NIL Newsletter #143 | Competing NIL Perspectives, Arkansas New NIL Bill, + ICYMI
Welcome to the NIL Newsletter by Optimum Sports Consulting - providing valuable, actionable NIL resources for student athletes, administrators, agents and other sport professionals.
Recapping NIL This Week:
Notre Dame President and AD Publish Op-Ed in NYT
This past Thursday, Notre Dame’s President—John Jenkins—and Athletic Director—Jack Swarbrick—published a joint opinion piece focused on amateur athletics: “College Sports Are a Treasure. Don’t Turn Them Into the Minor Leagues.”
They discussed what they considered to be threats to the foundation of amateur athletics, particularly focusing on NIL deals and the possible classification of students as employees.
“We call on universities to reaffirm that student-athletes are students first and to ensure that their athletic programs serve the schools’ broader educational mission, not the other way around.”
In their discussion of NIL, the Notre Dame leaders stated that NIL is too easy to exploit, and has become a legal workaround for the pay-for-play prohibition enforced by the NCAA.
The opinion was met with harsh opposition by a number of proponents of NIL, and the full column is available HERE.
Senator Chris Murphy Publishes Op-Ed in USA Today
A few days before Jenkins and Swarbrick published their opinion piece in the NYT, Senator Chris Murphy published his own opinion in USA Today: “The real March Madness: Why don't NCAA schools pay college athletes who make them billions?”
Senator Murphy makes the claim that NIL is simply about providing student-athletes with the same rights that their classmates already possess.
Murphy recommends that the NCAA spend less time lobbying Congress for NIL reform and more time working on their own revenue-sharing mechanism. With the March Madness tournament projected to bring in over $1 billion in revenue this year, there seems to be more than enough to go around.
Senator Murphy left the reader with one final idea: “I've introduced legislation to help the students, but let's be honest – the NCAA doesn't need our permission to do the right thing. Our laws already allow for this arrangement.”
The full opinion is available HERE.
New Arkansas NIL Bill Allows High School Athletes to Cash In
The newest NIL bill introduced into the Arkansas State Legislature would allow High School student-athletes to sign NIL endorsement deals.
These student-athletes would have to be accepted to a college, or have signed a written agreement to attend a university. Neither of these pre-requisites can be met before a student’s senior year under current NCAA rules.
Representative R.J. Hawk, who introduced the bill, pointed to neighboring states Louisiana and Tennessee, which both allow high school athletes to be compensated.
"To tell a person -- whether it be a kid, be a parent, be whoever -- that they can't make money doing something they are good at, I have a problem with that," he said.
More info is available HERE.
ICYMI Ticker
Two UCF-focused collectives—Mission Control and The Kingdom NIL—have combined. LINK
UCF Football’s Chief of Staff SJ Tuohy left the position to lead to lead the new combined UCF collective. LINK
Connecticut partnered with Athlete’s Threat to provide officially licensed merchandise for over 125 student-athletes. LINK
A Florida State-focused collective, The Battle’s End, received a pledge from a donor to match up to $500,000 in donations. LINK
Miami(FL) Women’s Basketball athletes Haley and Hanna Cavinder signed an NIL deal with Caktus AI. LINK