Nebraska football fans and the rest of the college sports world should be very worried about a piece of NIL legislation making its way around Congress.
NIL has been a hot topic among Nebraska Cornhuskers fans in the last few years. It’s mainly been a hot topic when it comes to Nebraska football. Some of the news is good news, and some of it is bad.
One of the most consistent and accurate complaints is that the NIL world is sort of the Wild West these days. There are very few consistent rules from one conference to another, and the NCAA is primarily powerless to step in when there’s actual conflict because various states around the country have their own laws and regulations governing how NIL can be handled.
That’s why on its face, the news that Lindsey Graham introduced national NIL legislation sounds like a positive. However, a deep dive into the language of the bill shows that its many flaws overwhelmingly favor institutions and strip away quite a few of the rights and privileges NIL offered to athletes in the first place.
Chief among the biggest problems with this bill is that the university could tell Nebraska football players what sort of NIL deals they could strike. The school could also tell Nebraska football players – as well as any other athletes – what companies they can’t do deals with.
It doesn’t appear there needs to be a reason to “outlaw” a specific company beyond the school administrators not liking it. But that’s also not the worst aspect of the new bill.
Nebraska football NIL privileges in the crosshairs of new bill
The largest section of Lindsey Graham’s legislation establishes a sort of clearinghouse. This organization would oversee new NIL rules and govern Name Image and Likeness standards in the same way the NCAA now oversees college sports.
However, the bill grants this new NIL clearinghouse broader powers than the NCAA when it comes to suspending or banning players it deems broke the rules. And that’s the biggest problem,.
Certainly, Nebraska football fans can all agree that there needs to be a set of rules standardizing how NIL works in the college sports world. But Lindsey Graham’s bills goes much too far in one direction.
It goes too far in favoring institutions over players. In the end, the bill takes away quite a few rights and privileges players around the country gained – especially when it comes to allowing themselves to plan for their own future – and it should be defeated.