The NCAA will eventually be under new leadership. NCAA president Mark Emmert recently announced that he’ll be stepping down from his role by June 2023.
With so much uncertainty surrounding name, image and likeness deals in the NCAA, Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff and SEC commissioner Greg Sankey took a trip to the nation’s capital this Thursday to meet with key U.S. senators. The goal of this trip was to push for lawmakers to pass an NIL statute.
After this meeting came to a close, Sen. Marsha Blackburn spoke to Sports Illustrated about the future of NIL deals in college sports. She also called out Emmert for the way he treated student-athletes.
“For far too long, the NCAA has refused to allow student-athletes to benefit from the use of their name, image, likeness (NIL),” Sen. Blackburn told Sports Illustrated. “NCAA President Mark Emmert’s resignation is one of many necessary structural changes that will enable the NCAA to support our student-athletes. During my meeting with SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey and others today, I continued to push for the accountability and fairness measures our student-athletes deserve.”
That’s a strong message from Sen. Blackburn to say the least.
One possible solution for student-athletes is considering them as employees for their respective schools. Whether or not that’ll actually happen is uncertain.
What we do know is the NCAA is reaching a critical point where it needs to set out actual guidelines.