Tuberville and Joe Manchin and the NIL

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Today, student-athletes, college and university administrators, athletic directors, and athletic conferences face uncertainty in a rapidly evolving NIL landscape. The arms race of NIL implementation has already far exceeded the original post-Alston intent of ensuring that players are equitably compensated for the use of their name, image, and likeness. A lack of clear, enforceable rules is creating an environment that potentially allows for the exploitation of student-athletes by unregulated entities, prioritizes short-term financial gain over careful investment in one’s career and the lifelong value of education, and diminishes the role of coaches, mentors, and athletic staff while empowering wealthy boosters. In short, we are rapidly accelerating down a path that leads away from the traditional values associated with scholastic athletic competition.

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Since 2019, at least eight federal NIL bills have been filed,.. Despite more than a half-dozen congressional hearings on the topic, NIL proposals in both the House and the Senate have failed to gain enough support to move through either body. In the past, Republicans and Democrats have disagreed on both the scope (broad vs. narrow) and concepts (permissive vs. restrictive) of an NIL bill.

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Tuberville and Manchin are in the infancy stage of gathering a framework for their potential legislation, and so it is too early to publicly comment on possible concepts, Tuberville says. “We are not getting involved with the [NIL] money. We want to get into some rules—who you can give money and how. Something like that,” he says. “We don’t know the direction this is going to take us. We want to come up with something that we can sell to both sides of the aisle.” The NCAA is hesitant to sanction programs over NIL because the association is “afraid of lawsuits,” Tuberville says, something SI explored.

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