An NCAA subcommittee will meet this week to consider opening up the veil separating athletics departments from their athletes' NIL activities.
Among the proposed changes would be to allow schools to "proactively" assist in the development and creating of NIL activity -- i.e., pitch their athletes to businesses -- to provide tax preparation and contract review, to provide media equipment that would assist athletes in fulfilling NIL deals, and to communicate with existing sponsors about NIL opportunities for athletes.
In short, the changes would allow most larger schools to bring what their collectives already do inside the walls of the athletics department.
"The dollars that have flowed into our space are real," Nebraska AD Trev Alberts told ESPN, who broke the story. "Coaching salaries, AD salaries, let's be honest about where we are today. I'm not opposed to student-athletes participating in the sharing of ultimately what they're helping to generate. ... Change is hard, but ... I'd rather get busy changing than slowly dying a death by 1,000 cuts."
Here's a look at some of the proposed changes that the NCAA group is considering (new ones are in red): pic.twitter.com/WhTfwAPLas
— Dan Murphy (@DanMurphyESPN) October 9, 2023
The changes are purely in the conversation stage at this point. No specific dates have been attached to when any new guidelines would be implemented.
If approved, these changes would represent a major step toward full-on professionalization of college athletics.
Schools would be expected to have deals in place for top recruits and transfer prospects but, at the same time, much of that goes on already -- it's just handled through third parties. There's some thought within the NCAA governance structure that, by bringing more NIL activities in-house, it would give schools a greater sense of control over the NIL marketplace.