NCAA takes correct stance on NIL booster collectives but enforcement could lack teeth

It doesn’t happen very often, but the NCAA is right about this one: If a school in Arkansas or Oklahoma is violating NCAA rules by coordinating name, image and likeness deals with booster collectives in order to recruit, it shouldn’t matter if a state law was written to shield the school from punishment. 

That’s just common sense. The NCAA is a voluntary organization with rules around competition that are adopted by the collective body of members. Don’t like it? Go find somewhere else to play. 

That’s essentially the line in the sand the NCAA drew Tuesday when it sent a memo to schools about their dealings with NIL booster collectives, writing: “If a state law permits certain institutional action and NCAA legislation prohibits the same action, institutions must follow NCAA legislation.” 

NCAA:Sets up confrontation with state lawmakers concerning NIL guidelines

Obviously, the courts will weigh in, as they always do, but it feels like the NCAA is on the correct side here. This isn’t like the original California NIL bill that kickstarted all of this, which specifically dealt with the rights of athletes to earn money off marketing deals. The types of bills we are seeing more recently in states like Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas are more targeted toward the activities of collectives, which are supposed to be operating independently of the schools under the NCAA’s rules on NIL activity.

Of course, we all know those rules aren’t being followed very well and that coaches and schools are, in many cases, working hand-in-hand to identify recruits to make deals with. So, in response, some state legislatures are writing laws to ensure their schools don’t face sanctions if the NCAA finds its rulebook has been violated. 

Again, the precise legal interpretations are for the courts to decide. And the NCAA is rarely, if ever, a sympathetic figure in these discussions after it spent years foolishly restricting the ability for athletes to earn money while the enterprise of college sports grew by billions.

But regulating how schools interact with booster collectives strikes me more as a competitive issue not a rights issue. That’s the NCAA’s neighborhood, not any legislature’s.

If schools want to change the rules to allow such activity, that’s fine too. Or, if Texas, Texas A&M and Oklahoma don’t like it, they are perfectly free to start their own league where they write the rules. They’d undoubtedly have plenty of peer institutions ready and willing to join them. 

But ultimately, if you're part of the NCAA and enough members have agreed that it’s against NCAA rules to use collectives in that manner, then the NCAA should be able enforce those rules. 

Of course, that only works in theory. In reality? Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

We have seen enough from the NCAA over the last three years to realize it has no shot of regulating, investigating, or enforcing anything with regard to NIL. And, if the NCAA does try to take a school to task, the threat of litigation will prompt an instant backtrack. 

We saw this in February during the first enforcement case related to NIL when Miami was slapped with some very light penalties, and the athletes involved in the improper recruiting inducements weren’t penalized at all.

John Ruiz is the businessman at the center of the case who has been signing Miami athletes to significant deals, including some notable transfers who helped its men’s basketball team make the Final Four this year. The NCAA didn’t sanction him because it knew Ruiz would have fought back in court.

Just last week, the NCAA couldn’t even completely nail former LSU men's basketball coach Will Wade despite a mountain of evidence, including an FBI-wiretapped phone call that linked him to extensive violations and paying players out of his own pocket.

Yes, LSU fired Wade, who will face a 10-game suspension and recruiting restrictions in his new job at McNeese State. But if we are judging by history and the seriousness with which the NCAA wanted to root out corruption after the FBI investigation into college basketball back in 2017, the punishment for both the coach and the school did not fit the crime. 

It feels like the NCAA has no hope of regulating any of this, which could be the point. The final play for new NCAA president Charlie Baker may essentially be going back to Congress once again after years of failing to get an NCAA-friendly bill to the floor and saying, “Hey, we tried to do this ourselves. We can’t. You are the only ones that can save us.” 

It’s hard to see how that moves the needle with lawmakers. The NCAA has been working Congress since 2019 without anything to show for it, and Baker so far has been selling the same schlock in a different package as his predecessor Mark Emmert. Coming up with a bill that satisfies lawmakers from both parties and can get 60 votes in an evenly divided Senate seems impossible. 

Plus, there’s a little thing called a presidential election cycle starting. In about six months, nobody in Congress is going to care at all about college sports because their jobs and committee assignments are going to be on the line. Then we get to do this dog and pony show all over again in 2025. 

The NCAA may very well be right on the specific issue it addressed in its memo to schools Tuesday. But it has been so wrong on so many other parts of managing NIL that it probably doesn't even matter at this point.