The pending House vs. NCAA settlement announcement will shake up college athletics and NIL in massive ways. The presiding judge appears close to approving the settlement after a lengthy litigation process, and when they do, it will set all sorts of new parameters for how NIL can be used.
One pressing question throughout the entire process has been what role the NCAA will eventually end up having when it comes to enforcing these new parameters, as the settlement would mandate some pretty sweeping changes.
NCAA President Charlie Baker recently gave everybody an answer to this longstanding question at an event hosted by the Knight Commission, essentially announcing that the NCAA will no longer be in the business of enforcing college amateurism.
Per Front Office Sports’ Amanda Christovich, Baker has announced that the individual power conferences will instead be responsible for implementing and enforcing the new NIL laws.
“The power conferences’ response to [the lawsuit] is to create an entity, the College Sports Commission,” Baker said. “The point behind that was to have an entity that would see the cap management system and the third party NIL system. Have rules associated with both. Create enforcement parameters for violating those rules under the rubric that would be the theoretical injunction.”
Many who have been tuned into the proceedings leading up to this point have seen this coming for a while, but to hear the president of the NCAA himself come out and confirm it all is still pretty jarring.
For almost 120 years, the NCAA has steadfastly committed to upholding its view of amateurism in college athletics. The implementation of NIL took so long precisely because the NCAA fought tooth and nail against student athletes earning money for so long.
Now, in the span of just four years, they’ve essentially thrown their hands up and given up whatever power they once had in the matter. It’s become very clear that the NCAA wants no part in dealing with NIL, and this stance could end up putting the nails in the coffin of the organization as a whole.
