Game Changer: The New NCAA NIL Rules

uh thank you yes trying to make hello guys okay so it is i think is do [Music] the columbus metropolitan club was founded in 1976 by 13 women leaders who wanted to be included in the community conversation i am sally bloomfield and i was one of those 13 women having been left out of men's clubs that focused on community issues it was a priority for us to make the club 100 inclusive today cmc presents public policy forums every wednesday at lunch with average attendance of more than 200 people i'm tony bell and i frequently attend forums which are open to everyone and present relevant current and newsworthy topics i'm grateful that cmc is nonpartisan and presents many perspectives on every topic i'm jane scott president and ceo of the columbus metropolitan club cmc's open to everyone we invite you to explore the personal and professional benefits awaiting you at the metropolitan club welcome to cmc welcome to cmc welcome to cmc welcome to cnc good afternoon everyone and welcome to the columbus metropolitan club i'm doug buchanan i'm a member of the cmc board of trustees and editor-in-chief of columbus business first it's my pleasure to welcome our in-person audience today and to say hello to all of you watching via our live stream let's begin by meeting our new cmc members today we have charles hill with the columbus urban league michael kinney caitlyn mcneish with cusatech and megan wonsick with the ohio i'm sorry with the osteopathic heritage foundation welcome to cmc let's give them all a big welcome like to invite you to join cmc as well at just 16.95 a month for individuals membership is an investment in yourself professionally and in our community your membership also supports the not perform not-for-profit columbus metropolitan club cmc members like you inspire our wednesday forums and are a critical part of the community conversation and we thank you thank you as well to today's forum sponsors porter wright morris and arthur llp and with support from the columbus dispatch today's okay let's give them a round of applause as well of course today's cmc live streaming is presented by the emergency response fund of the columbus foundation and in partnership with the columbus dispatch and pnc thank you to them as well we would also like to thank you those of you who purchased a virtual seat for today's forum we're grateful for your continued support you can learn more about cmc register for events join or renew your membership purchase a virtual seat or make a donation anytime at columbusmetroclub.org all right on to today's forum with the sweeping changes to the ncaa's name image and likeness rules big changes are coming to the world of college sports ohio governor mike dewine recently signed an executive order allowing college athletes to earn revenue using their name image and likeness so are amateur athletes still amateurs if they can sign contracts like the pros what does this mean for athletes teams families sponsors and higher education and will high school athletics be next our expert panel will dissect the issues and the implications of these game-changing new rules introducing our panel today will be bob tannis managing partner with porter wright morrison arthur llp and you can find more about each of today's panelists in your forum flyer and online bob podium is yours [Applause] thanks doug for that introduction and and thank you to the columbus metropolitan club and its leadership for putting on these great programs and these great forums porter wright is very pleased to sponsor today's program and we're excited about uh to hear what the panelists say um porter wright is a full-service law firm started in 1846 so we're celebrating our 175th year as a firm this year excited about that we have offices in eight offices in ohio chicago pennsylvania florida and washington dc so with regard to to our our sports law practice you know i met luke over five years ago and sort of immediately fell in love with his energy and passion and i know that for those of you who know him will feel the same and and and we'll get that today at the time that we started talking about our developing a sports law practice really our goal was to become one of the country's leading law firms representing athletes before during and after their sports careers to get there we really saw the importance of education as a really important foundation to the work to the work we do alongside with our legal representation today porter wright represents high school college professional retired athletes in all of the major sports across the country so uh we're well on our way in terms of uh having that that national reputation so as uh if you know luke as he's often fond of saying let's do this so let me introduce the panelists uh luke fedlam who's president of sports uh anomaly sports group and chair of the porter right sports law practice next to him is kristen ronea who's the director of compliance at the ohio high school athletic association and roger ingles who's ceo of executive management uh partners um and then also our host today is roger aller who's the columbus sports uh uh columnist the columbus dispatch sports columnist so uh i will turn it over to you rob [Applause] good afternoon we're going to have an interesting and fun time this afternoon listen to these experts need to start where everything does start with nil it seems on twitter i a recent twitter poll responded to the question what is amateurism now and and does it exist 47 of the respondents said no such thing that amateur athletics nearly half no such thing 20 percent pre-college you're an amateur if you're pre-college and then 33 percent was anything without a hard salary hourly or salary so if you're not getting paid directly to play that would be amateurism so we're going to start with the hardball question first for the three panelists what would you say amateurism is is it change is it what it always was what's your views on amateur athletics take it away luke okay so we're going to be here for the next hour talking about amateurism and what it is um but no i think probably the um the the best way to articulate amateurism at this point is i think it's a bit different right than pro athletes in the sense that pro athletes get compensated for their performance on in their sport right so they earn compensation for actually performing in their sport and i would say that amateurism is where you have athletes who are not being compensated for their actual performance you know they may do deals that make them professionals and we'll get into the name image and likeness side of things where players may do deals that they get paid and they become business professionals but as it relates to their sport not receiving compensation is a great place to start in my mind that's a great perspective luke from the perspective of the ohio high school athletic association um just a little bit of background we are a non-profit voluntary organization of ohsa schools um so they elect to become members and our rules are created based on a membership vote so i actually have the definition that i'll be sharing with you that our member schools have decided um as it relates to amateurism so an amateur athlete is one who participates