA Board of Governors and the rules go into effect as early as the 2020-21 season, athletes can now make sponsorship deals just like professional athletes in the NFL and NBA. Let's take Trevor Lawrence for example, the All-American quarterback from Clemson. He couldn't even raise money for charity without getting a slap on the wrist from the NCAA. In March, Lawrence and his girlfriend, Marissa Mowry, set up a COVID-19 relief fund on GoFundMe. Reportedly at the time, the NCAA put a temporary halt to the fundraiser, but they denied that they asked Lawrence and Mowyr to take it down.

"The NCAA did not ask Trevor Lawrence to take down his fundraiser for COVID-19 patients and their families," the NCAA said in a statement. "We continue to work with member schools so they have the flexibility to ensure that student-athletes and communities impacted by this illness are supported, and we applaud Trevor for his efforts."

Nobody would have been surprised that the NCAA would have done something like that, because that's been their way of operating for decades. There was so much rampant cheating in the 70s and 80s, that the NCAA put the clamp down on programs including giving SMU's football program the dreaded "death penalty" in 1985 for recruiting violations. But it seems as though after attempting to stop the cheating, the organization has gone overboard.

Now, after witnessing the Fair Pay to Play Act in California, which was set to go into effect in 2023, the NCAA is pushing for athletes to get paid. College football players have been leaving after three seasons in school for decades, but in college basketball, star players are only staying for one year. That may change as Jalen Green, one of the top five recruits for the 2020 class is heading to the G-League with a six-figure deal that includes a scholarship to college. In the previous season, LaMelo Ball and R.J.Hampton decided to skip college and play professionally in Australia.

This is an incredible turn of events, if the NCAA Board of Governors allows athletes to get paid for their likeness. Last season, the NCAA was contemplating whether to allowed the state's 58 schools to compete in the organization.

But seeing players skip college basketball altogether and leaving after their redshirt sophomore seasons in football, plus the Florida Senate approving an athlete compensation bill, has changed the landscape of the NCAA. Not every athlete is going to stay in college or an extra season, because let's face it, not everybody wants to go to school or is college material. Elite high school baseball players skip college all the time and go right to the minors. NFL players do need several years to physically mature, so it's a different situation than the other sports, but there will some true freshman or sophomore to challenge the three-year rule in the future. Will college basketball and football players now stay in school if they can make five figures, six or seven if they are allowed to have their likeness used for a car dealership or bank. Surely that's the NCAA hope, that they can elevate college basketball and in some way, limit the payments under the table that are still likely going on.

How will they regulate this or will this become the wild west? Will boosters take advantage of the rule? On the positive end, this could also eliminate the possibility of shaving points. Players in the past, who may have accrued thousands of dollars of debts, or just needed the point, actually fixed games. That was a lot easier to do accomplish in college basketball with just five players on a team. The last noted scandal that took place was in the 1993-94 college basketball season when Arizona State star guard Stevin Smith helped shave points and fix four home games. Other players were also involved and something similar took place a year later at Northwestern. Could this new legislation prevent potential point shaving? Possibly.

The bottom line is that the NCAA had to do something. Their backs were against the wall thanks to what happened in California and was about to happen in Florida. Schools are making billions off of athletes who don't get compensated. Sure, they do get a free education but that doesn't pay the bills, pay for a car, a date, the rent, a pizza, or being able to take a date to a movie or a restaurant. Many athletes come from poor backgrounds and don't have the money to pay for those things above and a Cost of Attendance stipend can last for so long. These college sports have become