The NIL revolution: An occasional Star Tribune series starting today that examines how the name, image and likeness era is transforming college sports.
Cash for recruits? How the latest legal ruling over NIL could benefit the Gophers.
A recent court ruling means that for now, the NCAA can no longer ban players from being paid in the recruiting process. Some Gophers boosters think it could level the playing field.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
March 1, 2024 at 5:17PM
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As Friday afternoon news drops go, the one that Judge Clifford Corker released Feb. 23 was a doozy. A federal judge in the Eastern District of Tennessee, Corker suspended the NCAA’s power to enforce regulations on name, image and likeness (NIL) opportunities in recruiting. The preliminary injunction was a sharp blow to collegiate sports’ top governing body.
Attorneys general for Tennessee and Virginia had sued the NCAA over its enforcement of NIL rules that ban monetary recruitment enticements for high school athletes. Corker’s injunction, which covers the entire nation and lasts until the case is resolved, will now allow collectives — the facilitators of NIL deals between boosters and student-athletes — to offer athletes money, cars, endorsement deals and more before they even have enrolled in college.
“The NCAA’s prohibition likely violates federal antitrust law and harms student-athletes,” Corker wrote in his ruling.
How does that affect the Gophers program?
Derek Burns, co-founder and president of Dinkytown Athletes, the official NIL collective for University of Minnesota sports, acknowledged that the ruling is “a big, big decision that changes things.”
“Where we’re at as a collective, we haven’t changed our behavior as of yet,” said Burns, who emphasized that his collective has followed NCAA rules and has not ventured into recruiting, a statement backed recently by Director of Athletics Mark Coyle in an interview with the Star Tribune. Burns added that Dinkytown Athletes will wait on guidance from the athletic department on how to proceed.
Corker’s ruling signaled that the court likely would rule in favor of Tennessee and Virginia, which would be another blow to the NCAA’s power.
“It’ll make things a little bit more wild,” said Burns, adding that change would be better than what he sees today as “a rule that some people follow, some people don’t follow, and the ones that don’t follow aren’t punished.”
“This has a chance to even the playing field a little bit,” he said.
The changes, Burns added, will be disruptive to the NCAA’s traditional ways, but they could help the Gophers compete in the long run.
“In a program like Minnesota that hasn’t won a football or men’s basketball conference championship in 50 years, don’t you want disruption? Was the other system so great for us?” he asked, pointing to the football team’s last Big Ten title in 1967 and the men’s basketball team’s last non-vacated conference crown in 1982. “I understand that it’s just human nature and most of us hate change. … Just put on your seatbelt, wait a little bit and see how this unfolds.”
The No. Gophers had a nine-game winning streak snapped last Saturday at Bemidji State and and will look to bounce back against a struggling Notre Dame team.
