NCAA adopts new rules regarding NIL, infractions
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Dan Murphy, ESPN Staff Writer
PHOENIX — The NCAA Division I Council voted Wednesday to adopt new rules designed to help athletes avoid unscrupulous agents and unfavorable terms in name, image and likeness contracts.
Starting in August, the NCAA will provide athletes with standardized contract recommendations for NIL deals and aggregated data to help schools and athletes have a more realistic picture of the going rates for endorsement deals. The association also plans to create a voluntary registry of credible and trusted agents that will be based largely on feedback from the athletes who have worked with them in the past.
“We don’t want to do anything to get into the way of student-athletes trying to activate their NIL rights, but we do want to assist them in essentially protecting themselves,” MAC commissioner and Division I Council vice chair Jon Steinbrecher said. The council voted on the new rules during the NCAA’s annual convention this week.
In addition, the council formally proposed new rules that, if passed, will be able to help facilitate deals between athletes and NIL collectives — a move that would likely return some degree of control over roster management back to athletic departments and teams on campus. The schools, and any associated NIL collectives, will still be prohibited from negotiating deals with recruits or transfers before they enroll.
The council is expected to vote on those proposed changes before the start of the next academic year after gathering feedback from school leaders.
While these changes represent a significant shift in NIL policy that previously tried to keep schools at a lengthy distance from endorsement activity, they may quickly become moot if the NCAA decides to adopt even more progressive rule changes in the coming year. Last month, NCAA president Charlie Baker proposed a far more dramatic new policy shift that would, among other changes, allow schools to pay athletes directly to promote their universities through name, image and likeness deals.
Baker’s proposal was designed to start a conversation rather than establish specific policies. The NCAA Division I board of directors is expected to vote later this week on whether to formally begin discussing those changes. If they decide to proceed, those changes could be in place as soon as fall 2024.
“We’ve only had a few conversations [about Baker’s proposal],” Steinbrecher said. “I don’t know why I’d be scared about any of this. Let’s focus on it. Let’s think about what it means to us and how we want to help craft this. But let’s move forward.”
Council members are optimistic that the rules put in place this week will remove some bad actors from the NIL marketplace. There is currently no comprehensive source of public data to provide a clear picture of how much athletes are making from their deals. Aggregate and anonymous data shared by all NCAA members — there is no plan to share the details of specific deals signed by athletes — could help both schools and athletes have a more realistic picture of what to expect when negotiating deals with companies and NIL collectives.
The standardized contract templates are not yet finalized, but are likely to include suggestions for terms of NIL deals, such as making sure no contracts last longer than an athlete’s college career or that an agent doesn’t take an exorbitant percentage of the proceeds.
Morgyn Wynne, an Oklahoma State softball player and one of two athletes on the Division I Council, said the rules adopted Wednesday are “extremely necessary” to help athletes navigate their endorsement options.
“We were very supportive of the things that were put out for student-athlete protections,” Wynne said. “I don’t believe that there really are any concerns that should follow any of those.”
Among other items, the council also voted Wednesday to adopt stiffer penalties for individuals who violate NCAA rules. Moving forward, coaches who are suspended will be required to stay away from their teams on days between games in addition to missing games themselves. Schools who hire coaches with show-cause penalties from past violations could receive penalties, and the NCAA plans to create a public database of individuals with a history of Level 1 or Level 2 violations.
Baker, who took over as the association’s president in March, is expected to address his proposed changes and other major issues in college sports at his first annual state-of-the-union style address to the convention Wednesday night.
ARLINGTON, Texas — Boston Red Sox designated hitter Rafael Devers became the first major leaguer to strike out 12 times in a season’s first four games.
Devers went 0-for-4 with two more strikeouts Sunday in Boston’s 3-2 loss to the Texas Rangers.
Devers’ latest mark for futility came a day after he became the first big leaguer to be fanned 10 times in the first three games of a season.
