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There may be a new way for college athletes to be compensated in the near future outside of the current framework of name, image and likeness opportunities.
Ross Dellenger of Yahoo Sports and Nicole Auerbach of The Athletic reported NCAA president Charlie Baker sent a letter to Division I members outlining a planned proposal that would allow high-resource schools the chance to opt into a subdivision of Division I schools that could pay athletes directly through NIL agreements and trust funds:
Nicole Auerbach @NicoleAuerbach
NEWS: NCAA president Charlie Baker is proposing the creation of a new FBS subdivision that would allow the highest-resource schools to compensate athletes directly through a trust as well as NIL: pic.twitter.com/j7q4cjZ0oW
Nicole Auerbach @NicoleAuerbach
The third proposal from Baker: “We should make it possible for all Division I colleges and universities to offer student-athletes any level of enhanced educational benefits they deem appropriate.”
Such a system would give schools more direct control over the NIL situation, which is largely controlled by booster-led collectives at this point.
It also comes as the commissioners of the Big Ten, SEC, Big 12 and ACC have actively lobbied Congress to step in and provide a national standard for NIL instead of leaving the rules up to individual states.
Manu Raju, Clare Foran and Morgan Rimmer of CNN reported Sens. Ted Cruz (R, Texas) and Cory Booker (D, New Jersey) have pushed toward a bipartisan solution and met with the commissioners.
“I’m confident that there’s a bipartisan path and the urgency to get something done is there,” Booker said. “I think everybody who has a football or basketball player in their state is interested in getting it done.”
As for Baker’s proposal, Dellenger noted schools that opt into the system would need to invest at least $30,000 per year per athlete into the “enhanced educational trust fund.”
While there would be no cap on the funds provided and schools would not have to deposit the same amount of money for each athlete, they would have to continue to follow Title IX rules and allocate 50 percent of the investment toward women’s sports.
“It kick-starts a long-overdue conversation among the membership that focuses on the differences that exist between schools, conferences and divisions and how to create more permissive and flexible rules across the NCAA that put student-athletes first,” Baker wrote. “Colleges and universities need to be more flexible, and the NCAA needs to be more flexible, too.”
Schools that opt into the subdivision would still be under the NCAA’s umbrella and compete for the same championships as those that don’t. However, those that opt in would have control over variables such as countable coaches and scholarship limits.
Dellenger suggested this would surely only accelerate a football split between the power conferences of the SEC, Big Ten, ACC and Big 12 compared to the other leagues, especially given the nature of television-rights deals.
Yet he also pointed out “many college leaders have anticipated a Power Five split for years, if not even decades.” Certain cost-containment measures under traditional NCAA rules have led to anger at times from “those revenue-producing bluebloods of college football and basketball who believe they don’t have enough control of their own cash.”
Baker himself recognized that reality.
“The growing financial gap between the highest-resourced colleges and universities and other schools in Division I has created a new series of challenges,” he wrote. “The challenges are competitive as well as financial and are complicated further by the intersection of name, image and likeness opportunities for student-athletes and the arrival of the Transfer Portal.”
This proposal is likely just an early step, and Dellenger noted it will be one of the discussed topics at the NCAA convention in January.
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