NCAA's Doomed Guidelines Probably Won't Regulate NIL

It's a safe bet the kangaroo court's smokescreen could only provide money for lawyers

Author:
Andy Hodges
Updated:
May 13, 2022 3:33 AM EDT
Original:
May 13, 2022

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Don't expect much to happen with the NCAA's latest attempt to put the genie back in the bottle.

As CBS Sports' Dennis Dodd points out in a story recently, "any hint at limiting college athlete compensation these days smacks of an antitrust violation."

But don't expect the players to be making the most money. As usual, that will be lawyers. That's not a negative toward them. It's their job.

"If you're a lawyer and you're practicing in college sports, Katy bar the door," Rogers-based attorney Tom Mars was quoted as saying in the story.

That's because a lot of people read the kangaroo court in Indianapolis' wish list and giggled. The NCAA lost control of college football in 1984 and just about any other revenue-generating sport since then.

As usual they fell back on the "booster" tag to try and hold the horses that may already be in full runaway mode. All that does is effectively nothing in this day and age. You can be a booster and not even be in the same state or ever set foot on the campus of the school you boost.

Miami may end up being the test case.

Some guy named John Ruiz has a collective and has paid some big money already.

""To me, it's business as usual," he told CBS Sports.

His collective has already rounded up $550,000 for Hurricanes football and a Kansas State basketball transfer is getting $800,000. Ruiz' claim to CBS Sports is you can be a booster as long as you have a legitimate business.

"it doesn't matter if you are a booster or not," he said in the story. "The deal is an arms-length transaction."

Whether we agree or not doesn't really matter. It's all going to end up in front of a court somewhere 5-10 years down the road.

The lawyers will get involved the first time the NCAA tries to clamp down, then you're going to have enough lawsuits to pack court dockets for months and years.

Blame the NCAA, who lost all relevancy years ago. In recent years, many schools self-investigated, assessed their own penalties, then the NCAA put out a press release that imposed penalties and those were often less than what the school has already imposed.

The only places that lose with the NCAA are the ones dumb enough to cooperate when they arrive to investigate. Schools that have lawyers meet them at the door on the first visit seem to keep rolling along.

Now there is the players, who can find attorneys to represent them and there's just not a legal way seen here the NCAA can arbitrarily determine an amount that's too high.

If the players have a union (like pro sports) there could be a cap on the NIL through collective bargaining.

Until then, though ... well, Mars probably summed it up best in the story:

"The law is completely unsettled. If those boosters want to spend a gazillion dollars, more power to them."

Chaos is already here.

And the NCAA's desperate attempt to do something is only going to produce more.

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