NCAA to review proposed NIL changes: Is UVA poised to be able to take advantage?

The NCAA, still trying to stave off actually having to treat student-athletes like actual employees, is poised to take another step in the direction of kinda, sorta doing so.

A subcommittee in charge of the rules governing NIL is set to meet this week to discuss proposals to give schools clearance to pursue NIL deals for their student-athletes.

The changes that will be under review on Thursday would also give schools the ability to help kids with contracts, help them with their taxes and provide other resources related to the execution of marketing deals.

This would be a step in the right direction, certainly, but still, remember that NIL money is basically endorsement money paid by third parties, not compensation from an employer to an employee for services rendered.

That is still to come.

And no doubt, the employee model is the endgame.

In the here and now, Nebraska AD Trev Alberts told ESPN that it’s time for the NCAA to “be aggressive” with respect to the next steps with NIL.

“Let’s be honest. Some of the stuff we’re talking about now, we would have never even had a conversation about two years ago,” Alberts said. “The goalposts keep moving. We keep sliding further and further. Some of the things early on that were impermissible, it’s time to rethink those things.”

The current NCAA approach to NIL has merely shifted the Wild, Wild West that had existed before with under-the-table payments being made by boosters and would-be agents to top student-athletes into being a Wild, Wild West that is somewhat above board.

The NIL collectives that have come into being operate under what feels like an undefined set of supposed guidelines that some athletics departments, like the one at the University of Virginia, are following to the letter of the law and beyond, and others (ahem, looking at you, Miami) are exploiting to the echo of the whistle.

The proposed changes would seem to level the playing field a bit, of course almost entirely at the top of the food chain – the subset of wealthy schools that have staff and consultants who work with their athletics departments on NIL.

“We all know how college athletics works. If schools are allowed to do something, and it provides value to their athletes, then it’s going to be used in recruiting. That’s going to lead to schools investing quickly and heavily in these support services,” said Casey Schwab, the founder and CEO of Altius Sports Partners, an NIL-based consulting firm that began working with UVA Athletics last year.

The Altius-UVA relationship, per a press release from last July, has a UVA Athletics-funded general manager from Altius Sports Properties who is in charge of overall NIL strategy for the athletics department

“By participating in the Altius GM program, we will expand our partnership that enhances resources for students which will create more opportunities for them to maximize their NIL,” UVA Athletics Director Carla Williams said in the news release. “Our original goal with Altius was to establish a substantive NIL program grounded in best practices and adding lasting value to the lives of our student-athletes. This will help to accomplish that utilizing dedicated staff who specialize in the ever-changing world of NIL.”

UVA Athletics already has the infrastructure in place to be able to scale up in the event that the proposals being reviewed this week by the NCAA end up being adopted.

“These are the types of things that people on campus have been clawing to do and venting to us about for the last few years,” Schwab told ESPN. “We want to be able to support athletes; we need to be able to do more of it.”