Clemson football fans are keeping a close eye on the changing landscape of College Football and what might be afoot with new NIL laws.
For those who have been out of the loop, the state of Georgia recently passed an NIL bill that will go into effect on July 1st of this year. As a result, athletes who come to play in Georgia will be able to make money off their name, image and likeness.
Other states- such as Alabama, Florida, New Mexico and Mississippi- have followed suit. While the South Carolina legislature has passed an NIL bill, it’s not scheduled to go into effect until July of 2022, effectively putting Clemson football at a disadvantage for a year at the very least in terms of recruiting against many other major programs from other states.
As these individual states have passed laws, the NCAA has remained silent and there’s no expectation that the organization will bring uniformity to the issue at any point in the near future, certainly not before July 1st.
Here’s why the current NCAA rules don’t matter in the uphill NIL battle that Clemson football will be faced with
We’ve had many Tiger fans reach out and bring up a valid point. They say that if the NCAA doesn’t take action, that the athletes in those states who do take money for NIL would suffer penalties and those programs could suffer, as well.
The common example in this argument is that of marijuana. It’s legal in the state of Colorado, for example, to partake but it’s still against the NCAA’s rules. If an athlete in the state of Colorado tests positive, they would suffer the same consequences as an athlete from another state as far as their NCAA eligibility is concerned.
Here’s why that doesn’t matter in the case of NIL.
It’s a valid point and one that does deserve to be examined, but here’s the problem: Public perception.
The court of public opinion has already decided that student-athletes deserve to make money off their name, image and likeness. No matter where you stand on the issue, the truth of the matter is that society as a whole has already looked at the massive amounts of money that the NCAA generates off these athletes year-in and year-out and the overwhelming majority has decided that it’s a disservice to the athlete to keep them from making money from their own branding.
If the NCAA decides to intervene and tell athletes in the state of Georgia, for example, that they can’t make money off that NIL, the organization will face strong legal opposition. And the overarching belief is that they’ll lose before the cases- and there will be a ton of them- are even presented to a judge.
The NCAA has no power and no jurisdiction in this new landscape of college athletics. They’ve had their chances to make this happen and they’ve instead sat on their hands.
Now, as these bills go into effect, anyone who has faith in the NCAA to all of a sudden step in and become the patrolling agent who is going to regulate fairness likely has disappointments waiting on them.
The best chance for Clemson is to see this bill revisited in the state legislature and for the date to be moved up because nothing is going to stop Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Florida State and many others from beginning to recruit using NIL as yet another tool in their arsenal against the Tigers.