Enforcement is key to solving NIL 'pay-for-play' concerns on recruiting trail

Festivus came early on Wednesday.

The secular holiday made famous on “Seinfeld” for practices such as “airing of grievances” doesn’t officially arrive until Friday. But that didn’t stop college football coaches from coast to coast from venting their frustrations about how NIL has impacted the recruiting trail.

Oklahoma coach Brent Venables said rival programs “waved money opportunities” at Sooner commits and top targets down the stretch. Nebraska coach Matt Rhule, who returned to the college game after three years in the NFL, said NIL is being “misused and mishandled in a lot of places.” Heck, USC coach Lincoln Riley openly admitted the Trojans lost out on some recruits this cycle because of NIL.

It was a message repeated across the country.

“I think there are major concerns with what’s going on in college football,” Penn State coach James Franklin said during his National Signing Day news conference. “Right now, there’s really no guardrails. There’s not a whole lot of guidance, and there’s not a whole of governance.”

There isn’t a lack of NIL rules

But see, that’s where Franklin and the other coaches are right and wrong.

There are guardrails. There is guidance. But there’s absolutely zero enforcement going on.

It has been and is still against NCAA rules to use NIL payments as a recruiting inducement or offer “pay-for-play” deals. But with NIL deals pouring to athletes through booster-funded collectives, the NCAA has yet to actually enforce its rules.

“We still see a lot of coaches and some athletic directors lamenting that there is no NIL guidance or no NIL rules, but that’s not accurate,” Mit Winter, a sports attorney and NIL expert at Kennyhertz Perry LLC, told On3 Thursday morning. “The NCAA has issued three separate memos that discuss and lay out its NIL rules. They’ve provided further guidance on those rules. Some of the guidance might leave room for interpretation. But much of it is black and white.

“For example, the NCAA issued a memo stating that collectives can’t be involved in recruiting. Everyone understands what that means. The same is true for the rule that says deals can’t serve as inducements. In addition to the NCAA rules, there are around 30 state NIL laws that have provisions similar to the NCAA rules.

“So, coaches and others shouldn’t be complaining about a lack of rules. If they want to complain, they should be complaining about a lack of enforcement of the rules.”

NIL rules ‘meaningless’ without enforcement

Winter is right. But this lack of enforcement isn’t entirely a new concern if you’ve been paying attention.

Those in the recruiting trenches have been sounding the alarm for months and months about boosters who are using the guise of NIL to lure top high-school recruits through “pay-for-play” deals and target players in the Transfer Portal.

“Guidelines on top of guidelines are meaningless unless they can be enforced,” the operator of a collective that supports student-athletes at a Big 12 school recently told On3.

Jason Belzer is the CEO of the agency Student-Athlete NIL (SANIL), which runs numerous collectives across the country, including Crimson and Cream at Oklahoma, Success With Honor at Penn State and Knights of The Raritan at Rutgers. He also told On3 recently it is time for rules to be enforced.

“It’s not about guidance anymore,” Belzer said. “It’s about enforcement. You have a subset of folks that are doing it the right way. And you have a subset of folks that are doing it however they want. Until the NCAA comes along and says, ‘This is illegal,’ and does something about it, it doesn’t matter.”

Enforcement help on the way?

In early October, the NCAA’s national office posted a job position of “Associate Director of Enforcement – Name, Image and Likeness.”

As part of the role on the staff, the associate director would be tasked with effectively monitoring and enforcing compliance rules. Additionally, there have been a number of reports about the NCAA wanting to make examples of out NIL violators. But to this point, there’s been little movement from an enforcement standpoint publicly outside of a voluntary discussion between Miami booster John Ruiz and the NCAA.

There is hope among recruiters, athletic department officials and collective operators that new NCAA president Charlie Baker might make enforcement and accountability a top priority.

Then again, that might be easier said than done.

“The state laws aren’t being enforced at all, and the NCAA doesn’t have the resources or the legal authority to adequately enforce its rules,” Winter said. “That’s why we continue to hear the NCAA and other college sports leaders say they need help from the federal government. They know that if the NCAA starts to enforce its rules it’s likely it will be sued for violating antitrust law.”

NIL going to continue to impact recruiting

All of this leads us to another black-and-white reality.

NIL is now a significant part of the recruiting conversation. And it will continue to be despite the airing of the grievances on National Signing Day.

“The reality is this day and age you have to make decisions on how you’re going to handle this,” Riley said Wednesday.

Ohio State coach Ryan Day went even further with how he thinks NIL impacts recruiting moving forward.

“I think it was never part of the conversation, then it became part of the conversation,” Day said. “It’s trending toward being the conversation for a lot of folks. As time has gone on, it’s become more and more of a priority for folks.”