Cole Cubelic discusses Ross Bjork’s ‘middle finger’ to NCAA, NIL issues

As the fault lines grow between the NCAA and members schools over what’s allowable and what’s enforceable in the NIL space, Texas A&M has continued to push the envelope. That includes athletic director Ross Bjork recently affirming that the school will be abiding by Texas state law — and not necessarily NCAA rules — when it comes to NIL.

And it led to ESPN and SEC Network’s Cole Cubelic bemoaning the seeming modus operandi in college sport of only looking out for oneself and not the broader enterprise. And as NIL continues to also be a quasi-pay-for-play function, he doesn’t see things getting to tolerable status quo any time soon.

“I understand it’s a frustrating conversation, there are a lot of different ways it can go. But you’ve got coaches going up to D.C., you’ve got the NCAA trying to tell people what to do. You’ve got people saying ‘We’re not following your rules, we’re following state rules.’ It’s just all over the place. And as I’ve tried to state before, meeting in the middle is our biggest problem in college football right now. No one wants to meet in the middle. Everybody wants theirs and they want all of theirs, right now,” Cubelic said.

As for Bjork and Texas A&M’s specific actions?

“We saw some commentary coming out of Ross Bjork and Texas A&M, that essentially said, the NCAA trying to send down these mandates of ‘Here are the rules, we expect you to follow them.’ Ross Bjork’s saying ‘We’re going with the law in the state of Texas and that’s how we’re going to roll.’ To me, kind of took that as a massive middle finger to the NCAA,” Cubelic said. “Of ‘Don’t care what you say, don’t care what you do. Not sure you can do much about it. But legally, in this state, this is what we’re capable of doing and this is what we’re gonna go do.'”

In essence, the Texas NIL law that took effect on July 1 allows for closer relationships between schools and NIL collectives — Texas A&M has basically made their collective an in-house part of the athletic department now — and gives a stiff arm to NCAA investigators and enforcement. The second part is key to protecting the first half, as close relationships between schools and NIL collectives could violate NCAA rules in a number of ways.

And as colleges start to bring the NIL spending in-house, Cubelic is hopeful that the certain brand of NIL that is basically pay-for-play gets designated as such.

“We’re not putting the toothpaste back in the bottle,” Cubelic said. “I do not believe that there is going to be barrier, parameters, guardrails that are ever going to be set. Could there be strict rules as to how NIL takes place down the road? Well, let me go back a little bit, even further: We need to stop calling this NIL at a lot of different places, because that’s not what it is. It’s pay-for-play. It’s pay to show up and come here. It’s essentially salary, is what it is. And that’s fine, if this is what we want it to be, where we want it to get. But it’s just, we’ve got a lot of other websites and people that keep pushing Name, Image and Likeness and it’s great and this person’s worth this and all that. That’s not even really what it is a lot of the time.”