He’s 0-for-16, though he did draw a two-out walk in the ninth Sunday to keep the inning alive and put the potential tying run in scoring position.
The 12 strikeouts broke the previous record of 11 in the first four games, which had been done four times previously since 1901, according to SportRadar.
Brent Rooker of the Athletics struck out 11 times to open last season. The others were Atlanta’s Ronald Acuña Jr. in 2020, Minnesota’s Byron Buxton in 2017 and Houston’s Brett Wallace in 2013.
Devers is now solely the Red Sox DH after their offseason acquisition of third baseman Alex Bregman.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The two teams suing NASCAR over antitrust allegations said Wednesday in a filing that a countersuit against 23XI Racing, Front Row Motorsports and Michael Jordan’s manager is “an act of desperation” and asked that it be dismissed.
NASCAR’s countersuit contends that Jordan business manager Curtis Polk “willfully” violated antitrust laws by orchestrating anticompetitive collective conduct in connection with the most recent charter agreements.
23XI and Front Row were the only two organizations out of 15 that refused to sign the new agreements, which were presented to the teams last September in a take-it-or-leave-it offer 48 hours before the start of NASCAR’s playoffs.
The charters were fought for by the teams ahead of the 2016 season and twice have been extended. The latest extension is for seven years to match the current media rights deal and guarantee 36 of the 40 spots in each week’s field to the teams that hold the charters, as well as other financial incentives. 23XI — co-owned by Jordan — and Front Row refused to sign and sued, alleging NASCAR and the France family that owns the stock car series are a monopoly.
Wednesday’s filing claims that NASCAR’s counterclaim is “retaliatory” and “does not allege the facts necessary to state a claim.”
“NASCAR is using the counterclaim to engage in litigation gamesmanship, with the transparent objective of intimidating the other racing teams by threatening them with severe consequences if they support Plaintiffs’ challenge to the unlawful NASCAR monopoly,” the response says.
23XI and Front Row have requested NASCAR’s counterclaim be dismissed because it “fails at the threshold because it does not allege facts plausibly showing a contract, combination or conspiracy in restraint of trade.
“The counterclaim allegations instead show each racing team individually determining whether or not to agree to NASCAR’s demands through individual negotiations — the opposite of a conspiracy.”
The filing also defends Polk, who was specifically targeted in NASCAR’s counterclaim as the mastermind of the contentious two-year battle between the teams and the stock car series. NASCAR claimed in its countersuit that Polk threatened a team boycott of Daytona 500 qualifying races, but the teams argued Wednesday “there is no allegation that such a threatened boycott of qualifying races ever took place.”
“None of NASCAR’s factual claims fit into the very narrow categories of blatantly anti-competitive agreements that courts summarily condemn as per se unlawful,” the teams said.
Jordan, through a spokesperson, sent word to The Associated Press that Polk speaks for him and the NBA icon views any attack on Polk as “personal.”
NASCAR’s attorney has warned that a consequence of the 23XI and Front Row lawsuit could lead to the abolishment of the charter system outright — NASCAR argues it would be a consequence and not what NASCAR actually wants to do — and that 23XI first made this personal by naming NASCAR chairman Jim France in the original antitrust lawsuit.
The teams struck back at the threat to eliminate the charter system in Wednesday’s filing. It alleges it is an empty threat meant to scare the 13 organizations that did sign the charter agreements.
The claim also says Front Row should be dismissed from NASCAR’s countersuit because “NASCAR does not allege any specific conduct by Front Row or its owners or employees to support a claim that it participated in the alleged conspiracy.”
“The other allegations in the counterclaim against Front Row are all entirely conclusory or improper group pleading that seeks to lump in Front Row with 23XI Racing, Mr. Polk, and “others,” while never identifying what — if anything — Front Row Motorsports itself has done to purportedly participate in the alleged conspiracy.”
There is no deadline for a judge’s decision.
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