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The college sports landscape has undergone some dramatic changes since the start of the NIL Era, and we could be on the verge of another dramatic paradigm shift courtesy of a new law that’s now in effect in the state of Virginia.
It’s been close to three years since the Supreme Court issued the decision that essentially forced the NCAA to abandon its commitment to amateurism by unanimously ruling it violated antitrust laws by not allowing student-athletes to profit off of their name, image, and likeness.
It didn’t take long for schools (and players) around the country to take advantage of that new reality, although college sports were essentially thrust into a Wild West defined by a dearth of rules and regulations concerning the mechanisms of the NIL deals that are currently used to lure in top talent.
While the new system isn’t explicitly pay-for-play, the formation of the booster collectives that have transformed into de facto lobbying agencies for schools that aren’t technically allowed to offer players money in exchange for their services has created an incredibly blurry line—one that Virginia has essentially obliterated thanks to a new statute.
According to The Richmond Times-Dispatch, Governor Glenn Youngkin welcomed athletic directors, coaches, mascots, and other officials from schools around Virginia to its capital city on Thursday for a ceremony where he signed a law that was previously passed by the legislature that permits colleges and universities to directly pay athletes for the NIL deals they’ll be able to offer them as of July 1st of this year.
The law—which essentially allows schools to pay student-athletes under the guise of using their name, image, and likeness for marketing—bans the NCAA from handing out penalties over an approach it’s yet to officially sanction (the language means players would be viewed as independent contractors as opposed to employees).
Representatives from both the University of Virginia and Virginia Tech told the outlet they’re still determining how they plan to approach things, but they’ll have an unprecedented amount of leeway that could theoretically give them a recruiting edge.
With that said, it seems very likely other states will quickly follow in Virginia’s footsteps now that the blueprint has been codified, and the federal government could also get in on the action in the hopes of addressing the increasingly murky waters we’re currently navigating.