By: Ricardo Martir
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), is a member-led organization dedicated to the well-being and lifelong success of college athletes. Today the NCAA finds itself often criticized and challenged by its policies, which often inflict hardships on the people they are supposed to represent; the student athletes themselves.
According to the NCAA’s website, their goal is to allow students to be successful both in the classroom and in their competitions, while also giving them a voice on the decisions they have to make on a daily basis, as well as ensuring all student athletes mentally and physically strong.
However, in reality student athletes are often the most compromised in comparison to any other student that goes to college.
According to an excerpt video from “The Shop” by Maverick Carter and Lebron James, Governor of California Gavin Newsom says “the only people that sign away their rights are (student) athletes”.
In a room of college athletes that achieved high levels of stardom like; Katelyn Ohashi, Diana Taurasi, and Ed O’Bannon where they discuss how their success and likeness generated lots of money for these schools and sports departments, but how none of it ever went toward them.
When Governor Gavin Newsom signed the bill on September 30th of 2019 he hoped the bill would “initiate dozens of other states to introduce similar acts of legislation and change college sports for the better by finally having the interests of the athletes on par with the interest of the institutions.”
This bill is scheduled to go into effect on January 1st, 2023.
Now student athletes are finally getting paid, whether they are being endorsed or receiving individual sponsorship aside from team sponsorship.
However now that the NCAA is seeing this shift of power they have made changes to their rules in order to control which students are eligible for pay during this academic sport season in 2021.
An extreme example is Alabama University quarterback Bryce Young who is receiving a 7 figure offer on NIL deals after an impressive performance his freshman year of college.
Just like Bryce Young is having his life changed to an extreme there are also college athletes that will benefit with getting their basic needs met.