Pitt AD Heather Lyke Calls for Uniform Laws Around NIL
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PITTSBURGH -- Name, image and likeness in college athletics picked up steam so fast that many in the industry struggled to keep up, including Pitt Panthers athletic director Heather Lyke.
Lyke said she worries that the way college sports is collectively using NIL is unsustainable. She worries about how the drive to get athletes paid has gone unchecked by a central authority, leaving individual schools and states to juggle the well-being of college athletics and the athletes with the desire to be competitive for talent.
“It’s just hard to predict where NIL will go, because the current model, in my humble opinion, is not sustainable," Lyke said. "I think we’ve got to have a better solution as leaders in college athletics eventually. ... Chasing finances, I’m not sure that’s going to be the solution in the long term.”
She wanted to make clear that she is not arguing against NIL altogether - Lyke knows athlete compensation is here to stay and added Pitt's athletic department is embracing the still relatively new rules. But she can't ignore some of the larger trends she sees with NIL, namely its use in recruiting athletes in high school and the transfer portal.
"I think the biggest thing I struggle with is the tampering aspect," Lyke said. "That part is not - it doesn't reflect terribly well on our profession. But there’s no question that when an athlete reaches a certain stature and companies want to invest in them or people want to invest in them, that’s permissible. We don’t discourage it.”
She referenced former Pitt receiver Jordan Addison, who transferred to USC amid allegations of tampering and the improper use of NIL offers mere months after winning the Biletnikoff Award and an ACC Championship.
Addison's junior season in Los Angeles was handicapped by injury and his production was cut in half from last year's. Lyke doesn't think Addison's decision to leave Pitt resulted in a better shot at a professional football career and believes his experience will be used as a cautionary tale about the convergence of NIL and the transfer portal.
"Finances are important but I don’t know that if you run for x dollars in college, that it helps you that much more in the pros," Lyke said. "I’m not sure the example last year is in a better draft position than they would have been staying here. I would argue they aren’t. So I think we’ll see examples along the way where it didn’t work out exactly how they wanted it to be."
Lyke thinks the solution lies in more uniform rules governing NIL. As of right now, a patchwork of state laws dictates the application of NIL, but not all schools follow the same protocols and the uneven sharing of information leads to competitive imbalances.
“The fact that there are 50 different state laws and the fact that there’s no limit or there’s no real … reporting of it," Lyke said. "So what you hear, what you see, what you read - who’s to say what has really happened or transpired? No one really knows and I think that makes it challenging.”
Administrators from around the country have called for congress to act on federal legislation governing NIL and bills have been proposed, but none of them gained any traction. In lieu of legal protections, Lyke said she feels comfortable in the ability of Pitt coaches to protect against tampering because their players connect with them and can be honest about the choices they are faced with.
“When student-athletes have real, genuine relationships with their coaches - as I think a great majority of our kids do - they’ll go to their coach and say ‘Look, I’m being offered something by another school. What can we do at Pitt?’," Lyke said. "And fortunately, we have someone like Coach Narduzzi and his whole staff who have those types of relationships with our student-athletes where you can have those conversations."
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