COLUMBUS, OHIO — Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith on Tuesday said he is against the Fair Pay to Play Act, which says colleges in California cannot punish their athletes for collecting endorsement money.
“My concern with the California bill — which is all the way wide open with monetizing your name and your likeness — is it moves slightly towards pay-for-play,” Smith said, “and it’s very difficult for us — the practitioners in this space — to figure out how do you regulate it. How do you ensure that the unscrupulous bad actors do not enter that space and ultimately create an unlevel playing field?
“One of our principles is try to create rules and regulations to try and achieve fair play.”
Smith is leading the NCAA’s working group that is examining options for NIL rights, which has representatives from all three NCAA levels. He said he couldn’t comment on what the working group is doing concerning the idea of collegiate athletes profiting off their likeness, but he did say that the group will submit its report to the NCAA board of governors on Oct. 29 in Indianapolis.
“When you think about this issue, you need to think about its complexity as it relates to the university of the membership,” Smith said.
“The NCAA is an organization that has taken a long time to try and modernize itself. Over the last five to eight years, improvements have been made in that space to become more modern. What we can’t have is situations where we have schools and or states with different rules for an organization that’s going to compete together. It can’t happen; it’s not reality. And if that happens, what we need is federal help to try and make sure we create rules and regulations for all of our memberships that are consistent. And if that doesn’t happen, then we’re looking at a whole new model.”
As a member of the working group, Smith said he couldn’t comment on if he would be in favor or not be in favor for players to profit off their likeness if it was regulated and on a national scale. Ohio State head coach Ryan Day say that he stood with Smith on the fair pay argument.