NEW ORLEANS — The NCAA is changing its rules about student athletes earning compensation. Here are a few things to know.
Schools will not be paying players but this could potentially affect virtually any intercollegiate student athlete. All the talk, for now, is about players doing commercials or how this will affect NCAA video games.
Somebody like Joe Burrow, for instance, might actually earn some commercial endorsement money, but the vast overwhelming number of athletes won’t. How it could affect the average player, though, is they will now be allowed to make money off their names, meaning they could sell their autographs.
That means boosters could, if they wanted, organize autograph signing events and potentially pay any or all LSU student athletes to participate. In theory, some of the money raised by organizations like the Tiger Athletic Fund could go to the athletes. Obvousily, the amounts of money raised would be greater at a place like LSU, but all colleges have similar athletic boosters.
The bottom line is the rich in the NCAA figure to get richer because recruits could be promised autograph parties. Still, the rich are already (and have been) getting richer, so that’s not really a change.
MORE on 4
► Get breaking news from your neighborhood delivered directly to you by downloading the new FREE WWL-TV News app now in the IOS App Store or Google Play.