With NCAA set to allow athlete endorsement deals, Republican plans to push for NC law
A top North Carolina Republican lawmaker is pursuing legislation to mandate a uniform policy across the state for college athletes to get paid for their celebrity status.
Such a proposal would bring North Carolina up to speed with more than 20 other states that have recently passed similar laws requiring those athletes be compensated to be featured in advertisements, become Instagram influencers or even take paid internships.
The revival of the issue in North Carolina’s General Assembly comes just one day ahead of the NCAA’s Division I Board of Directors’ likely vote Wednesday to adopt an interim policy allowing individual schools to decide if their athletes can be paid for their name, image and likeness. That policy is expected to take effect Thursday, leaving some colleges and universities across North Carolina little time to cobble together policies without a state law already in place.
Sen. Jim Perry, a Republican from Kinston, said Tuesday he’s looking at changing the law to give every athlete across the state the same treatment, rather than leave individual schools to decide their own policies on how athletes should be compensated for their fame.
As the Senate’s majority whip, Perry is tasked with convincing fellow lawmakers in his conservative-majority chamber to vote for some bills. That means that if Perry himself files legislation, it has a better shot at making it to the governor’s desk than a similar Democratic-sponsored NIL proposal that has languished for months.
Perry’s attempt to revive the issue will address the NCAA’s “poor treatment of college athletes,” he said.
“We don’t leave our student athletes up to the whims of the NCAA, which, in my opinion doesn’t appear to be afraid to engage in arbitrary decision making,” Perry said.
Perry, an N.C. State graduate, also acknowledged his move to take up the issue is somewhat related to the NCAA’s decision to declare his alma mater’s baseball game against Vanderbilt a no-contest, eliminating the Wolfpack from College World Series championship contention.
“You spend the whole weekend reading about the NCAA, and you become much more motivated to take action,” Perry said.
Perry said he hopes his legislation will be similar to Florida’s name, image and likeness compensation law, but declined to share further details.
For more North Carolina government and politics news, listen to the Under the Dome politics podcast from The News & Observer and the NC Insider. You can find it at link.chtbl.com/underthedomenc or wherever you get your podcasts.
This story was originally published June 29, 2021 at 7:32 PM with the headline "With NCAA set to allow athlete endorsement deals, Republican plans to push for NC law."
