Everything you need to know about the NCAA’s NIL debate

Jun 25, 2021

College sports is in the midst of its most significant changes in a generation. Current athletes, the NCAA, state legislators and members of Congress have all proposed rules that would provide athletes with varying degrees of new protections and opportunities to make money by selling their name, image and likeness (NIL) rights while playing in college.

Who will get the final say in those new rules? How expansive will the new opportunities be? Those questions will be settled in the spring and summer of 2021, and the space below will be dedicated to providing you with the most up-to-date and in-depth information on that process.

Jump to a section: Calendar | Timeline | Legislation | The start

The Latest

NCAA leaders have spent roughly two years developing a plan to allow college athletes to make endorsement money while providing limits that could help them preserve their current definition of amateurism. Most of that work, it appears, will land in the scrap heap.

The name, image and likeness floodgates are less than a week away from opening, and while a national game plan is not yet set it stone, the picture of what college athletes will be allowed to do to make money this summer is slowly shifting into focus. At some point before July 1, the NCAA is expected to adopt temporary measures that will take an uncharacteristic laissez-faire approach to regulating the marketplace for college athlete endorsements.

Plans to vote on a detailed, prescriptive proposal were derailed (for the second time) in June by a landmark opinion delivered by the Supreme Court. The justices ruled that the NCAA should no longer be granted the considerable leeway it previously enjoyed in avoiding antitrust laws while restricting the earnings of college athletes. While that case was not related to NIL opportunities, it serves as a threat that any blanket NIL restrictions the NCAA wanted to place on its member schools could be challenged — and likely wouldn’t stand up — in federal court.

In the weeks leading up to the Supreme Court decision, several high-profile conference commissioners were gathering support for a plan that would help them avoid some of that legal exposure. Their new proposal has gained a good deal of support since the court’s ruling, and is now the most likely option to be adopted in the coming.

In the proposal, schools located in states that laws going into effect next are instructed to follow state laws. There are currently seven states scheduled to enact NIL legislation starting July 1. There could be up to five more that join that group before the end of the month.

In states that don’t have an imminent law, each individual school would be responsible for coming up with its own set of NIL policies based on a very loose set of guidelines from the NCAA: Don’t let boosters pay athletes, and don’t let any endorsement deals serve as recruiting inducements.

While most athletic departments have some infrastructure in anticipation of the coming rule changes, individual schools were expecting the NCAA or the federal government to provide more detailed instructions on how to thread the tricky needle of allowing athletes to make money while making sure they remain amateurs. That leaves athletic department employees with roughly a week to try to turn a considerable amount of gray area into rules that are as black and white as possible and then come up with a plan to monitor and enforce them.

Calendar: What comes next

June 28: The Division I Council has reserved another day to meet to discuss multiple options for changing the association’s rules that govern NIL activity.

July 1: State laws are scheduled to begin to go into effect. Athletes who attend school in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, New Mexico and Texas would be able to start accepting endorsement deals on this date. The NCAA might file a lawsuit against the states before July 1 and ask a judge for an injunction that, if granted, could postpone the law’s enactment.

Timeline: How we got here

Sept. 30, 2019: California passes legislation introduced by Sen. Nancy Skinner that will, starting in 2023, prohibit schools from punishing athletes who accept endorsement money while in college. The NCAA called the legislation an “existential threat” to college amateur sports when it was introduced months earlier.

Oct. 29, 2019: The NCAA’s board of governors agrees unanimously that it is time to modernize its name, image and likeness rules. The board directs all three NCAA divisions to make rules by January 2021 that allow athletes to make endorsement money while maintaining “the collegiate model.”

April 29, 2020: A working group appointed by the NCAA lays out its suggestions for how Division I should change its rules, including details about the opportunities and restrictions for future athlete deals. The Division I Council formally submitted these proposed changes in November 2020 with plans to put them to a vote in January 2021.

June 12, 2020: Florida passes its state law with a scheduled effective date of July 1, 2021, that significantly decreases the time to create a uniform national solution.

July 22, 2020: Emmert, the NCAA president, repeats a request for congressional help in creating a federal NIL law while appearing at a Senate hearing in Washington, D.C. Several senators urged Emmert and the NCAA to broaden the scope of their reform efforts if they wanted help from Capitol Hill.

