Earlier this week, the NCAA's Board of Governors took the first step toward allowing college athletes to earn compensation by using their name, image and likeness in endorsement and promotions.
There are a variety of stipulations that would go along with the ruling -- for example, the athletes wouldn't be allowed to wear school logos in advertisements or be paid directly by the universities -- but the NCAA clearly is moving in the direction of letting players earn money while still in college.
In our latest "Crisis Management" discussion, Warchant's Gene Williams, Ira Schoffel, Corey Clark and Aslan Hajivandi discuss the positives and negatives of this long-awaited decision.
Please read our comments below and also watch our debate in this video for the full discussion.
Don't miss our great FSU sports coverage. Get your 30-day FREE trial
This is the question we presented to our staff:
The NCAA took a major step Wednesday toward allowing student-athletes to earn money from their name, image and likeness while still in college. How would you describe your reaction to the news? “It’s about time.” Or, “This is going to create major problems.” And why?
COREY: I think my line of thinking is more, "It's about time," than anything else. By this point, I'm sure even the people who still see college football through rose-colored glasses, and long for the purity and sanctity of the game, can admit there has always been a sizable amount of inequality between the people who coach it and the people who play it. And it's never been more pronounced than it is right now, with these meteoric salaries for head coaches and assistants.
College football is a billion-dollar business. And in these college towns primarily across the South, these players are big stars, who create serious revenue for the communities and the schools. It's past time they are actually allowed to cash in on their fame. At the same time, here's why I don't think this is going to be a seismic shift in the sport: I just don't foresee a ton of real cash in that cashing in.
ALSO SEE: Crisis management -- Shorten the season? Or move to the spring?
For the most part, I think we're talking about a few thousand dollars (at best) for players to appear in commercials or have their images on billboards, etc. I think a much bigger problem will continue to be the under-the-table money that is handed out to some of these superstar recruits. That's not going away with this new legislation. But, what this does do, is allow someone like Cam Akers to make some nice money (say, I don't know, $20,000 for various promotions) above the table over the course of a year. I'm not going to clutch my pearls about that when Willie Taggart is getting paid more than $15 million dollars to NOT coach a football team in Tallahassee.
The only real issue I foresee is if a business like, say, Wal-Mart, decides to start paying Arkansas football players $250,000 a year to appear in a commercial. I think the NCAA might need to come up with some sort of guidelines for the "market value" of a commercial in Fayetteville or Tuscaloosa or Clemson or Tallahassee. Then if schools like Arkansas or Oregon want to pay exorbitant amounts of money to buy recruits, they'll have to do it the old-fashioned way. By cheating. But hey, if the NCAA doesn't come up with any sort of regulations like that, I have an idea: How about putting a bunch of five-star offensive linemen in SPANX for a national marketing campaign? Just saying.
GENE: My reaction? This is ill-conceived and the next step in the demise of major college sports. In addition to opening the door for potential abuses (see below), who does it really benefit? Florida State fields nearly 700 student-athletes. Outside of a half-dozen football players, a couple on the men’s basketball team and maybe one or two for baseball, it’s unlikely that other players will be able to take real advantage of the rule. You can bet that very, very few athletes on Olympic and women’s sports teams will benefit. So this will create an uncomfortable dichotomy between the very few haves and the rest of the have-nots.
All totaled, we are probably talking about a financial benefit to one or two percent of the student-athlete population. This is the same one or two percent that will probably make money later in pro leagues, so who is it really helping? It would make a lot more sense if the sums generated by endorsement deals went into a pool that would be shared by all student-athletes upon earning their degrees.