For years, amateur level sports, and specifically the college level, has produced some of the biggest names and stars in recent times. Johnny Manziel, Tim Tebow, Bo Jackson, Reggie Bush, and the more recent Trevor Lawrence, were all top college athletes over their careers, some contending for, and even winning, the most prestigious college awards, including college championships.  Each of these athletes, as a result of their efforts, excellence and performance captivated the college sports fan base and can be considered the faces of the NCAA at their respective times.

Besides the competition level, one of the only separations between amateur sports and professional sports is the ability to market your name and make profit off your own name. Basically, it will almost always be prohibited for amateur level athletes to make any money or profit off their name before they get to the professional level; professional athletes can only market their name for profit.

While it seems preposterous, student athletes can actually suffer criminal penalties for simply earning a dollar!  In accordance with 15 USCS §1,  amateur athletes who accept contracts, profits, bribes, money, or any form of conspiracy are deemed illegal and those who do not follow this statute could possibly face up to 10 years in prison. And for years, the NCAA has followed this rule very strictly and has come down hard on those who have challenged this rule.  With 10 years in prison, this statute can come off as more aggressive than even the most heinous crimes.

For example, Reggie Bush, a former University of Southern California star running back for their football team, was one of the most marketable and most well-known 20-year-olds in the country. Reggie won the Heisman Trophy (College Football’s MVP award) and the National Championship in 2005 and then went on to have a good career in the NFL.  In 2010, news broke that Reggie Bush had received “improper funds,” such as free airfare, a rent-free home for Reggie’s family, and even money from a sports agent who wanted to represent Reggie throughout his future career. The NCAA sanctioned USC by vacating their 2005 National Championship and Reggie was forced to vacate his Heisman Trophy for accepting “improper funds.”

THIS RULE MUST BE CHANGED! The NCAA should allow for amateur athletes to profit off their own name, regardless of being a professional or not. Reggie Bush’s vacated award can be an example of why the NCAA needs to modernize the rules and regulations. Hypothetically, let’s present a situation in 2005– Reggie Bush is a huge family man and doesn’t want to attend college far from his family. Mentally that can be a lot of a young man who is experiencing the first big change in his life. From one standpoint, if the agent who put up Reggie’s parents did do that, the world may never have known who Reggie Bush was.  Frankly, had Reggie not received such treatment, he may have never achieved everything he did at USC and may never have won the Super Bowl with the New Orleans Saints in 2009.

According to USA Today, the federal court slammed the NCAA for the ruling against USC and Reggie Bush for potentially “predetermining” a decision against Bush and USC. It remains to be seen what will happen in the future with the NCAA and the former Heisman Trophy Winner, but one would suggest that USC will be re-awarded the 2005 National Championship and Reggie Bush will be the first athlete to have the Heisman Trophy rightfully re-awarded to the USC alumni.

In 2020, Alston v. NCAA (In re NCAA Ath. Grant-In-Aid Cap Antitrust Litig.), 958 F.3d 1239, (2020) , The district court properly applied the Rule of Reason in determining that the NCAA’s enjoined rules that restricted the education-related benefits that its member institutions could offer student-athletes were unlawful restraints of trade under §1 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. §1, as the student-athletes carried their burden by showing that the restraints produced significant anticompetitive effects within the relevant market for student-athletes’ labor, only some of the challenged NCAA rules served the procompetitive purpose of preserving amateurism and thus improving consumer choice by maintaining a distinction between college and professional sports, and the student-athletes showed that any legitimate objectives could be achieved in a substantially less restrictive manner.

Essentially the NCAA, just did away with this rule and deemed 15 USC §1 unlawful. From that point on, future amateur college athletes are able to make profit off their names. For the former college athletes who were not allowed to profit from their name and never made the professional level, I feel pity. At that point in their life, those athletes were at the height of their career and would have made money that might have potentially changed their lives even without the professional level. It seems like the NCAA essentially “robbed” those former athletes of that potential financial freedom, and I can clearly see future lawsuits upcoming against the NCAA.

According to the Washington Post, a new bill being introduced explicitly states that the NCAA, conferences and schools have no power to restrict or limit athletes’ rights to profit off their NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness), either individually or as a group, and there’s no cap on the amount of money athletes can earn. It would allow athletes to use sports agents to help negotiate agreements and use a “collective representative to facilitate group licensing agreements or provide representation for college athletes,” again prohibiting any interference from schools, conferences or the NCAA. And it threatens penalties or legal action if any of those entities meddle with an athlete pursuing NIL opportunities.

The future athletes of the world will reap the benefits of their NIL and the NCAA can do nothing about it. Once this passes the college sports world will forever be changed. The amateur sports level will never reach the height of professional sports, but in essence amateur level sports will eventually have the same camaraderie as the professionals now that athletes can profit off their NIL. This not only affects the individual athletes, but this also affects the colleges as now, the bigger campuses can throw around their money power to convince the “next big college superstar” to come to their campus. Thus, a structure of power between colleges that have money and have more power than other campuses is most likely going to be born, which could also change the course of college sports and college campuses forever.

In the hopes of the passing of this bill, to allow college athletes to profit off their NIL, sports itself is forever changed as the corporate side of this and the money side of the sports begins to take over. Sports Management will never be the same again either as the agents and managers of the sports world will now be interconnected with uncharted territory of advertising college athletes. Sports Management of athletes will now become one of the major components into finding, developing, and marketing younger stars of the sports and with hope, college sports and American sports as a whole will expand its popularity into undocumented waters and that can only help build up the sports world.