NCAA Board of Governors Endorses Student-Athlete Compensation For Promotions and Endorsements

The seemingly endless war for student-athlete compensation has hit an important landmark. The NCAA board of governors announced its support for compensation of promotions and endorsements following recommendations from its Federal and State Legislation Working Group.

This change, however, does not authorize member institutions to compensate its student-athletes, and identifying material such as school or conference logos are not allowed to used.

The next step for this rule change will be the NCAA’s respective divisions creating rules to govern the newly-endorsed endorsement authorization. The divisions are expected to have rules in place by January of 2021 to be implemented for the start of the 2021-22 academic year.

The NCAA reaffirmed that the rule changes would prevent against a so called “pay for play” scheme, and schools and conferences would not be able to get involved in the endorsement structure. Agents and advisors will also be significantly regulated.

This is a decision that is long coming. The former rule structure that didn’t allow student-athletes to be compensated for name and likeness never really made a ton of sense, so it’s good to see the NCAA move away from that scheme. While there still remains the fact that a number of institutional stakeholders make a significant amount of money from certain sports that the athletes still will not be able to see, it’s good that student-athletes can at least get something out of their work.