NCAA to allow players to profit off their own name and likeness
Yahoo Sports' Dan Wetzel explains what the NCAA's huge rule change means for college athletes, recruiting and the possible return of college sports video games.
Video Transcript
DAN WETZEL: The NCAA announced Wednesday it will begin allowing its players to earn money via endorsements starting in 2021. It's a long-awaited relaxing of the amateur rules that had proven increasingly outdated and unfair. Essentially, if a local Ford dealer wants to hire the star quarterback or, say, the goalie for the women's hockey team to come down to the showroom, sign autographs, and bring in a crowd of potential buyers, they can. If a statewide Ford dealership decides a player is so popular that they could move product all over, they could hire them to be on billboards or in television commercials. And if someone is so popular that they could sell cars nationally, Ford could hire them to do that. I mean, maybe something like a Zion Williamson could do-- certainly for Nike.
This is deregulation of college sports. And there's a measure of free marketplace coming to the athletes. This isn't the schools paying the players. They're still not going to give anything more than tuition, room, board, and a small stipend. It's the schools no longer prohibiting anyone else from paying the players. It's a big distinction. This will change college sports. This is a new era of college sports. In my opinion, it's not going to be the way it changes that some people fear.
Because every school has businesses and boosters, it may be more desirable now to be a star at a school such as Boise State or even Iowa State than another cog in the machine at Alabama or LSU. Your business opportunities would be greater being the elite of a smaller-- so-called smaller program than a bigger one. This could actually lead to the leveling of the current uneven playing field that we have, rather than just the fear that Alabama will just buy all the recruits.
Now, the bad news-- the EA Sports popular college football game is not coming back under this arrangement. There is no allowance for group marketing deals by players. And hence, that game can't happen-- at least for now. We'll see if they can iron that out. But as for this moment, it's a long overdue and worthy move by the NCAA to make their sport more equitable and fair to the players.