Aug. 2, 2020: A group of Pac-12 football players threatens to boycott the season while sharing a list of demands that included giving players a share of athletic department revenue. A similar group of national stars formed a week later and stated its intent to form a college football players’ association in the future.

Sept. 24, 2020: Reps. Anthony Gonzalez, R-Ohio, and Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., introduce a federal bill that would allow for NIL deals with some restrictions in hopes of keeping endorsements from disrupting the recruiting process.

Dec. 10, 2020: Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., introduces federal legislation that would allow for some NIL deals and also create an antitrust exemption that would protect the NCAA from some types of future lawsuits.

Dec. 16, 2020: The Supreme Court agreed to hear the NCAA’s appeal of a federal judge’s ruling in the Alston v. NCAA antitrust lawsuit. While not directly related to NIL rules, the Supreme Court’s decision in this case could impact how much control the NCAA has in defining amateurism in the future.

Dec. 17, 2020: Sens. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., introduce legislation calling for a wide-reaching overhaul of NCAA rules and college sports governance.

Jan. 11, 2021: The NCAA’s Division 1 Council decides to indefinitely delay its vote on name, image and likeness rules, citing concerns prompted by a letter from the Department of Justice related to the possible antitrust implications of changing its rules. Emmert, the NCAA president, said he was “frustrated and disappointed” by the delay.

Feb. 4, 2021: Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Rep. Lori Trahan, D-Mass., introduce federal legislation that would create a completely unrestricted market for college athlete endorsement deals.

March 31, 2021: The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the Alston v. NCAA antitrust lawsuit.

April 1, 2021: NCAA president Mark Emmert met with three men’s basketball players trying to raise awareness — using the hashtag #NotNCAAProperty — for what they see as unfair treatment of college athletes. The players asked the NCAA to adopt a temporary blanket waiver that would allow all athletes to make money from endorsement deals next school year while more permanent decisions take shape.

June 18, 2021: Six conference heads (including the ACC, SEC and Pac-12 leaders) propose a new plan that would make individual schools responsible for creating their own NIL policies. The new proposal surfaced after a pair of Senate hearings in June made it clear that a federal law was not imminent.

Legislation

The NCAA has asked Congress for help in creating a federal NIL law. While several federal options have been proposed, it’s becoming increasingly likely that state laws will start to go into effect before a nationwide change is made. There are six states with NIL laws already in place and more than a dozen others that are actively pursuing legislation.

States with laws in place
Alabama — Passed: April 2021. Goes into effect: July 1, 2021.
Arizona — Passed: March 2021. Goes into effect: July 23, 2021.
Arkansas – Passed: April 2021. Goes into effect: Jan. 1, 2022.
California — Passed: September 2019. Goes into effect: Jan. 1, 2023.
Colorado — Passed: March 2020. Goes into effect: Jan. 1, 2023.
Florida — Passed: June 2020. Goes into effect: July 1, 2021.
Georgia — Passed: May 2021. Goes into effect: July 1, 2021.
Kentucky — Passed: June 2021. Goes into effect: July 1, 2021.
Maryland — Passed: May 2021. Goes into effect: July 1, 2023.
Michigan — Passed: December 2020. Goes into effect: Dec. 31, 2022.
Mississippi — Passed: April 2021. Goes into effect: July 1, 2021.
Montana — Passed: April 2021. Goes into effect: June 1, 2023.
Nebraska — Passed: July 2020. Goes into effect: No later than July 1, 2023 (schools can implement new policy at any time).
Nevada — Passed: June 2021. Goes into effect: Jan. 1, 2022.
New Jersey — Passed: September 2020. Goes into effect: September 2025.
New Mexico — Passed: April 2021. Goes into effect: July 1, 2021.
Oklahoma — Passed: May 2021. Goes into effect: July 1, 2023 (schools can implement new policy at any time).
South Carolina — Passed: May 2021. Goes into effect: July 1, 2022.
Tennessee — Passed: May 2021. Effective date: Jan. 1, 2022.
Texas — Passed: June 2021. Effective date: July 1, 2021.

States with bills in legislative process
There are 11 states with bills actively moving through the legislative process: Connecticut (2021), Illinois (2021), Louisiana (2021), Massachusetts (2022), Missouri (2021), New York (2021), North Carolina (2024), Ohio (2021), Oregon (2021), Pennsylvania (2021), Rhode Island (2022).