Shane Beamer shares his pros and cons of NIL
It’s been just over two years since the NCAA opened the gate for name, image and likeness to have a role in college football. And South Carolina, along with every other program in the country, has to find a way to navigate it.
It’s been the Wild West in some regards the last 24 months, so much so some politicians are trying to pass bills to try and put even a few guardrails up moving forward.
And Shane Beamer, when asked, weighed in on what he might include if he was drafting the bill.
“That’s a tough one, and I’m probably going to get in trouble for what I say or don’t say,” Beamer said, smilign. “I think there’s a lot of things with NIL that can be better, and again, I’m in favor of it and want to help our players in any way and support name, image and likeness.”
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Beamer continued to harp on his willingness to help his players capitalize on their name, image and likeness. a profit.
“I’ll do everything that I can to help them be able to capitalize on it if they’ve earned it,” Beamer said.
South Carolina has tried to take steps forward to build out its NIL infrastructure, initially bringing in Park Avenue to help and recently naming Garnet Trust as the university’s official collective.
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But that’s not to say NIL doesn’t have any faults. It’s still fairly new to college athletics and constantly progressing.
For Beamer, he wants to find a way to avoid buying players in the recruitment process. It’s something that is eerily similar to that of free agency in professional sports.
“That’s not what it was intended to be,” Beamer said. “So I would love to write a bill or have a law that gets that a little bit under control. And then certainly some protections for student athletes and things like that as well.”
Beamer also believes in having “less recruiting inducement” in the game, which is something he knows can be hard to monitor.
“I think (SEC) Commissioner (Greg) Sankey has been very outspoken about what we’re looking for as far as college athletics go,” Beamer said.
“Certainly, you sell what your players are doing in recruiting from a name, image and likeness standpoint, which we do. We’ve got some guys that have been able to capitalize on theirs, and they’re doing awesome things. But not necessarily, that’s the reason they come to your school because of something on the front end.”
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Going off his point, Beamer would like to see more transparency with NIL as it has caused a lot of frustration for him at times.
“There’s just a lot of rumor out there about what certain guys are getting paid at different schools,” Beamer said. “If there was just a little bit more transparency where everybody knew what everybody was getting, great. It would clean up a lot of the stuff of what guys are hearing. That’s not always the case.”