in activities of his or her sport for the purpose of derisi deriving the physical mental and social benefits organized sports competition has to offer and not for any present or future commercial gains since the student is considered a member of the student body a clear line of distinction between educationally based athletics and professional sports must exist and be maintained at all times so exactly what you said we want student athletes at the high school level to really be engaging in sports for those benefits that intersclassic athletics can provide for them and not for any payment or that sort of thing but that could certainly be changing here in the next coming year so we'll talk about that here shortly getting to the question of amateurism and is it around i don't think true amateurism has been around for quite a while if you've been following the olympics there's 13 athletes that have won medals at the olympics that entitle them to 315 000 in compensation from the olympic committee all those have college athletic eligibility left and all of them are okay under old rules to take that prize money so i think our definition of amateurism at the college level has changed tremendously over the last several years and the olympics have been one place where that has happened great so i was a ohio state sprinter back back back in the day 30 30 uh 35 years and 40 pounds ago as i like to say and uh i would love to have had nil back then but uh where where does it stand everyone thinks football basketball but i guess 53 percent of the nil so far has come from outside football and men's and women's basketball so over half is the what you would call olympic sports in my day we call them minor sports you can't call them that anymore i don't think so um where is the opportunity for the non-football and non-basketball for you you guys can comment on that from my perspective i i would say that social media absolutely changes the game um for those minor uh minor sports as you so referred to um these student athletes can accumulate followings um which are in the hundreds of thousands even and millions um especially in a sport like gymnastics where they do these routines that really get that social interaction engagement so i think that changes the game and really opens up that door for student athletes in any sport to be able to recognize these opportunities from nil and i'll say too i think it's important that we actually understand really what nil is right so name image and likeness it's the ability for a student athlete to license their name image and likeness to a third party in order to receive compensation right so that's kind of the technical definition but the way the ncaa i.e college sports uh uh generally have kind of talked about name image and likeness is actually more than that right it's it's the ability now for student athletes to earn compensation in ways that they haven't been able to earn compensation before so yes you might have the situation of a student athlete licensing their name image and likeness in a traditional sports marketing type of agreement that we all see pro athletes doing that we're familiar with but it's also the opportunity for student athletes to start non-profits to start entities for-profit entities to sell a product or a service to do speaking engagements appearances to do more than just the traditional sports marketing type of agreements and so because of that it opens itself up and lends itself to much more than just your traditional kind of revenue producing sports that we would that we would assume and you know um to kristin's point if you look at i think it was 2019. i don't know if the numbers are out yet for 2020 but the the college sports team that had the highest social media engagement across the country was ucla women's gymnastics team and so understanding that unders and thinking about social media as a starting point for name image and likeness or at least one of the primary starting points for name image and likeness shows you how that engagement by athletes is is what's important not just necessarily the sport that they that they play or even necessarily the number of followers they have brands are looking for the engagement that they actually have with their following yeah and i would just add that uh every student athlete has a following okay they all different size but they all have a following it may be a family it may be their local community uh as they progress at the higher levels it's you know a buckeye nation it's it's other groups but everyone has a following that they can appeal to and therefore everyone has the possibility to be creative and innovative and come up with some sort of nil program or uh process that can afford them the opportunity to make money did start to take place you saw these posts on social media of i am a division three baseball player i want um to put out there that i give businesses my permission to use my name image and likeness please contact me so so students recognize that immediately and wanted to put that out there we just had a front page story on ohio state football players signing autographs for for pay i'm just curious you guys are the experts um if you're a college athlete do you what's the best way to proceed do you dive in do you wait and see what would be your advice for uh you can break it down too if you want football or you know lacrosse how would you go about it what's what's the key and central to this the most important thing because we've seen football players make deals that were pennies on the dollar when they first jumped in and now i'm wondering do they regret that i i think if if all of us in this room said you know what so so as roger said we all have a followings you know if you want to follow me i'm at luke fedlam just as a side note um increase my nil value but um but but what i'll say is if all of us in this room had the opportunity right to do name image and likeness we would all have to figure it out for ourselves in the sense of do i want to do it if i do want to do it how do i want to engage in it and i think that's the question that student athletes are facing because a lot of times from the outside looking in we assume that all student athletes want to participate in name image and likeness and that's actually not the case some want to focus really on their sport others want aren't sure how they might engage so if i'm if i'm answering your question you know i want to make that broad statement first that that there has to be a decision as to whether i want to engage and how i want to do that and if i do decide that i want to engage there are a lot of different ways it depends on what do i want to do with the name image and likeness if i want to do autograph signings or you know just make as much possible money as i can you know then there's a path of doing that if it's that i want to make or engage in valuable opportunities to me and limit my engagement so that my time can still focus on my studies and on my sport and my performance within my sport and so maybe i only want to take certain um activities or name image and likeness opportunities then my path might be a little bit different but i think the key here is that this is really up to the individual student athlete to go through that process for themselves to figure out if and how i want to engage in name image and likeness i would add uh rob with that too is that a lot of student athletes right now are asking uh questions about what can i do what can't you know what what does this allow me to do and i think it's it's important that the colleges and the universities set up a strong education program if they can't do it themselves and bring in an outside source there are some great companies out there i know luke is aware of one but there are companies out there that work both on the university side in terms of educating student athletes and what it is they're allowed to do versus those that work with the student athlete trying to to find promotional opportunities for them the the big question that i think a lot of people have asked is you know how much these student athletes understand about what they're getting into do they understand tax laws do they understand the role of a contract and what that does for them and what when they do make a deal what's it what's that do uh to them uh liability wise so i think there's a lot more to it than you know just the student athletes saying hey there's great opportunities and we have to be creative and innovative to find ways they've got to find ways to we have to find ways to educate those kids into doing things the right way luke you had a great if you want to share it you had a great little uh story there with the car do you want to can you share that just as an example of the the lack of information or knowledge that's out there sure so you know we were talking at the table earlier and just share this into rogers point about you know student athletes really don't understand a lot of this we were speaking to a um doing an engagement with the power five school and their basketball program and we were on zoom presenting to the team their coaching staff and then we also had uh parents on the zoom as well and the question came up by by one of the student athletes uh they said hey um what about car deals how do car deals work like i might want to do that and so i asked like does anybody in here kind of know how a a car deal in a traditional kind of sports marketing type of scenario how it works and nobody really knew how it works and so i shared about how it's typically a lease it's for you know usually a year maybe two years and the owner of the dealership will pay those make those lease payments and they're like that sounds great i'm like yeah it does until we start talking about the fact that you get taxed right on those on what they paid on your behalf right so that's one thing and then two insurance let's talk about insurance because you're not they're not leasing you the 29 version 2009 version right of a beat up card they're gonna lease for you a 2021 a 2022 model and you're a college student so your insurance is gonna be through the roof and the best part of the conversation was they said okay well i'm on my parents insurance so my parents are gonna just pay right and the parents are on the zoom like no we're not right and i think that just gets to the point that people like there is so much education that has to occur i mean just with all of us right it's new it's new to college athletic departments it's new to parents it's definitely new to the student athletes it's new to the coaches so there has to be some education to help prepare them so that student athletes end up in a better spot when they leave school since we know 98 of them are not going pro that they're in a better spot when they leave school than when they started do there also need to be guard rails that that term has been thrown out does it does the congress need to get involved in this or is it the opinion of you three that it is individual by conference by school by state how do you think how how do you see this playing out and what how does it need to play out again does there need to be a federal i don't know i guess federal regulations to keep this thing a level playing field yeah let's start with that uh yes there has to be guardrails and no the ncaa is not going to do anything until congress acts okay the ncaa basically threw their hands up and says okay you guys wanted it you got it you figure it out that's basically what the policy says the congress is going to either have to give the ncaa an anti-trust exemption which is what they're asking for and that's what they've been working on or they're going to have to pass federal legislation on nil that is in place across all 50 states because right now you have a number of states that have have nil legislation and a number that don't and the ncaa has told those states that do not have nil you guys figure it out at the school level okay so you're putting the fox in charge of the hen house in some cases is they can figure it out but until that happens on a federal level we're going to continue to have this wild wild west mentality out there where everybody's trying to do their own thing and nobody really knows what they can and cannot do do you think legal action no matter what happens is going to continue even even if the federal government steps in we're not going to see the end of of legal action correct no and in fact uh i think the one of the latest cases with the supreme court just filed some amendments lawyers just filed amendments citing the case or the comments from the austin case which took away the ncaa basically took away the ncaa's anti-trust standing that they've been living off of for the last 30 some years and i think lawsuits and law firms like porter wright are going to play a big role in this as we move forward just tell everybody that we'll keep that going that would be great but but i will say i think it is important right you you've got to there will be a national standard because let's let's just look at the last eight months right so we're august third today right so since january first of this year we went from a place where that next week the ncaa was supposed to vote on their name image and likeness regulations that their working group had worked on for a couple years so we thought okay we're going to have a national ncaa imposed rules on name image and likeness on january 11th the couple days before they were supposed to vote the department of justice said hey don't take that vote because we think that there are some significant antitrust issues here so then it went to states now saying okay well florida is supposed to go into effect july 1st so now we need to make sure that we catch up so that we aren't left behind in a recruiting and retention battle right so for student athletes so now states are all coming in and so at the last minute we all saw it in june and may and june where states either through executive order or through past state legislation said okay we're gonna we're gonna do this and we all thought it was gonna be a state-by-state issue and then because of the ncaa versus austin decision the ncaa said we're gonna take a step back and schools it's on you and so now we're in a place where we thought it was going to be a national plan with the ncaa then we thought it was going to be state by state and now it's literally an institution by institution you ca there there can't be a competitive balance if what we're looking for is competitive equity we can't have that if every single school has their own plan because to to the point earlier it is in certain respects the fox guard and the hen house because who's actually doing the enforcement because the ncaa is not doing the enforcement when it comes to name image and likeness because it's a school policy and therefore ultimately for schools to say hey we're that this recruiting you know kind of battle that we're all in is fair there's got to be a national standard okay you're talking in some ways about unintended consequences here uh and this one's for kristen this question uh you've got quinn ewers has given up his his senior year high school in texas to come to ohio state that's probably an unintended consequence um you're at ohsa how do you deal with this where what is your opinion on this and the other you guys can chime in after she's finished absolutely so from from a high school perspective the biggest tangible thing that i'm able to point to is there's going to be a big discrepancy now between schools that elect to become members of their state association and schools that don't as in prep schools because now these prep school coaches are able to sell to these student athletes hey you can come to our school we don't have any amateurism guidelines you're going to be able to make hundreds of thousands of dollars if you come play for us where if you stay at your local public school or local non-public school that you grew up in you can't do those same things anymore so it's really going to draw students away from those interscholastic opportunities that they have which is a difficult thing to digest previously those ncaa standards will level across the the playing field but because those have gone away now those prep schools and non-state-affiliated schools really on a different level so we've not had a year to experience that yet um but i will say this upcoming school year there's going to be a lot of engagement with our member schools to see how do we want to address this moving forward because what i guess kind of contrary to what you said roger we want our member schools being the ones to make these rules we don't want our state legislators to force the forces upon our member schools obviously they have excellent insights and and are going to be included in those conversations but um we really want our member schools to be the ones who are making these rules that our their student athletes are abiding by i would add kristin at the ncaa created this mess by part of their interim policy is that prospective student athletes can participate in nil so that opens the door for school for kids that are at schools that are you know the parochial or the non-public schools uh to participate and i think right now i believe there's only one state that allows it uh for a student-athlete at the high school level participate and uh as you mentioned earlier they can't participate using the high schools logos or images or trademarks but they can participate in california and it seems like california is the state that kind of kick starts everything i mean they were the ones that kind of kick-started the legislation on the nil to begin with and now they've kind of kick-started it a little bit to create a rush at the high school level i think it's important too to be honest about where we're at though as well right and it's easy to to make to point out a particular individual that you know could make a lot of money and so he's forgoing kind of his senior year but he's met all the academic requirements to be able to graduate early we've seen that before name image and likeness student athletes have been able to do that before stu before name image and likeness even became a thing student athletes have been able to you know if we're talking about football have been able to finish their high school senior year season graduate so that in january they can enroll in the school that they want to go play in so we've already seen this before that has happened so now the difference is we're talking about dollar amounts associated or potentially foregoing their last year of playing at the high school level but what we're going to be talking about for those who do that is typically those elite of the elite who will have the opportunity to who really want to enroll as early as they can so that they can get the training the development and be one year closer to make it making it to the pros right i mean that's partially what it comes down to especially on the football side so yes money is involved and that changes things but at the same time this isn't something that is just brand new because of name image and likeness it's been around and been happening for a while isn't that part of the the issue though is that we have we have viewers who's like the one percent that can do this but that doesn't mean 50 percent think they can't right there's there's the there's the danger it's who's in your ear who's who are you talking to who's counseling you this is where education comes in on another level what are your thoughts on on on that is do you foresee i guess try to project and speculate here where do you see it headed and yeah so so to to that point it's it's actually a great point right because we know statistics have shown that only two percent of college athletes play professionally but when polled and i think the last time i saw this was 2018 or 2016 over 50 think they can play professionally right so so you've got this already this kind of tension there um and whatnot but at the end of the day i mean that's that's that's a bit about what college should be about right we know we know the money that's in college sports and we could talk about that for uh the rest of the year every wednesday at noon for the rest of the year we can talk about the money in sports but we don't have that time and we won't get that programming but the the key though i think is to to recognize that um this is this is this is what college is supposed to be about educating and preparing young people for the next step in their life if their next step in their life is to be a computer programmer great college should prepare them for that if their next step in life is to be a professional athlete great college should help prepare them for that and give them the education the skills necessary to be able to be successful as they navigate on these waters i truly believe that name image and likeness is a conduit to provide meaningful real-world education to young people who might otherwise not care about it right if we're being honest if we can now say hey you should take this um digital storytelling class you should take this marketing class now because it could impact you and how you could potentially earn money then absolutely let's use name image and likeness as a way to get that education to young people who need it most there seems to be you know two levels here there's a skies falling outside and there's nothing to see here aside let's take this down to the the locker room level how is it going to affect team chemistry uh i know that that's been a lot that kind of gets talked about around the water cooler or whatever is that you know the offensive left tackle or right tackle uh gets x and the quarterbacks making 10 times that how does that affect does the tackle just not block as well that seems like a crazy thought but i mean you hear that out there there's all kinds of stuff you know being talked about is that a legitimate concern in terms of maybe not with uh you know in the nfl with 30 35 year olds who are mature but with an 18 year old if it does come down to the high school level a 19 year old freshman in college is there so much money that they just it's not a big deal or is there potential for this being a big deal who wants to tackle that one uh yeah the potential is there to be very disruptive i mean urban meyer was one of the leading proponents against nil for a long time here at ohio state and part of it is is that the the complaints you hear from coaches is it's going to upset the locker room it's going to create uh culture issues it's going to you know create the haves and have-nots within our own team uh that's something you know coaches have been dealing with culture issues for a long time it's gonna it's gonna be a factor in recruiting let's face it when nick saban stands up in front of the texas high school coaches knowing that he can't use nil as an inducement to attract kids to alabama but says hey my incoming freshman quarterback has got a deal for you know almost seven figures already hasn't played it down you know it's going to be used kids are going to end up going to places where they think they can make money and the transfer portal is going to explode because you know what you make a whole lot more money when you're starting than when you're back up and you know the situation ohio state i hope those four kids all stay here and all graduate in that quarterback room right talented kids but when they see somebody making this money and they're starting and i'm fourth string and i have an opportunity to go someplace else where maybe i can get a little bit of that pie you know what's going to happen and the transfer portal has already made it easy so that's part of that locker room culture is how do you keep kids involved in your program how do you keep them from leaving and there's good and bad i mean i've seen both sides of it rob i i was not a proponent of it at all for the longest time and now i see that you know student athletes should have this opportunity uh but how we how we control it is is still up in the air i mean that's that's the question i think one of the unintended consequences too that people aren't talking about is how these contracts with these student athletes are going to impact the relationship they have with the school that they're attending so at the college level there's all of these endorsement deals and contracts with what's what sport uniforms you have to wear that's not necessarily as exclusive at the high school level and if a student enters into a contract that says i have to display something on my uniform the current law in ohio says it's okay as long as it doesn't conflict with a contract already signed by the university or college so if that high school doesn't potentially have that same sort of contract are we going to have student athletes with little emblems on their uniform because it's not in conflict so it's really important the way that these rules are written to consider all those different factors because now you have a family who is fighting against a school because my contract says i'm allowed to wear this emblem but you're not letting me put it on your school uniform yeah i i think the locker room question is an important one but i think sometimes it's blown out of proportion um locker rooms have been um you've had the starters the stars the people who always get all the press attention media attention the interviews after games and things like that so coaches have had to deal with that issue in the locker room you know forever right um and so let's not let's not discount the also the players themselves and their um kind of how they view the value of what they're actually doing every day are they going to say i'm not going to block him because he's making money and i'm not no right especially if they're part of that 50 to think they can go pro um so they want as much you know as good of film as possible and all that and they're they're performers that's what they do they perform on the field that's what that's what they're there for but the other part is this it's the coaches job it's their job they get paid a lot of money in 42 of the 50 states the highest paid state employee is a is a college basketball or football coach right so so we know that they get paid a lot of money so guess what for that money this is another part of your job deal with it figure it out educate right you're getting paid big big bucks to do that so it's part of your job make it happen sorry i got a little fired up that's what we're that's what we're here for uh how about back to before we we move on here with questions uh level playing field roger you talked about it does ohio state in columbus almost 2 million people opportunities how much of an advantage is that to a even a purdue or a place any or a smaller school is does nil does or nil as we're calling it now i guess uh does that just make the rich get richer well we're already dealing with that i mean the rich we have you know top five programs in the country you know texas georgia oklahoma ohio state alabama they're already rich and they're already getting richer i mean so does it give the others an opportunity to compete yes but i think it's something that that is just part of college athletics right now you know where i'm mostly concerned is is what's it do to the really the small schools who just went through budget cuts who just cut programs who cut coaches and now are looking at i've got to have compliance for nil and how do i do this and they can't afford to hire the outside groups i can't afford to hire a staff member like you know tennessee or stanford or whoever does uh that's where the difference is going to be it's going to be in how they are able to best serve their student athletes great okay so it is cmc's tradition to take audience questions this is the fun part uh jane scott of cmc is curating questions from the live stream audience and for in-house audience that's you please keep your questions brief and to a point and have it be a question not a statement what is our first question yes some really good ones roger blackwell does the institution in which the student is enrolled have a right to a portion of what the student receives and i guess the other piece of that question if i can if i can expand on roger these kids are getting scholarships and now they're making a million bucks do they forfeit their scholarship there's no uh the university can't be a part of their uh arrangement but what they can do is they can sign a an agreement with a company like brander that allows or open source that is dealing in group deals where the university allows the student athletes to use their trademark images and their their university marks but the universities you know for instance uniform sales the student athlete will get a could get a cut off of those now okay with their name and their numbers which they couldn't do before but the university can