NCAA calls for review of NIL impact on student-athletes due to 'concern' over NCAA recruiting violations

On3 imageby:Wade Peery02/18/22

On Friday, the NCAA’s Division I Board of Directors directed the Division I Council to review the impact of NIL on student-athletes. The board met virtually Friday.

“We are concerned that some activity in the name, image, and likeness space might not only be violating NCAA recruiting rules, particularly those prohibiting booster involvement, but also may be impacting the student-athlete experience negatively in some ways,” said board chair Jere Morehead, President at the University of Georgia.

In the press release, Division I council chair Shane Lyons agreed that current Name, Image, and Likeness issues should be reviewed. “

We look forward to conducting this review and hope to be able to provide the membership with additional clarity,” said Lyons, athletic director at West Virginia. “Any recommendations we provide will help members as they support their student-athletes moving forward.”

There are a couple of completely fair and legitimate questions to ask here. Can the NCAA do anything at this point? Just in case anyone needed to see how powerless the organization was, it was proven for the world to see during the college basketball corruption scandal. Not only that, will they do anything? Let’s not forget the NCAA just lost one of the biggest cases in sports history in the NCAA vs. Alston case. On3’s Caroline Bynum wrote an excellent in-depth breakdown of the timeline of that case and the evolution of NIL.

The NCAA vs. Alston case was important for an endless number of reasons, but one of the biggest is that the NCAA will from this point onward, forever fearful of future litigation. There’s a good reason behind that. Different schools across the country had to pay the $38 million legal tab when the NCAA lost the Alston case. Will the NCAA have the courage to reform NIL or just leave it as is? The problem is, if they reform NIL or make restrictions, changes, or revisions, it’s likely those changes will be challenged in court.