The NCAA has started implementing a policy that could allow student athletes to get paid as early as January 2021. Payment will be decided off of an athlete’s name and likeness and the ruling was unanimously passed by the organization’s board of governors back in late October. But how is that going to affect the athletic departments at Division Two schools like Colorado Mesa University?
“It is hard to say how it is directly going to affect us because there has not been any legislative change yet from the NCAA level,” Assistant Athletic Director Austin Kaiser said. “[As] of right now everything is status quo and the NCAA has tasked the three different divisions to come up with solutions on how they are going to conquer this.”
Depending on the ruling that the NCAA decides within the specifics of DII teams, there could eventually be opportunities where athletes could make money off of lessons or ads.
“ In Division One, Division Two and Division Three, there are working groups within the division to say okay what would this look like in ways that are reasonable, that is fair, that is trackable from an institutional standpoint knowing that there are states, that is kind of what triggered this,” Kaiser said.
“There are states now passing laws like California and Florida that are saying okay in four years from now, we are going to allow athletes to be paid so this is essentially the NCAA’s response: ‘This is the direction that we are moving ad how are we going to make this work,” Kaiser said.
The NCAA came to this new law to hopefully get in front of and as a response to California and Florida passing laws that say in four years athletes are allowed to get paid for their perspective sports.
“We have talked about it. It will be interesting to see if conferences themselves react to this saying you know maybe they will put in a conference rule in saying no you can’t do x, y, and z I have a hard time thinking that will happen the conferences fall under the same bylaws as the NCAA,” Kaiser added.
The new ruling has the possibility to have a significant effect in the role of recruiting for CMU. Athletes are more likely to look and accept offers from division one schools because if they have a big enough name and are liked by the fans, the school has a larger budget to pay the athletes then division two and three schools.
“If any of that money at all can come from institutions than those institutions had the advantage because of the amount of cash flow that is coming through those institutions is greater than a division two Colorado Mesa.” Kaiser said.
One has to remember that the impact will be greater on the Div. I level compared to Div. II and III. Not all 40 people on a baseball roster or 120 on a football roster can be the star. So the athletes that stick out as the high profile athlete of that team or the key player is the player that is going to have the most jersey sales, the athlete that is going to sign the most autographs after their games.
The NCAA has only established right now what these laws could look like in the future for all of collegiate sports and athletes hoping to play at the next level. Again, the earliest we will see this be in effect is early 2021 and the start of the 2021-2022 school year.