On April 25, the NCAA’s Commission on College Basketball dropped a 52-page report that doubled down on a lot of stuff that’s already wrong with the sport.
Condoleezza Rice says college athletes should be allowed to make money off their names, which is not what she said before
Rice’s Commission on College Basketball didn’t go nearly as far as she’s going now.
Photo by Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images
What’s wrong with college basketball, more than anything, is that players can’t get paid. That’s the starting point on the path to the government accusing a handful of coaches and agent types of criminal schemes that involve paying players under the table.
The chairwoman of the NCAA’s commission was Condoleezza Rice. Fifteen years after providing political cover for the Iraq War, Rice moved to shelter a different kind of scam from public criticism: NCAA amateurism. The commission report didn’t recommend allowing players to be paid, which was like a report on firefighting not recommending using water.
The report by Rice’s commission tossed around what’s often called the “Olympic model,” where players can get paid for their own name, image, and likeness. But it stopped short of endorsing it, or any other form of player pay.
The meat of what the commission said on the subject:
The Commission recommends that if the legal context changes or clarifies, the NCAA should remain open to rule changes addressing student-athletes and NIL. But, in the current legal circumstances, the Commission decided to address the charge of exploitation by providing individual student-athletes with access to professional opportunities, and ensuring that the student portion of student-athlete is real.
The NCAA has worried for years that allowing pay for players whose likenesses are used in video games, for instance, might lead to colleges having to pay their athletes for other things.
The commission said the NCAA “should remain open” to letting players get paid for their name, image, or likeness “if the legal context changes or clarifies.”
NCAA president Mark Emmert has already indicated he’s open to the Olympic model. That doesn’t mean anything on its own, because of how the organization is structured. Saying you’re open to something is insignificant in an organization that’s really just a nesting doll set of subcommittee after subcommittee. To make change, you have to push, for real.
Now, Rice says she and her commission believe something they didn’t say in the report: Players should be allowed to take that kind of money.
“We believe that students ought to be able to benefit from name, image and likeness but you can’t decide a program until you know the legal parameters,” Rice told USA TODAY Sports. “That was the point. I think some of the commentary suggested that we didn’t really speak on this issue. I think we did speak on this issue, it’s just that we understand there’s a legal framework that has to be developed first.”
Rice said she thought the commission’s report was “pretty clear” in its support of athletes being able to cash in once the various legal issues are resolved. But she maintains that the NCAA cannot do this while a pair of ongoing cases are pending.
”I think people may have looked at the fact that we said there’s a legal framework to be developed and said, ‘Oh, well, maybe they’re punting on this.’ Nobody was intending to punt on it.”
Rice says it was “pretty clear” from her group’s report that the commission supports players getting paid for their names. It would’ve been a lot clearer if the commission had written a sentence that says: “Players should be allowed to get paid for the use of their name, image, and likeness without losing their NCAA eligibility.”
That took me eight seconds to type. Why didn’t she just tell that to the NCAA?
See More:
