Kentucky colleges and universities could share revenue directly with, or set up third-party agreements for, student athletes under a bill that passed a committee vote Thursday. Lead sponsor GOP Sen. Max Wise of Campbellsville said his legislation would allow the state’s institutions to be competitive, given the likely results of a federal lawsuit.
In an expected settlement in the House v. NCAA lawsuit, former and current college athletes who couldn’t take advantage of NCAA’s 2021 changes to its name, image and likeness agreements policy would receive “backpay,” valued at more than $2.7 billion. A judge will review the details of the settlement on April 7. The settlement is also expected to establish a revenue-sharing framework, which Senate Bill 3 would make legal under state law.
Wise said the bill would help “maintain our universities' competitiveness” in recruiting and retaining student athletes. He said the days of student athletes not expecting compensation has passed, even as some in college sports miss the old way of doing things.
“We’re in a new era of college athletics,” Wise said. “It’s a time for us to act, and it’s a time for us to update, to make sure, that the Commonwealth of Kentucky and our universities are not left behind when it comes to college athletics.”
The lawsuit and bill are part of a national trend away from amateurism in college sports. Student athletes, who pull in billions of dollars for universities across the country, have clamored over the past several years to enter into “name, image and likeness” or NIL agreements with third-parties. In 2021, the NCAA changed its policy, allowing students to enter such agreements if their states allowed them — hence, the lawsuit from student athletes playing prior to the policy’s implementation. Kentucky opened the state to NIL agreements in 2022.
Mitch Barnhart, athletic director at the University of Kentucky, said NILs and athlete compensation are an “absolutely new landscape” and said he hoped for more stability in college sports moving forward.
Several lawmakers, including GOP Sen. Danny Carroll of Paducah said they regretted the shift in college sports even as they voted “yes” on the legislation. Carroll bemoaned what he saw as a decline of college sports, with some athletes switching universities chasing better compensation.
“I’ve lost interest in college sports because of it,” Carroll said. “I also know that Kentucky has to compete and I know there’s millions and millions of dollars involved in this.”
Under the legislation, the institutional agreements would be exempt from open records requests, with Barnhart attributing that decision to student privacy rights.
