Sen. Tommy Tuberville: College sports' name, image and likeness rules a 'disaster'

Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., said Wednesday that current NCAA rules and state laws concerning college athletes’ ability to make money from their name, image and likeness are “a disaster,” and he also appeared to express his distaste for athletes' relatively new ability to freely change schools.

In a video provided by his office, Tuberville said he was meeting Wednesday with various college sports constituents to discuss the situation, as he and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W. Va., continue to refine a bill that he said is now in text form.  

“Today we are meeting with coaches, athletic directors and administrators from several different conferences here in Washington, D.C., talking about the disastrous new NIL rules. And they are a disaster,” Tuberville said.

Tuberville expressed his support for college athletes to be compensated but questioned the current NCAA transfer situation. In recent years, those regulations have been changed so that, in nearly all instances, athletes in all sports can transfer at least once without having to sit out for a season.

Under the previous rules, in most cases, athletes in football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball who transferred from one Division I school to another had to sit out for a season. There had been some loosening of those rules for athletes who had earned their undergraduate degrees before using their four seasons of eligibility and for football players moving from a Bowl Subdivision school to Championship Subdivision schools. But with the new rules and the advent of the transfer portal, rosters now are being reshaped annually.

“Now, I'll tell you this,” Tuberville said. “I'm for players being able to be compensated for their hard work in athletics as well as academics. We have to come to some kind of agreement where we can help the NCAA make improvements to this runaway NIL situation that we're in as we speak. Players transferring at any time? Players making deals with the help of agents with schools and then not being compensated after making these deals?

"We're looking out for the player as much as for the university. But we're looking out for education and we're looking out for the sanctity of college sports. We want to make sure we can continue to afford women's athletics as well as men's athletics.

“So we'll meet up here this week. We'll have some discussions. We have a text of a bill already finished. We're going to make improvements (to) it. Joe Manchin and I have been working on this for at least a year.

"But our universities, our colleges, our athletes, our coaches, administrators and our fans need a lot of help with this because this is out of control and we cannot sustain this. And if we don't get some kind of control, we will not have the same product on the field. We will not graduate as many students through education, and it will be a disaster when it comes to having only a few people able to afford this across the country, basically cutting out the middleman and the little guy."