make money from that group deal but not from just a separate single individual deal to student athlete has yeah i'll just add to that real quick that's absolutely right schools will only be able to share and what a student athlete makes to the extent that the school is a school that allows the licensing of their marks and students to be involved with that and therefore they would simply just receive their ongoing uh compensation as it relates to the license of their mark hi i'm bill lafayette i own re-genomics i'm an economist and my question is there's a tremendous potential it seems to me for these young people to get scammed and exploited and i'm wondering if we've thought that through and if there are good ways to prevent that from happening um i would say that some people have thought that through um and it's a very much a reality and we have we're having those conversations all the time but the i think the challenge is is that the way this all came about with name image and likeness in in providing defense of the institutions themselves um they were told the you know literally a couple days before july 1st that they had to come up with their school's policy because you know following the supreme court ruling and different things the ncaa was saying we're not going to come up with the solution um in schools you have to so that's a lot to deal with right so you've got covid that schools are still trying to figure out and how do we continue to have a season and plan for the fall you know dealing with now this new name image and likeness that as a school we have to figure out what's our policy um there are legal components to that significant legal components as well as trying to think about the pressure from coaches and others to make sure that it is something that is favorable to student athletes so that they can recruit student athletes that also because of the transfer portal they can retain their student athletes and not lose them to another school so so there's a lot going on there that's not an excuse it's just offered up in defense of what's been happening but we've been kind of shouting from the mountaintops because having worked with pro athletes and seeing how pro athletes have been taken advantage of it's very easy to see and there have been many articles written about the number of companies that have just popped up just because of name image and likeness and people who want think that you know they can come up with deals for players and they're i'm gonna find you the best deals you know in uh in columbus and things along those lines and try to get players to sign with them so absolutely there is a high opportunity for student athletes to be taken advantage of and the only way that you combat that is with education i would echo that as well when this legislation passed there was a lot of influx of messages to our association of how does this impact high school athletes the current answer right now is none but we have had those name image and likeness companies who are trying to do things the right way who reach out to us to get that clarification so they know how to work with ohio athletes unfortunately that doesn't happen with every company which is why that education piece and just exercising an appropriate amount of due diligence hopefully the parents can help guide these student-athletes through that process but takes a lot of education so there are a lot of good questions mary urina asked with social media available to all college students why are the resources of a university about nil education only in the context of student athletes wouldn't all students benefit and i guess i would ask another question we had a forum a few years ago about the esports and those folks were exploiting the hack out of all the promotion and advertising and it doesn't seem like they even fit into this mold at all i i would say that there is a lot of i guess misunderstanding especially at the high school of and i'll go back right there because that's where i live about the relation of esports and and chess club that's an exaggeration but um that aren't really covered under any of these rules so um for student athletes who are 10 for students who are attending colleges that might not um play a sport as long as they are not violating those licensing agreements with the colleges they are able to to make money off their name image and likeness even if they're just a student at that school as long as they're not exploiting the the college and colleges and universities trademarks and the listener who asked the question is spot on right which is yes name image like this education would be great for all student athletes i mean all athletes i mean all students excuse me all students um but non-athlete students have been able to start businesses sell products you know market themselves uh for forever and it's just brand new to student athletes and we know based on you know the earlier question by bill which is there's a high likelihood of you know risk of someone being taken advantage of student athletes in particular being taken advantage of because of their celebrity status and the dollars involved so that education is critical to get them first but yeah absolutely this education should be for all students danny vincent and my question well a thought and a question i'm thinking about the rich quarterback and the poor old left tackle and thought about what happens when you finish a round of golf at a country club you have somebody comes up and clean your clubs and you give them five bucks and there's two or three of those people doing it and typically at the end of the week they pull the money and split the tips so i'm thinking if a coach is trying to really keep the team together could there be a solution where you take the rich quarterback and the penny's court a tackle and throw the money together and the team benefits as a team from all the money just a the question of pittsburgh's quarterback signed a deal with a local downtown hotel and restaurant to promote them and as part of that promotion package his compensation was they were going to feed his offensive line once a week okay it's a great thought that's part of that pooling concept so so kids are kind of doing that on their own it creates a question of who pays the tax liability is it the quarterback or is it the lineman who eat the meal and so there's a lot of issues that are going to go into things like that do you see it happening yes miami florida every football player is receiving 500 a month a month from a uh apps group right so they're making six thousand dollars a year 85 kids that they signed a group deal with so that's an example of what creative ways that you can do that is it going to happen without major legislation probably not so carol mcguire asks osu will soon sell jerseys with current student athletes names and numbers on them looking at this and many other revenue generating activities what's the larger scope and scale that this might create right i mean the sky's limit it's only name image and likeness is limited only by the creativity that people have to come up with new ways of doing things um and and what i think is important and this goes back to kind of our earlier conversation around just the fact that this is