Art Chansky’s Sports Notebook is presented by The Casual Pint. YOUR place for delicious pub food paired with local beer. Choose among 35 rotating taps and 200+ beers in the cooler.
Mack Brown says NIL and the transfer portal are no longer “out of control.”
The Carolina football coach was asked Tuesday if promises of Name-Image-Likeness money are still being made to athletes as inducements to sign.
“I think it’s settling down,” Brown said. “It got out of control completely. And there were a lot of news reports, some probably accurate and some not. But last year there were a lot more parents and kids asking for money than there is this year.”
Brown related last year that some players he was recruiting asked blatantly, “How much NIL money will I get?” When he explained to those recruits how the NIL program worked at UNC, Brown said several players quoted dollar amounts they were promised by other schools recruiting them.
“We talked to one of the lead enforcement people for the NCAA the other day for about an hour and a half,” Brown said. “And he told us that you cannot be promised (NIL) money before you get to a school, and they’re going to start using that as an inducement to go to a school and start making kids ineligible if they accept that money. And so that’s a game changer.”
Brown says the faster the NCAA can do that the better. “The more that word gets out, the better it’s going to be,” he said. “There is no question that if a school offers a kid money, what’s the difference between offering him money five years ago and offering him money now? It’s still an inducement.”
Brown said “families are learning that a lot of the coaches who have offered them money, that’s illegal and their kids could lose their eligibility. They’re also learning that some of the collectives that have offered them the money, when they get to school that money is not there. And if it is there, it’s less than they were told. We have not had a person in recruiting so far this year talk to us about NIL, and that’s different than it was last year.”
That former Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker has succeeded Mark Emmert as president of the NCAA, Brown hopes, has made a big difference.
“Everybody’s probably waiting to see,” he said. “You’ve got a governor taking over the NCAA and everybody’s starved for great leadership in that position.
“They’re excited about what may change. And obviously Congress has gotten involved with NCAA rules and a governor who’s grown up in politics may be the right guy to fix it. So we all hope so.”
It may be easier said than done with agents acting as go-betweens with schools and athletes, and many of the cases could end up in civil court. But it is at least a start at maybe putting some of the toothpaste back in the tube.
Featured image via Eli Melet
Chapelboro.com does not charge subscription fees, and you can directly support our efforts in local journalism here. Want more of what you see on Chapelboro? Let us bring free local news and community information to you by signing up for our biweekly newsletter.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
“Back in the Tube?”
No, Mr Chansky, it most definitely is not. It is better hidden but that’s all.