BOWLING GREEN — Following years of speculation and court battle after court battle, the NCAA board of governors voted to allow athletes to profit from their name, image, and likeness in a landmark ruling on Tuesday.
While details still are being worked out, the board wants all three division of college athletics to implement new rules by January, 2021.
The NCAA aims to allow athletes to make financial gains, just as their peers do, a paradigm shift that will affect everyone in college athletics.
“To quote Bob Dylan, the times, they are a-changin’,” BGSU director of athletics Bob Moosbrugger said.
The unanimous vote did not come as a surprise to most senior administrators in college athletics. While the ruling purportedly would allow the elite-level athletes at major schools to earn lucrative endorsement deals while still in college, opportunities to profit would extend to smaller schools as well.
Even before Tuesday’s vote, Moosbrugger said Bowling Green in particular recognized the value of its athletes’ social media accounts. In June, the school partnered with INFLCR, a sports-focused software that gives content-creation abilities directly to athletes.
In many cases, Moosbrugger said athletes were interested in posting photos on their social media accounts, which the school in turn hopes will lead to more engagement with and more interest in their sports teams.
By using the software, athletes can, in essence, become ambassadors for Bowling Green.
“For us, the reason that we invested in this was our student-athletes are some of our best storytellers,” he said.
Similarly, Moosbrugger said the vote can be a positive because it further reinforces what the department of athletics already is preaching to its athletes. Only a fraction of each college team will ever play professionally, so Moosbrugger said the department stresses that each athlete should make the most of their short time in college.
With the new ruling, that can work in multiple ways.
“Now, the student-athlete will possibly be able to go out to an advertiser and say, ‘I’m a star athlete at Bowling Green State University, and I can post something for your business,’ and they can get fair market value for that,” he said. “During these four to five years they’re here at BGSU, this may be the height of their social media following.
“Once they graduate from BGSU, and if they don’t professionalize in their sport, they’re going to be a professional in sales, technology, you name the field, but will they have as many followers as they do now?”
Though players would be able to profit from things like YouTube channels, sponsored posts, or autographs, the school’s role remains unclear.
The board said only that new rules should be "transparent, focused, and enforceable," though Moosbrugger said the use of athletes’ names likely will be driven by the athletes themselves.
“This is my personal feeling: I don’t think universities and athletic departments will be in the business of soliciting compensation for our student-athletes through the use of their name, image, and likeness,” Moosbrugger said. “It has to be all worked out, but I believe that will be left up to the student-athlete to do.”
Moosbrugger said Bowling Green, like most, are in the fact-gathering stage, but that change has undoubtedly arrived.
“This is going to be an enormous task,” he said. “We have to find the balance of doing what’s right for the student-athletes and also being fair and equitable.”
First Published October 30, 2019, 10:19 p.m.
