Interesting tidbit from the second installment of the “Inside Virginia Athletics” podcast that dropped last week: UVA Athletics is now requiring student-athletes to sign “binding” contracts.
“These contracts, these agreements, you just have to have them, and that is that is going to continue to evolve over time,” said Carla Williams, the athletics director at the University of Virginia, answering a question from John Freeman, the voice of UVA Athletics, and the host of the podcast.
Neither Williams nor Tyler Jones, who was named the general manager for the football, women’s basketball and baseball programs by Williams last week, went into the specifics of how the contracts are structured.
“It comes in different shapes and sizes. It really depends on a number of different factors, right?” Jones said. “Undergrads, you know, do they have multiple years of eligibility? But those athletes are signing an actual contract, and that is pretty commonplace now in our environment, across several sports.”
Williams offered that “because there’s no standard contract, we all work with our general counsel’s offices across, you know, the country to help build these contracts, and we have to have them, that’s a part of it. They are not employees, but we do have these agreements with them that are binding.”
The line from Williams about the contracts not being meant to signify that UVA student-athletes are considered employees is in line with the spirit of new legislation in the early stages of review in Congress.
The SCORE Act, which would codify the recent House settlement, create a national NIL law and give the NCAA an antitrust exemption that would continue the long-standing unbalanced relationship between athletics departments and student-athletes, has cleared two U.S. House committees, though it isn’t likely, in its current form, to get through the U.S. Senate.
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Chris Graham
