The head of the National Collegiate Athletic Association is welcoming the possibility of Donald Trump and the executive branch weighing in on the name, image and likeness rules for college athletes.
Last week, I wrote about former college football coach Nick Saban’s meeting with Trump, in which he’s said to have urged Trump to take executive action to control the system that currently allows college athletes to earn money from their name, image and likeness (NIL). Saban has previously suggested today’s college athletes are too entitled, and he’s found an ally in Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, who’s also a former college football coach who has complained about the current system. It’s a pairing that raises doubts that any solution they propose will favor players rather than the colleges that rely on their labor. More recent news reports indicate that Trump is considering naming Saban and a billionaire Texas Tech booster to a commission on college athletics that could include NIL rules.
During a gathering on Monday, NCAA President Charlie Baker expressed openness to government involvement. According to The News & Observer of Raleigh, N.C.:
‘I think the fact that there’s an interest on the executive side on this, I think it speaks to the fact that everybody is paying a lot of attention right now to what’s going on in college sports,’ said Baker, a former Republican governor of Massachusetts. ‘There is a lot going on, that’s not all bad, and I’m up for anything that helps us get somewhere.’
On whether Trump or his commission’s involvement would bring about the NIL legislation that some NCAA officials have been seeking for years, Baker said, “I don’t have a crystal ball on that one, I don’t know." He added, “We do need some help at some point to create some clarity out of some of these issues in Washington. Creating clarity one lawsuit at a time is just a really bad way to try to move forward.”
So it looks like the NCAA is taking a different approach to Trump’s potential meddling in their institution. Where some organizations, like a handful of law firms, have resisted Trump’s edicts that attempt to dictate how they operate, the NCAA is “up for anything.”