College Athletes Are Realizing Their Power Amid the George Floyd Protests and COVID-19
June 18, 2020
In recent months, however, three states—California, Colorado and Florida—have passed laws that would permit athletes to profit off their name, image, and likeness; in April, the NCAA itself announced that it “supported rule changes to allow student-athletes to receive compensation for third-party endorsements both related to and separate from athletics.” The NCAA said it would enact these rules changes for the 2021-2022 academic year.
But with football players returning to campus in the midst of a pandemic and economic turmoil that has surely impacted some of their families, the least the NCAA could do is allow athletes to receive benefits if any local or national sponsors, or boosters, or neighbors want to offer them. “If there’s a reason to accelerate the transition to a system where kids can legitimately capitalize on who they are,” says Kenneth Shropshire, CEO of the Global Sport Institute at Arizona State University, “this would be it.”