College athletics have undergone a massive makeover in the last couple of years as name, image and likeness (NIL) have taken over.
Now that players can benefit from his nameathletes base their decisions about where to play, at least in part, on the amount of money they can earn during their college careers.
Notre Dame Fighting Irish Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick is seen before the game against the Ball State Cardinals at Notre Dame Stadium on September 8, 2018 in South Bend, Indiana. Notre Dame defeated Ball State 24-16. (Michael Hickey/Getty Images)
NIL collectives have been established across the country, apparently creating a «pay-per-play» situation where athletes are being contracted with NIL offers as part of the field.
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Thursday, University of Notre Dame Athletic director Jack Swarbrick told Sports Illustrated that without stricter rules and regulations on NIL, and if student-athletes are considered employees, the NCAA could splinter.
Swarbrick said the NIL spending is creating division among schools.
«If we can’t start to get to where we can make rational decisions like those and enforce them, the future will be more than just an athletic partnership. I can assure you of that,» Swarbrick told SI.
«We have to get our act together as college athletes and do the things that we can do. We keep implying that we can’t address name, image and likeness. Of course we can,» he continued. «We can do it in ways that require reporting on transactions, that require that there be transactions. We have to embrace that rather than have others fix it for us.»
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Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick and Head Coach Brian Kelly of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish speak after the game against the Stanford Cardinal at Notre Dame Stadium on September 29, 2018 in South Bend, Indiana. (Michael Hickey/Getty Images)
Swarbrick also wrote an opinion piece, along with president of notre dame the Rev. John Jenkins – in the New York Times on Thursday to explain why «college athletics are in crisis.»
«It faces threats on several fronts: the growing patchwork of contradictory and confusing state laws that regulate it, the specter of paralyzing lawsuits, the profusion of dubious name, image and likeness deals through which to funnel money to recruits, misguided attempts to classify student athletes as employees,» Jenkins and Swarbrick wrote. «Behind all of that is the widespread belief that college athletics is simply a lucrative business masquerading as an offshoot of educational institutions.»
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And while Swarbrick and Jenkins agree that student athletes should be allowed to benefit from their name, image and likeness, they argue that the current NIL rules are easy to abuse.
«Unfortunately, the new NIL rules have proven easy to abuse,» they wrote. «To get around the NCAA’s ban on paying athletic recruits directly, many schools funnel money to recruits under the guise of an alleged third-party licensing agreement, regardless of whether a player’s name, image, and likeness have some market value. We must establish and enforce regulations that allow legitimate transactions while prohibiting those that are recruiting incentives or paying to play.»
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Notre Dame Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick looks on during the Notre Dame Spring Blue-Gold football game on April 23, 2022 at Notre Dame Stadium in South Bend, IN. (Robin Alam/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Swarbrick told SI that the NCAA needs to create NIL policies, including a requirement that athletes report all NIL transactions to the school. He also suggested that schools should be responsible for ensuring that any NIL agreement includes the athlete contributing NIL value with compensation that reflects «reasonable market value.»
«People have been paying under the table for as long as I’ve been around,» Swarbrick said. «Now it’s the same payment, but they call it NIL. We’re not going to stop it. It’s not going to go away all of it. But we have to get out of this position where the vast majority of transactions that are happening are not what are being characterized.» .
«Educational institutions should be ashamed of being a part of this, ‘We’re going to do fraud here.'»