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IU prof: US senators’ proposal could impact student-athletes’ names, images, likenesses

IU prof: US senators’ proposal could impact student-athletes’ names, images, likenesses

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — A bill introduced over the summer by two U.S. senators has received little traction in Congress but could still greatly impact student-athletes

In June 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark decision allowing college athletes to profit off of their namesakes.

Mark Janis, the Robert A Lucas chair professor of law at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, said the decision overturned an NCAA prohibition. “It’s a familiar concept in a lot of other entertainment spaces, where your image, your name, your nickname, all sorts if things relating to you might have some commercial value.”

Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, and Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a Republican from Alabama, in July introduced the Protecting Athletes, Schools, and Sports (PASS) Act, which would establish a national standard for name, image and likeness (NIL). It would require agents and collectives to register with a regulating body.

Janis said, “A collective is an organization that is technically not affiliated with the university but typically set up as a non profit corporation whose business is to facilitate NIL deals.”

If approved by Congress and signed into law by the president, the PASS Act would also bar student athletes from transferring to a different school until they complete their third year of eligibility. “It says if you are going to transfer, you got to sit out for a year unless certain conditions apply one of those is if you’re three years of eligibility in,” Janis said.

Another part of the bill would ban student athletes from signing name, image and likeness deals that involve alcohol or drugs.

Janis said he surprised at how wide ranging the proposal is. “The heart of it is trying to address concerns about NIL. There is just all sorts of other stuff in there, so that’s the first thing that’s striking to me.”

Janis said if the legislation doesn’t pass Congress by the end of 2023 — a Senate committee has yet to address the bill — then the NCAA could impose its own NIL regulations modeled after the bill.