SAN FRANCISCO β Between all the promotional stops, interviews and general lightweight fun of the Pac-12βs annual preseason media days last week, commissioner Larry Scott sat down for a more serious discussion with both the menβs and womenβs contingents.
For a change, it wasnβt about the FBI. It was about an issue that could be more impactful in the long run, one that could sprout many different consequences and one that the Pac-12 sits directly in the crosshairs of: the new California law allowing college athletes to profit off their name, image and likeness.
Down the line, Pac-12 coaches on both the menβs and womenβs side expressed careful support for athletesβ rights and so, to some extent, did Scott.
βIf young people want to earn money from their name, image, and likeness and get paid to play, they should have that opportunity,β Scott said. βThatβs called pro sports.
βCollege sports is different. You go to get an education. Itβs amateur, theyβre students. Those are the defining characteristics, and weβd like to see those lines not get blurred and the interest in college sports become diminished.β
Thatβs the essence of a long-held argument for the NCAAβs amateurism model, of course. But Scott, several coaches and players also touched on potential unintended consequences of the law, if it were adopted by other states or instead worked into NCAA guidelines prior to the California law going into effect in 2023.
Among them:
1. Nonrevenue sports could suffer if outside money is diverted from athletic departments to star football and basketball players.
Scott said outside sponsorship dollars could be potentially divided in a βzero-sumβ game between schools and their top athletes.
For example, a business that gives the athletic department $50,000 for sponsorship rights might instead be tempted to give it only $40,000 and hand the other $10,000 directly to a star quarterback or point guard.
βWe donβt think that there are new resources that are necessarily going to be available for compensating student-athletes forβ name, image and likeness, Scott said. βItβll come from money thatβs already going to our campuses in my view. Itβll come from donors or local companies that want to support their local program.
βSo there will be less resources, I believe, that our campuses will have, and theyβll have to make some adjustments. From conversations Iβve had, I think there is a good likelihood thatβll come out of the hide of other programs β menβs Olympic sports programs and womenβs programs.β
This possibility hits new UCLA basketball coach Mick Cronin on a personal level.
βDoug Martin, the golf coach at Cincinnati, is one of my close friends. You wouldnβt want to see his team go by the wayside because money is going to menβs basketball,β Cronin said. βI think we should find a way to make it all work for everybodyβs benefit, and that would be for Olympic sports as well. You donβt want it to hurt them.β
But while apparel companies could be especially motivated to divert money to star athletes when they renegotiate deals with schools β UA currently gets about $3.8 million from Nike, including $500,000 in cash β Navigate Research CEO A.J. Maestas says he doesnβt think the impact would be that drastic.
Not counting the potential impact when long-term apparel deals get renegotiated, Maestas said he estimated a school would lose only a tiny percentage of its average revenue in a budget of $100 million (UAβs budget is about $91 million) if sponsors give some money directly to players, partly because it wouldnβt necessarily be a zero-sum game.
Maestas said sponsorships average about 8% of a budget and, based on his experience in pro models, athletes average about 2-3% of that figure.
βSo at worst it would have a 1% (overall) impact,β Maestas said. βIt would cannibalize sponsorships, but itβs not all that drastic. Itβs not dollar-for-dollar.β
2. Sponsor money going directly to athletes would not be subject to Title IX regulations, which college programs must follow in directing resources between men and women.
Basically, it would behave like money does in the rest of the sports world. Scott noted that only one woman, tennis star Serena Williams, cracked a recent Forbes list of the 100 top-paid pro athletes.
βFor those that follow womenβs sports and gender equity, they realize that women donβt come anywhere close to getting the same opportunities that men have in our country,β Scott said. βWhile we certainly have a few high-profile womenβs student-athletes that might benefit, thereβs no doubt in my mind that 99 percent, plus or minus, will go to men, not to women, and whatever resources are spent this way will be taken from athletics departments.
βThat runs a significant risk of taking away opportunities for women, as well as men in the Olympic movement.β
Basically, under the new law, sponsors could give name, image and likeness money to whomever they wanted. Maybe that could include Oregon basketball star Sabrina Ionescu, but more often it might be to male athletes.
Asked about the California law, Ionescu said she hadnβt thought much about it but hoped the result would be in βthe best interest of the student-athletes,β while Oregon coach Kelly Graves and UCLA coach Cori Close also tiptoed around the issue.
βItβs such a delicate line, right?β Close said. βYou want players to have opportunities and you never want to limit opportunities, but you also donβt want unintended consequences to maybe trickle down to how it could affect womenβs opportunities and how it could play out in recruiting circles.
βAnd is this good intention to try to reward image and likeness really going to play out to reward that, or will there be some other things that are taken away that are unintended? And I think thatβs sort of my caution.β
3. It could blow open recruiting (again).
The NCAA might have trouble regulating sponsorship money that is not commercially motivated β that is, money that a sponsor gives to a player because it wants to help the program, regardless of whether doing so brings the business any return on investment.
Or, in other words, cash for recruiting purposes.
βOne of (the California lawβs) several flaws is that it doesnβt contemplate that thereβs competitive recruiting between schools,β Scott said. βThat money, if itβs allowed, will be used to attract student-athletes to go to school X over school Y, and itβll be dressed up as an NIL payment for an appearance, an autograph.β
Maestas says that could be particularly common with a car dealer or other local businessman who is also a booster. If he or she opts to give money to a player to make an appearance or pose for an ad, it could be difficult to determine if they are doing it to help their business β¦ or help a coach.
βThatβs the hard part to regulate,β Maestas said. βHow do you identify what is commercially motivated versus just a bribe to attend a school? Is your endorsement deal pending your attendance?
βOf course the NCAA is going to try to crack down on it. But if you open the floodgates, I would see more money going to athletes for performance and recruiting than I would for actual commercial endorsements, on average.β
In a fierce recruiting world that already attracted the FBIβs attention at Arizona and several other high-profile programs over the past two years, thatβs where even more clouds could settle in.
βWeβve actually been in a little bit of a gray area with recruiting issues with the rules in place to begin with, right?β Utah coach Larry Krystkowiak said. βTo me it could open a whole can of worms. Iβve read various peopleβs ideas, but really Iβm just kind of in a position that you canβt win. I just want whatβs best for our student-athletes. If we can find some common ground, I think thatβs great.β
But can they? The NCAA effectively has three years to figure something out before the California law goes into effect, unless other statesβ efforts become laws even sooner.
The race is on.
βCertainly, I think a lot of smart people need to get in a room and try to get everybody on the same page,β Stanford menβs basketball coach Jerod Haase said.
βWe really need to think not only about the obvious things, about the specifics, what happens initially, but really try and think through what all the consequences will be.β