SPORTS
The Balance Between Ball and Brand How the NCAA Allows Athletes to Embrace Their Identity Story by Allison Clowers & Madeline Wilson | Design by Chandler Vanous
Click! Click! Click! All you can hear is the clicking of the camera flashing before your eyes. You’ve been asked to become the face of a major sports endorsement brand and you are experiencing your first major photo shoot. This is just the beginning of your new brand as a professional student-athlete, only you’re not a professional yet. This could be the new normal for future student-athletes; opportunities for them could begin to pop up, with the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) new ruling that will support their building of a personal brand. According to a press release from the NCAA in April 2020, “The Board of Governors supported rule changes to allow student-athletes to receive compensation for third-party endorsements [and] also supports compensation for other student-athlete opportunities, such as social media, businesses they have started and personal appearances.” This means that while student-athletes cannot currently seek out photo shoots with brands as described, this could be in their future over the course of the next few years. There are many different factors at play when deciding rules about student-athlete conduct, specifically with name, image and likeness (NIL).
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Defining NIL These three facets to one’s identity fall under what the NCAA defines as right of publicity which, “involves those situations where permission is required of a person to use their name, image or likeness,” according to an article on how student-athletes’ NIL will shape the future of college sports from NCAA by Rachel Stark-Mason. There are a variety of intricate rules that are involved with governing student-athlete conduct which means the process for changing them can be difficult. Assistant Athletic Director for Compliance and the Senior Women Administrator at CWU Athletics Laura Dahlby Nicolai says, “Specifically with name, image, likeness … we actually delayed the vote. All levels … at the recommendation of the home office in Indianapolis, we actually all delayed our votes and removed them from the docket this year.” Within the different divisions of the NCAA, universities are allowed to vote on specific rule changes. Dahlby Nicolai says, within the conference CWU is in, “NCAA Division II has a one institution one vote policy; every institution gets a vote.”