a school by school policy and the national standard will need to be figured out which is what you see and what we're seeing now is just three months ago across across the country schools were adamant about the fact that student athletes will not be able to use school marks in any type of promotion for name image and likeness activity but then you have one school that does it and then what happens other schools say well we got to do it too and so you have one school that says hey we're going to allow student athletes to participate in jersey sales and get you know licensing and opt into a licensing type of you know model then of course you're gonna have other schools that will do that so we're gonna continue to see that happen um and at some point there will be a national standard around what this looks like that will help to say okay at least all schools are on the same footing in terms of what they're going to do within this name image and likeness space um ann gabriel ohio university retired and i was the faculty athletic representative for seven years worked with the mac and the ncaa and so i think we've kind of alluded to this and but more specifically you know we still think of name image and likeness as power five and football and basketball in particular so my question is how do you see it impacting the mid-american conference and the other group of five conferences in particular like this is going to work for anyone who wants to engage in it and has the ability to engage in it so quick example chloe mitchell chloe mitchell is a volleyball player she's now going into her sophomore year at st aquinas college in grand rapids michigan she uh she that's an naia school so naia actually passed name image and likeness um a year prior and so she was a high school senior during the beginning of the pandemic started on tick tock with just a couple followers and created a she shed and just you know chronicled this whole turning her you know garage or the shed in the backyard into this like lounge area and gained about three million followers because of it right and so she went in over this past year she's already been making money on name image and likeness because of it so if we're talking about the elite of the elite athletes who do traditional sports marketing opportunities that we're used and accustomed to seeing then yes we're going to mostly see revenue producing sports or big celebrity college athletes at usually well-known schools that are going to be able to participate in it that way but as we said before there are so many other ways that you can engage in name image and likeness that if you have the following it almost doesn't matter necessarily what school or size of school you're at you're going to have an opportunity because through social media that's for anyone right so it doesn't matter geographically if i'm if i'm going to you know creighton university in nebraska or if i'm you know here in in in you know at ohio university in ohio right you'll be found in social media you know folks who want your social media influencing will find you so my questions about the larger city markets they clearly have an advantage because they have more companies with more marketing money how do you see that playing out i i would answer quickly that that's one of the things that scares large athletic departments to death right that coach is making six million dollars a year in football coaches making three million dollars a year in basketball and there's only so much money out there for marketing and advertising right so a lot of the ads were scared to death that if nationwide for example has three million dollars in advertising money and they decide to put a million of that into student athletes that's less money the departments are getting so i think what is going to happen is you're going to either find out that this name image and light next likeness is working and businesses decide to put more money into it or can find out it doesn't it doesn't work and they'll go back to the older style of marketing and advertising and that size of market is an interesting one right because in in the example that roger used is columbus so columbus is a great market if you're thinking about name image and likeness because of this the companies that we have headquartered here same thing with like in austin um and some other schools that we could cities that we could think of the largest markets with you know your new york chicago miami atlanta they're all folk they're going to be fighting with professional athletes who are in those cities taking on marketing deals and things like that so unique that certain cities are going to have a unique opportunity to engage in that way hi i'm melanie farkas from porter right i'm really curious will universities be able to clear or regulate the type of products or events that students can be a part of so there's a big difference between an athlete putting their face on a fundraiser for a children's hospital versus you know the lion's den is that something that is that something that universities are going to be able to clear who wants to address the lion's den the answer the answer is yes um and so schools right now actually do say what their what their guidelines are and they put in their guard rails and they say you can't participate in certain things alcohol is one that schools treat differently some schools say no alcohol ohio state for example and some other schools say no hard liquor but beer and wine if you're over 21 you can participate in those type of name image and likeness opportunities adult entertainment is an area that's uh forbidden in most schools as well as like ncaa banned substances so if they're already banned substances that the ncaa has for student athletes you can't promote those as well so there are some guard rails and then some schools like byu has some really unique ones just based on the type of school that they are so schools will set what those parameters are absolutely you know isn't this kind of laughable considering the kids that sold their rings for tattoos never mind so will the schools impose a grace period for compliance because the the offenses are going to be happening and they're going to be done innocently and the rules aren't even going to be there to say what they did was wrong but after they did it somebody's going to go we should have thought of that so will there be sort of a grace period to learn this i think everybody's asking for grace right now right i mean honestly the schools are asking for grace because the student athletes like i want to do this i want to do that and schools are trying to keep up in real time with with what they're doing and and at the same time again enforcement on this is at the school level specific to name image and likeness not impermissible benefits which is different and we always make that clear if you're if you you are a student athlete you can earn compensation if you're providing a service if you're not providing a service it's still a violation right so but as it relates specifically to name image and likeness that enforcement is happening at the school level and schools are trying to kind of balance and figure that out so there's no formal grace period per se but they're all trying to