Oregon Governor Kate Brown signed a new bill early Tuesday afternoon that will have lasting effects on the college sports landscape.
Senate Bill 5, better known as the NIL (Name, Image and Likeness) Bill, gives Oregon student-athletes the right to financially benefit from their own name, image and likeness. Previously, student-athletes were prohibited from receiving any compensation outside of narrow NCAA stipulations.
The bill is expected to come into effect in Oregon on Thursday, July 1, 2021, along with NIL laws in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, New Mexico and Texas. Nebraska and Oklahoma already have NIL laws in effect and at least 10 other states (including California) will join the NIL party at later dates.
Schools themselves will not pay players – on the contrary, student-athletes can now receive payment from third-party institutions in exchange for using their names, pictures or likenesses. These are opportunities that current non-athletic scholarship students already have.
For many major sports like soccer, this will expand the set of tools coaches can use to recruit players.
The University of Oregon and its student-athletes will have many opportunities to take advantage of this new law. From program donors to businesses near and far, the scope of the possibilities for using the NIL is quite vast.
For example, the school’s long-standing relationship with clothing giant Nike has already paid off in recruiting and retaining players. UO built its football program into a national powerhouse through the huge donations and marketing force of Nike, which will likely be a significant third-party entity that players could use for monetary gain.
The NIL problem has increased in the varsity athletics world since the discontinuation of the popular NCAA Football and NCAA Basketball video games from Electronic Arts – where players were represented, but without any compensation. EA has publicly stated that it plans to bring back NCAA football in the years to come.
While individual states have prepared their own NIL bills over the past few years, there is still no federal NIL law to govern the entire landscape of college athletics. So the NCAA drafted its own interim NIL policy last week, which is should be approved Wednesday June 30.
This provisional project came about following a unanimous decision Supreme Court judgment against the NCAA, in which restrictions on student-athlete education spending were shown to violate antitrust law.
In that decision, the separation of amateur collegiate sports and non-sporting advantage was an important domino in the player compensation process.
One player, University of Wisconsin quarterback Graham Mertz, has already created his own personal brand in anticipation of upcoming changes to NIL. Many more are expected to follow suit in the weeks and months to come.
This law allows players to monetize themselves through third party opportunities. It is designed to prevent student-athletes from being unable to support themselves while in school, as very few college athletes go pro.
With this bill, UO can double the efforts that have made the university one of the most recognizable brands in the country, while providing more meaningful opportunities than ever for its student-athletes.
