All winter athletes in NCAA Division I sports will be given an additional year of eligibility and all football programs will be allowed to compete in bowl games — regardless of their win-loss record — as part of one-time rules changes in response to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
The NCAA’s Division I Council voted to approve both measures this week during their annual meetings. Council chair Grace Calhoun, who is the athletic director at Penn, said they wanted to provide as much opportunity and flexibility to athletes as possible amid the uncertainty that is hanging over this year of college sports.
In a normal year, college football teams need to hit .500 to qualify for a postseason game. Calhoun said the council decided to drop that requirement in 2020 to “continue the theme of providing maximum flexibility.”
NCAA rule-makers previously voted to allow all spring sport athletes and fall sports athletes to maintain a year of eligibility no matter what portion of their season had been impacted by the pandemic. The same rule will apply for any athlete that participates in a sport in the upcoming winter season. Calhoun said the council didn’t want athletes opting to redshirt this year due to fears that their season might be cut short or otherwise be negatively impacted by coronavirus.
“We felt it was important to make this decision now so student-athletes had the peace of mind to go into this season and compete,” Calhoun told ESPN Wednesday evening. “They know they can regain that eligibility and have their clock automatically extended so they’re not taking that chance on the front end if they choose to compete.”
Council members also decided to push forward during this week’s meetings with two other rule changes that are likely to have a much larger long-term impact on college sports. The council intends to propose new rules that would dictate how athletes can make money from their name, image and likeness as well as a new rule that would allow all athletes to transfer schools one time without having to sit out a season.
The NCAA’s board of governors will vote this January on whether to officially adopt those proposals. The details of both proposals can be changed at any point in the next three months leading up to that vote.
Most NCAA sports already allow college athletes to switch schools without penalty. However, in football, men’s and women’s basketball, baseball and men’s ice hockey current rules dictate that a player has to sit for one season if he or she changes schools before graduating. The rule change would make it so those athletes in those five sports are also allowed to move schools once during their college sports career.
Calhoun said the rule proposal was met with “broad support and very little debate.” The biggest issue to be resolved with the transfer rule is whether they will implement a deadline for athletes to tell their current school that they intend to leave. Calhoun said there were multiple proposals on how to handle that detail. They ranged from players being allowed to transfer anytime they want to having separate deadlines for each season of sports or allowing an extended deadline for athletes when their coach leaves the program.
On the name, image and likeness(NIL) front, council members debated a proposal from the working group that has been assigned to come up with new rules as they continue to sort through some of the details of how college athletes will be able to make money in the future. A little more than a year ago, the NCAA’s board of governors told each division of the association to revise its rules that restrict athletes from making money by selling the rights to their NIL. Under pressure from state and federal lawmakers, the association is expected to vote on changes that would go into effect no later than next fall.
Federal or state lawmakers may also have a say in how much the NCAA is allowed to restrict the future earning power of college athletes. After college sports leaders asked for their help, several members of Congress have introduced pieces of legislation that address the changing landscape of college sports. State laws that have already passed could go into effect as soon as next summer if they are not preempted by federal legislation before then. NCAA leaders are hoping their proposed changes will work in concert with what Congress decides to pass in order to create a uniform set of rules that apply across the nation. Some members of Congress have expressed concern that the NCAA is unwilling to go far enough in expanding the rights and benefits of its college athletes.
Calhoun said the group is trying to be “as permissive as possible while making sure there is fairness and integrity in the process.” College leaders have said they are concerned that allowing an unrestricted market for college athlete endorsements would be used as thinly-veiled recruiting tools rather than matching the true market value of an endorsement. Calhoun said she is hoping that transparency and flexibility will help them manage some of the still unresolved issues with balancing those two objectives.
The rules changes proposed this week would allow athletes to be paid for signing autographs, teaching lessons or camps and appearing in commercials among other items, Calhoun said. Athletes would have to disclose any deals to the school. The NCAA will likely rely on a third-party administrator to organize those disclosures and look for any abnormalities, such as a payment that is clearly higher than the fair market value for a particular endorsement. It’s still not clear what consequences would follow a deal deemed to be inappropriate. Nor is it clear who would decide what is appropriate and how it would be decided.
“If there is sunshine on that, maybe that takes care of some of these abnormalities and things that might make some feel like this really was not a fair deal,” Calhoun said. “I’ll also acknowledge as much time as we’ve spent talking about this and contemplating how to draft the legislation, we also have said many times that these are the types of major changes that sometimes you have to live with a little bit and see where they work and where they don’t work. I don’t think anyone feels like even as we continue to refine the proposals before January that we’re going to have this 100% right. There is going to be a period of time where we have to see how it is implemented and what works well and what might have to be refined.”
The current proposal also would impose some restrictions on the types of companies that athletes would be allowed to endorse. Athletes would be prohibited from endorsing brands that go against NCAA values, such as alcohol, drugs, tobacco, gambling or adult entertainment.
Further restrictions could be left up to individual schools to decide. Some college sports administrators have previously suggested that college athletes shouldn’t be allowed to sign deals with companies that are direct competitors with brands that sponsor their school. For example, they believe an athlete at a school that wears Nike uniforms should not be able to sign a contract with a different shoe company.
Calhoun said this week’s discussions led her group to believe that each school should be allowed to make their own decision on how to handle potential conflicts between their sponsors and potential sponsors of their athletes. In that scenario, schools would be required to disclose their rules and restrictions to prospective athletes before they signed on to compete for that school.
“These conversations have been a long time in coming because there aren’t any easy answers,” Calhoun said. “But I think we’ve put forward a great package that will be refined by the membership over time. We’re headed in the right direction at least.”