figure out okay if somebody does violate our guard rails we put in place what do we actually do and now it's school regulated so are we going to bench or suspend a particular player for a particular sport you know it's gonna be a school decision i think one of the most likely scenarios is is you know your top quarterback goes to a local restaurant and owner comes over and says hey this one's on me just mention this and you're on your uh social media student athlete walks out the door doesn't report it you know and the school's got to deal with it they have to deal with that now so i i imagine they'll deal with it the same way that we've been dealing with violations like that i'm carol looper two-part question would the rules about that affected tattoo gate be different now under these rules and secondly i remember when i was a reporter talking about supporters were not even allowed to buy a coke for players does any of that in the student handbook change uh sure so um i'll take your second one first um the the supporters piece is kind of like what i said before so um again you're still in that same place we're still in the same place as we were before with the rules that uh a student athlete impermissible benefits uh they still that still isn't in place and so if you're just buying student athletes something whatever that is a coke a meal uh taking them to a game or whatever that might be that's still not that's still prohibited if they're not providing a service for you now if they end up sending out some social media posts about that that's different they have to report it and disclose it the other piece around tattoogate um i i can't get into the particulars there per se but again the key in name image and likeness and what makes this difference is that the student athletes you know have to be providing a service they have to be doing something so this is it's just it's a bit apples and oranges i know that it comes up a lot just like reggie bush and his heisman and now that these rules are changing but it's it's different because that we're saying hey student athletes just like other students if you provide a service you can receive compensation and therein lies that that contract if you will um i just want to say thank you i think on behalf of all of us we want to say thank you for being here today my name is david corey i'm the executive director of the bowling centers association of ohio and we've been talking today from the university's perspective and also from the i guess we call them student athletes but they're really athlete students but what about from a businesses perspective what would be your recommendations for a business who wants to get involved in this is that getting with the sports information department at the university level obviously talking to the student athlete directly but what are maybe some you know guidelines you could give for businesses thanks the university has pretty strict guidelines in terms of what they can do to help promote the student athletes i think the best thing there are several really strong organizations out there that work on behalf of the student athletes that you can get registered with and work with the university-sponsored groups whether it be open source register with them influencer is another one that works with universities icon source is one that works with the student on behalf of the student athletes there are some good groups to get involved with that way just do some research and find out the organizations that have there's not going to be a lot of track record but that have some advice and then ask people uh like some of our panelists up here who have they worked with or who would they recommend that a business go to if they're interested in trying to engage what i'd refer to now as a business student athlete and i think i completely agree the only thing i would add to that um as kristen mentioned earlier right most athletes these days are saying their their dms are open so if you don't know that's direct message on like social media platforms that's just an easy way for student athletes to communicate with business owners and others and that's how people are reaching out through their dms but um but the other key the thing that i'll say too is again thinking about what works with your company's brand right so a lot of times people are thinking about this goes back to some of our earlier questions about the the star quarterback or the star receiver star basketball player but i've had conversations with business owners who've talked about you know what um i i want to focus on and he said i could share this information i was talking i used to i work at scott's miracle grow central ohio company i was talking to their head of marketing and we had this conversation about name image and likeness he was like you know what i'd rather instead of having we could go out and get any celebrity sponsor we want to i'd rather have somebody a student athlete that cut grass when they were a kid right somebody that you know played football in their backyard where their grass was they had to take care of their grass and trim it just right to play a good football game on it right because that's authentic to our brand and so when i think companies remember that of what what type of student athlete would be authentic to our brand that creates opportunities because now you're not competing to get that star quarterback or that wide receiver or whatever it may be you may be looking for that that student athlete that can really speak to your the mission of your business the mission of your company and and bring you followers or at least additional attention which is why you're putting money behind it in a way that's beneficial to the business and real quickly just uh to take this this opportunity to use this platform i guess businesses don't contact student athletes at the high school level just yet so that would be my advice in that regard it certainly is coming and if there is that interest in the future moving forward it would be the school's athletic administrator or principal that you would reach out to but don't want to waste this opportunity to put that reminder in there all right well i hope you found today's forum uh concerning exciting i'm not sure where i uh all the above okay please make plans now to join us next wednesday as we follow up today's forum with one on critical race theory buckle your seat belts for that one our thanks to our forum sponsors porter wright morris and arthur llp and the columbus dispatch and to the emergency response fund of the columbus foundation for presenting our live stream in partnership with the dispatch and pnc and thank you to our online virtual seat patrons and a special appreciation and thanks to our speakers bob tannis luke fedlam roger ingles kristen roney and our host rob aller can we have a round of applause for them please [Applause] again thank you all for joining us we cannot do this without you we look forward to seeing you next wednesday as the columbus metropolitan club presents another community conversation thank you and have a great day [Music] you

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Length: 68min 44sec (4124 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 04 2021