What's very ironic to me is that some of the same issues that led to NIL in the first place, in college sports supposedly regulated by the NCAA, has also led to the current chaos we are seeing in professional golf. What happened in professional golf was that the PGA Tour, like the NCAA a monopoly, decided to be pigs with player's media rights and essentially controlled and profited from those rights. We are talking about broadcasting deals and digital assets. This is not a new thing either; the modern PGA Tour was born out of a similar rebellion by tour players in 1968 regarding the fundamental issue of control over some revenue sources.
So the PGA Tour behaved in a typical monopolistic manner and the tour players rebelled and started a rival LIV Tour funded by Saudi Arabia's public interest fund, which showered the rebels with money. The specter of ongoing litigation costs for armies of attorneys duking it out between the 2 rival tours led to a highly secretive merger settlement deal that Congress is now investigating.
What the NCAA also has in common with the PGA Tour is being a monopoly. There is a U.S. Supreme Court case that protected the monopoly but eventually the players rebelled and sought control of revenue derived from their NIL and eventually won in Court. So now states are being left to regulate it and the NCAA, which had previously been protected by federal law, is looking for some federal regulation of NIL. It's really unfortunate that the federal government is getting bogged down with having to regulate college sports and professional golf, but this is what happens when revenues skyrocket and everyone wants a slice of the revenue pie. Ultimately the Courts will need to sort it out if Congress does not. I kind of agree that it should not be left up to the States to regulate this. It's way too problematic.
www.espn.com
What he is basically saying is his immediate predecessor f****d up. And he is right.
