Thanks to a surprising partnership on Capitol Hill, the first draft of a national Name Image and Likeness (NIL) bill has been released.
Per a report from Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger, Democratic Senators Cory Booker (New Jersey) and Richard Blumenthal (Connecticut) and Republican Sen. Jerry Moran (Kansas) formed an unexpected alliance to create the College Athletes Protection and Compensation Act, a bill that would provide medical protections for college athletes while standardizing NIL as national legislature.
The NCAA has sought legislative action from Washington since losing its NIL case, and the early returns are promising for the organization. According to the discussion draft, bill would “set a national NIL policy, preempts most if not all state NIL laws, creates an NIL database for transparency and even grants the NCAA authority to create rules to enforce provisions in the Act while affording the association a degree of legal protection.”
Athletes would benefit also, “receiving lifetime scholarships and long-term medical coverage through both their schools as well as an established medical trust.”
A major bone of contention absent from the discussion draft is athlete employment, which has a court case in Pennsylvania ongoing, as well as an expected ruling from the National Labor Relations Board.
What does this mean for HBCU athletes and HBCU sports programs?
If the bill goes through legislative channels and then to the President Joe Biden’s desk for signature, a national NIL code of conduct would be instituted instead of a state-by-state or school system-by-school system approach.
As more than two-thirds of HBCUs are state-sponsored institutions, this means the schools would likely need to be up to speed and in accordance with the new law.
One point of interest is that any school making $20 million or more in athletic revenue per year must provide athletes with medical coverage for two years after their final competition for the program.
As we’ve seen, $20 million is a struggle for a number of Division I HBCUs, so it likely will force the hand of institutions to either make money or take a hard look at reclassification.
For the athletes, they will still be permitted to negotiate and sign NIL deals. However, they must report deals to their schools within seven days of signing and recruits/transfers must disclose all expiring and potential deals to their schools before enrollment.
An interesting non-NIL note: Athletes would be able return to school after declaring for a professional sports draft, provided they do so within seven days and did not receive compensation from a sports league, team or agent.
The modernization of college sports is on the horizon. How HBCUs can and will keep up will be something to watch as this bill moves through Congress.
