Memo to NCAA: Drop the fig leaf. NIL killed amateurism, rules need to reflect new age | Opinion

With all due respect to the hard-working NCAA employees who insist they are trying to protect college athletes and do what is best for intercollegiate athletics, it’s time to remove the fig leaf.

It’s time to end the charade and stop pretending college athletes are “amateurs” who should be governed by arcane, archaic recruiting rules that no longer apply in the era of Name, Image and Likeness, when student athletes are allowed to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars, even millions, by profiting off their personal brands.

The NCAA was founded in 1906 by President Theodore Roosevelt after a public outcry to clean up or abolish college football because gang tackling and schools filling rosters with non-students led to 18 deaths and more than 150 serious injuries on the field the previous season.

A governing body was formed to create a uniform set of rules and eligibility requirements that would help keep players safer.

That makes sense.

More than a century later, that organization, whose schools generate $1.14 billion in revenue, punished UM women’s basketball coach Katie Meier and her program after an exhaustive four-month investigation because she was involved in arranging contact between high-profile UM booster John Ruiz and twins Haley and Hanna Cavinder, who were already planning to transfer from Fresno State to Miami last April and had more than $1 million worth of NIL deals before they arrived in Coral Gables.

That makes no sense.

According to the NCAA report, Meier first met Ruiz at a school function for donors shortly before the twins’ scheduled visit. He chatted with her and said he had been trying to set up a meeting with the Cavinders (who happen to be very selective in whom they do business with). Meier then “asked an assistant coach to contact the prospects and let them know that the booster was a legitimate businessperson, and the prospects agreed to meet with him.”

The report further stated that Meier’s involvement violated NCAA recruiting rules, that boosters cannot have in-person, off-campus contact with prospects, and when the Cavinders visited Ruiz’s home and were provided with a meal, it “violated inducement rules.”

We are talking about a pair of athletes who had an agent, who had been negotiating lucrative sponsorship deals for nearly a year. Why does the NCAA feel it needs to protect the Cavinders from having a meal or a meeting with a local businessperson?

The only thing the NCAA is protecting is an outdated set of rules that no longer make any sense. It is silly to pretend that potential earnings have not entered the equation when elite athletes are choosing a school.

Alabama quarterback Bryce Young has NIL deals valued at $3.2 million, and Ohio State quarterback C.J. Stroud has endorsements estimated at $2.5 million.

LSU gymnast Livvy Dunne (who boasts 6.5 million TikTok followers) is valued at $2.6 million after inking contracts with Forever 21, Grubhub, Linktree, Too Faced Cosmetics, American Eagle Outfitters and Vuori clothing. Auburn gymnast Suni Lee has $1.5 million in deals with CLIF bar, Amazon, Gatorade, Target and Invisalign.

And then there are the Cavinder twins, social media stars with nearly five million combined TikTok and Instagram followers. They have been at the forefront of NIL since July 1, 2021, the day the new rules went into effect.

Determined to be the first to sign a deal, they flew from Michigan, where they were visiting family, to New York City for the occasion, signed with Six Star Pro Nutrition and Boost Mobile and immediately appeared on a Times Square billboard pronouncing them the first athletes with NIL deals.

According to Forbes, the Cavinder twins have surpassed $1 million in NIL deals. They are co-owners of a streetwear company called Baseline Team and have also signed deals with Champ Sports, LifeWallet, Core Hydration water, and the siblings also launched a podcast with iHeart Radio called Twin Talk.

The twins also happen to be outstanding basketball players. The 5-foot-6 guards are hard-working gym rats who combined to average 34.2 points through three seasons at Fresno State. They transferred to Miami last April, eager to join an Atlantic Coast Conference team in a global city where they had local ties. They made an immediate impact with the Hurricanes.

Haley is the team’s leading scorer with 12.8 points per game heading in the ACC tournament this week. She also averages 4.6 rebounds. Hanna hit a season-high five three-pointers for 15 points in a win against Virginia on Sunday.

“Haley and Hanna are relentless competitors,” Meier said. “They are special and have basketball minds. Even if it’s just the team free-throw contest or the pregame half-court shooting contest, they make most of them, know exactly how many they made, and when they made them. I can’t imagine we would have had the success we had without that dogged focused mentality.”

When the NCAA sanctions were announced last Friday, Ruiz told the Miami Herald that the ruling was “silly”, and that Meier was punished for “something that’s benign.”

“Its pretty shameful that they involved two stellar young ladies and a great coach that did nothing wrong with some technicality that they want to try to hang their hat on.”

He makes a good point. That said, Ruiz should cover the fines because he was partly to blame for drawing attention to the meeting with the Cavinders by posting a photo of them at his home on Twitter. That raised a red flag. No doubt there are thousands of boosters around the country hosting meals and having meetings. But they don’t boast about them on social media.

Critics contend that without more stringent rules the NIL policy will allow boosters to abuse the system, bankroll their beloved teams and create an uneven playing field. The loosely regulated NIL policy has resulted in a multimillion-dollar arms race to induce athletes to attend and stay at certain schools.

The idea behind NIL was for athletes to use their entrepreneurial spirit to get sponsorship deals. Deep-pocketed boosters have twisted that concept, pooled their resources, and formed “NIL Collectives” — pots of money disguised as start-up companies that pay athletes for appearances and social media posts.

The barn door has been flung open, and there’s no turning back. The NCAA must accept that amateurism is dead and stop policing as if it were 1983.

Student musicians, even those on scholarship, are allowed to perform for money in their free time. Student artists are allowed to sell their art. Student journalists are allowed to accept paid internships.

Student athletes now have the same right. It’s about time.