Since the O’Bannon lawsuit is settled (I know, I know: “pending appeals, etc.”), I thought maybe we could try and shoehorn all the various topics affecting college athletics and the reformation of them in the US into one thread.
The impetus for this thread was reading this VICE article about a startup crowdsourced company that aims to collect donations to give to college athletes ONLY after they successfully receive a four year degree from their school .
Naturally, the NCAA and it’s member schools have been fighting the idea.
Because FanPay encourages athletes to remain students and won’t pay them while still enrolled, the founders hoped this would skirt the draconian NCAA bylaws. Although Klausing is the first to admit it’s not a perfect solution—athletes who come from impoverished backgrounds still wouldn’t get any immediate help no matter how badly they need it—he views it as “steps in the right direction.” But the constant flow of cease and desist letters demonstrate the NCAA doesn’t share their perspective.
Unlike student-athletes, the FanPay co-founders are fully within their right to profit from their labor. Similar to Kickstarter and other crowdfunding platforms, FanPay will take a small cut from each donation, which will be used to pay its employees. But as a result of this basic desire to reap the fruits of their work, FanPay enters a tricky legal realm. As a for-profit enterprise, FanPay can’t use athletes’ “name and likeness” for profit (not even the players get to do that—only the NCAA and its business partners can). Every cease and desist cites NCAA Bylaw 12.5.2, which combats the scourge of unlicensed serving trays, among other things:
If a student-athlete’s name or picture appears on commercial items (e.g., T-shirts, sweatshirts, serving trays, playing cards, posters, photographs) or is used to promote a commercial product sold by an individual or agency without the student-athlete’s knowledge or permission, the student-athlete (or the institution acting on behalf of the student-athlete) is required to take steps to stop such an activity in order to retain his or her eligibility for intercollegiate athletics.
Sports lawyer Darren Heitner told me that FanPay is “treading on unchartered territory.” He believes universities are sending cease and desists “because they do not want to take the risk of the NCAA responding in an adverse fashion,” suspending star players who have received donations on FanPay. Michael McCann, director of the University of New Hampshire’s Sports and Entertainment Law Institute and legal analyst for Sports Illustrated, offered a similar opinion. “Under current NCAA rules it would seem that these universities have a reasonable argument, especially given that 12.5.2 has been broadly interpreted.” Although crowdsourcing has not been specifically addressed under NCAA rulings, McCann sounded skeptical on whether that would open a large enough legal loophole through which FanPay could squeeze.
](https://sports.vice.com/article/the-ncaas-psychotic-quest-to-shut-down-a-charity )
I doubt that many of us have a clear idea of what we’d realistically like to college athletics to be like in the future, exactly, but I thought it would be fun and interesting to hear each other’s ideas and perspectives on things that will factor into the coming reform, like the O’Bannon lawsuit , the possible unionization of college athletes ,the UNC fraud scandal , etc.
Okay, let’s hear your thoughts on college athletics reform, Doper Sports Fans!