LEXINGTON, Ky. — Granting athletes the right to profit from their name, image and likeness is apt to hit college sports like an earthquake. Against that backdrop, let's stipulate some things:
Change is hard.
At least initially, the new college sports landscape is going to be chaotic.
Not everything that will occur as a result of players being able to benefit off of their athletic fame will be an improvement.
Nevertheless, college athletes gaining NIL opportunities is the right thing — and long overdue.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear on Thursday afternoon issued an executive order designed to address the issue of college athletes in the commonwealth having the chance to benefit financially from their fame. The move puts our state in line with others in the Southeastern Conference footprint where legislatures had already passed NIL laws.
In Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas, college athletes will have the right to profit from their NIL rights beginning next Thursday. Athletes in Missouri will acquire that opportunity Aug. 28; those in Arkansas and Tennessee on Jan. 1, 2022.
As a result of Beshear's order Thursday, teams and coaches representing Kentucky will not be at a recruiting disadvantage vs. rivals in states where NIL changes will soon become law.
(Given that it appears the NCAA is moving toward granting a blanket waiver for all schools to allow their athletes to profit from their fame beginning next Thursday, an executive order in Kentucky might not have been necessary.
Still, where the NCAA is concerned, why take any chances?)
When college sports really was primarily an extracurricular activity designed to augment students' college educational experience, then having one's tuition, room and board and books paid for via athletic scholarship was generous.
However, due to its own popularity and the massive infusions of television-rights fees that followed, college athletics at the level at which schools such as Kentucky and Louisville compete long ago morphed into something different.
Let's run some numbers:
The contract CBS and Turner Sports have to telecast the men's basketball NCAA Tournament through 2032 is worth $8.8 billion.
For the right to telecast the College Football Playoff for 12 years through 2024, ESPN is paying $5.61 billion.
Over the fiscal year 2020, the Big Ten Conference had revenues of $768.9 million. The SEC's revenue for the same year was $720.6 million.
According to a USA Today database for 2018-19, 40 different universities had athletics revenue of $100,000,000 or more.
Alabama's Nick Saban made $9.3 million for coaching football in the 2020-21 school year.
Sixteen head football coaches — including Kentucky's Mark Stoops ($5.014 million) — made more than $5 million this past season. Twenty seven coaches earned more than $4 million, 50 more than $3 million.
Kentucky's John Calipari made $8.096 million for coaching men's basketball in the 2020-21 school year.
There were 26 men's college hoops head coaches making over $3 million a year this past season.
Heck, 24 college football assistants made over $1 million in 2020-21. Seventy-three football assistants earned more than $700,000.
Those massive numbers are why it long ago became indefensible for the college sports hierarchy not to find a way for the athletes to have more access to the available bounty.
The granting of name, image and likeness rights — a version of "the Olympics model" — is the proper way to try to achieve this.
Calling for the schools to directly pay their athletes is not realistic. While I am not an attorney (nor do I play one on TV), just the Title IX ramifications would make such a system wholly unworkable.
There will be drawbacks in a world where college athletes have financial incentives to maximize their individual brands. Certainly, it's easy to envision a scenario where team chemistry is damaged due to jealousy over who is and isn't reaping maximum rewards from NIL.
Still, most of the negative scenarios one hears theorized about college sports in a NIL era will prove overblown.
I do not think you will have players skipping practice to do paid autograph signings or to film commercials.
Instances where college athletes will be competing against their own school's athletics department for sponsorship money will, I believe, prove rare. The transient nature of a college athletic career versus the permanency of a university sports program will tilt that equation toward the schools.
Will players want to sell commercial patches to wear on their team uniforms?
What happens if a player has an individual deal with Adidas but his school is contracted to wear Nike?
What happens if two players on the same team fall out while competing for a chance to appear in the local car dealer's TV commercial?
I don't know. Some of this stuff will just have to be worked out via experience.
What I do know is that, moving forward, the challenge in big-time college sports is:
1.) Figure out how to preserve the good of the current system, especially the ability to offer scholarships and field high-level teams in many different sports;
2.) At the same time, find the best way to ensure the athletes have greater opportunity to benefit financially from the sports fame they bring to/build on campus.
For all the uncertainty that comes with it, NIL is the best, realistic step toward achieving the latter goal.
