Pac-12 basketball coaches support NIL, but are keeping an eye on competitive implications

Not surprisingly for a team coming off a Final Four that also happens to be located in a major entertainment capital, UCLA players are having a little NIL fun these days.

After the NCAA and a cascade of state laws enabled college athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness beginning on July 1, UCLA guards Jaylen Clark and Tyger Campbell launched their own cryptocurrencies.

Campbell has also signed on with the plant-based Honeybee Burger chain and has his own “Fat Tyger” sandwich at Fat Sal’s deli (whose menu also contains a “Fat Jaime” sandwich, even though UCLA guard Jaime Jaquez admits, “I tell people that it’s mine, but it was there before I got here.”)

During Pac-12 media day earlier this month, even bald-headed Bruins coach Mick Cronin got in on the fun.

“We have a hair product line coming out, us three,” Cronin joked, sitting next to Jaquez and Pac-12 player-of-the-year candidate Johnny Juzang, “We’ve got a lot of stuff in the works. It’s great for these guys and they deserve it. I’m all for it. But look for our hair product line.”

Across town at USC, guard Drew Peterson says the Trojans get a lot of opportunities on social media and to promote things but that “we know not to overstep our boundaries,” and make sure everything stays NCAA-complaint.

Except there really aren’t many boundaries — only the fuzzy definition that NIL deals are not to be meant as inducements for recruiting or as part of a pay-for-play scheme.

Last month, it was announced that all 13 of UNLV’s scholarship players would receive $500 monthly car allowances, essentially ensuring that anyone who plays there gets a free car. Is that an inducement?

And will Kentucky’s future recruiting become even more formidable now that elite high school players saw UK freshman TyTy Washington of Laveen announce an endorsement deal with a Porsche dealership last week, posting a photo of himself driving a $70,000 Porsche Cayenne?

Meanwhile, what walk-on football player (and his parents) doesn’t want their tuition paid for, as Built Bar has arranged to for those at BYU?

“There’s a lot of gray area,” Colorado coach Tad Boyle said. “But the way the rule is written and the way NIL has been introduced, the players have to figure it out. And if coaches and institutions are part of the process, they’re violating the intent of the rule.

“But that doesn’t mean it’s not being violated,” he added with a chuckle.

The UNLV car arrangement may hit closest to home for Pac-12 coaches. The Rebels are smack within the conference’s geographic footprint and chase many of the same players that many Pac-12 schools do.

Boyle said the setup will have to be counteracted “or kids will just go to UNLV.”

How, exactly, remains unknown.

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“We’ll see,” Boyle said. “I don’t know the answer to that.”

There could be other NIL deals that haven’t even become public, too, all potentially demanding some sort of response.

“To be honest with you right now I think everybody’s kind of guarding and protecting what’s happening,” Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd said. “You really don’t know what’s true, what’s not true. You’re hearing things that could be urban legend or could be true. So it’s hard to navigate right now.

“But I think in the next little bit the dust will settle a little bit, and we’ll start getting a better idea how it’s going to look for student-athletes.”

When asked about NIL earlier this month, Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff said the league is offering athletes free video “highlight packages” to help promote themselves but also drawing a hard line against anything that could be used for inducement or pay-for-play.

“We’ve read about some of the deals, particularly in the Western United States, that look more like pay-for-play,” Kliavkoff said. “We’re not in favor of those deals. We’re very focused on making sure that we follow what we think will eventually be the national standard. No inducement. No pay-for-play.”

Right now, there isn’t a national standard, just a patchwork of state laws and a general ruling from the NCAA that athletes in states that don’t have NIL laws just need to stay within the NCAA rules.

“Today we’re in a little bit of the Wild West because we don’t have a fair playing field across all the United States,” Kliavkoff said. “But we’re working with all of our schools. I would say we’re focused on making sure that eventually there is federal legislation and an even playing field.”

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown signed a state senate bill into law just two days before the interim NCAA NIL policy and various state laws went into effect on July 1, but Oregon coach Dana Altman said it’s still been tricky to navigate it all.

“If the players have the ability to make some money, I think it’s great,” Altman said. “I think it’s a work in progress. People just don’t know how to respond. Our boosters don’t know how to respond. As coaches, we don’t know what the rules are. We don’t want to arrange anything because we’ll get in trouble. So everybody’s just kind of trying to figure it out.”

Another problem, Altman said, is the potential effect on team chemistry, no matter what rules are in play.

“It’s a team game still, and so we’re going to run into some of the problems that the professional ranks run into,” Altman said, as he sat next to Oregon standouts Will Richardson and Eric Williams on the Pac-12 media day stage. “If Will gets something that Eric doesn’t and Eric’s upset about that, there’s a whole new set of problems that coaches are gonna have to go through.”

But so far, at least, USC’s Peterson and ASU forward Marcus Bagley didn’t indicate that was a problem. Peterson said USC players are simply “having fun with it,” while Bagley said he doesn’t even talk with other players about it much.

After all, an NBA contract tends to pay a lot more than your everyday NIL deal does.

“I feel like it was a step in the right direction,” Bagley said of NIL. “But you’ve gotta stay focused on the task at hand, and that’s winning and getting to the next level.”