Big Ten commissioner wants Congress' help so players can have 'true NIL'
INDIANAPOLIS — Eighty-seven days into his tenure as Big Ten commissioner, Tony Petitti spoke for nearly 30 minutes at Lucas Oil Stadium to open the conference's football media days.
He covered a swath of topics — conference expansion, new TV partnerships, the active hazing allegations within the B1G and the greater state of college athletics.
And when it comes to name, image and likeness (NIL) — the new rules (or lack thereof) for which changed the NCAA landscape two summers ago — it became Petitti's top priority, he said, after spending much of his first three months on the job learning both what NIL is and what it is not.
"It is a great mechanism for student-athletes to benefit from their name, image and likeness through real marketing opportunities," he said. "We as a conference not only support, but celebrate a student-athlete's ability to generate unlimited benefits from true NIL.
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"However, it is important to say what's happened now under the guise of NIL is not true NIL, but rather a move to a pay-for-play system that is driving recruitment and the transfer portal. This system operates away from and without institutional control, nor is it required to comply with Title IX. As a voluntary membership organization, the NCAA needs to be able to enforce its longstanding rules prohibiting inducements and pay-for-play."
Petitti recently traveled to Washington to meet with legislators to discuss the current NIL framework, among other issues surrounding college athletics. The main issues with the current model, as he sees it, remains the lack of uniformity and enforcement across the country.
"When I say true NIL, I mean is the ability for a student-athlete to take advantage of their marketing rights from either local or national companies," he said. "What we’re seeing though, is because there’s been this lack of enforcement around traditional things like inducements and pay-for-play, we’re seeing money move away from member institutions.
"We have very long standing rules to address this and we need to have the ability to enforce our rules … (there's a) difference between those two."
Petitti implied the money coming from "collectives," as opposed to the schools, is not in the best long-term interest of the institutions or their athletes. Petitti said he was optimistic that the NCAA and Congress are nearing a framework of regulations.
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"There’s real momentum for bipartisan legislation that benefits student-athletes, protects the academic-athletic model and recognizes that a national competitive landscape needs national rules that can be enforced," he said.
On the other hand, Petitti said he sees the potential for more chaos in the future.
He was asked how far away the sport is from allowing universities to pay athletes directly — always the hard line between amateurism and professionals. Although he sidestepped the notion, he didn't rule it out, which says just about everything about the state of college sports.
“It’s tough to predict but, what I’ll say about that is I think there’s a commitment to understand student-athletes can be entitled to additional benefits,” Petitti said. “What form that takes — how that’s tied to academics, all of that needs a lot more discussion.
“I don’t want to predict when that could happen in terms of a timeframe. There’s a lot of discussion about what future models could be. ... We’ve got to consider lots of different changes to the system while at the same time encouraging ‘true NIL’ to keep happening.”
'Focus on USC and UCLA'
This is the final season before the Big Ten expands to 16 teams with the addition of the USC and UCLA.
However on Wednesday, Petitti explained his main focus is not on possible further expansion.
"All the direction I’m getting from leadership; from presidents and chancellors and athletic directors, is to focus on USC and UCLA because we have a lot of work to do there," he said. "I'm proud of the scheduling format we created for football, I think it touches on all right things, but we have significant work to do on scheduling in other sports.
"I believe we have a good plan in motion ... but overall that’s where we are, I’m not getting direction to do anything else in terms of what the conference looks like right now."
The Big Ten has been linked to Notre Dame, Oregon, Washington, Arizona and others at one point or another, and while they're not ruled out, it's not the league's main emphasis as it works out the final details of its $7 billion TV rights deal with Fox and NBC, which is set to begin in four weeks.
"We owe it to the conference, to our existing members to make sure we're putting everybody in the best place this season," he said. "I don't think there's any distraction, I think we're able to do two things at once, look forward and at the same time do everything we need to do day in and day out this football season."
No B1G investigation into Northwestern
Petitti said there will not be an investigation launched by the conference into the hazing allegations within Northwestern athletics, which resulted in the firing of long-time coach Pat Fitzgerald.
“Right now, Northwestern has launched two investigations. The process in the conference on these matters is that it’s led by the institution.,” Petitti said. “So there’s no investigation being launched by the conference. We’ll wait and see the results of those investigations and we’ll have further comments at that time.”
Earlier this month, the result of a months-long independent investigation into the football program found evidence of widespread hazing and on July 7, Northwestern suspended Fitzgerald for two weeks.
"While the investigation did not discover evidence that coaching staff knew about ongoing hazing, the investigators said that there had been opportunities for them to discover and report the hazing conduct," the university release read on that date.
Three days later, after a public outcry, Fitzgerald was fired.
Since then, four lawsuits have been filed by former players against the university. On Tuesday, the Wildcats' planned Big Ten media day traveling party — Bryce Gallagher, Bryce Kirtz and Farmington Hills Harrison alumnus Rod Heard —announced they would not attend
Still, David Braun, recently named the Wildcats' interim coach, spoke with media on Wednesday morning.
"I have found a team that’s come together, that loves one another and has a resolve to attack the 2023 season. Let me be clear: This football team will be ready to go," he said. "A lot of people have been impacted by decisions made over the last couple of weeks. Our guys in that facility are going through a lot. We have an opportunity to either run from that or an opportunity to truly stare that adversity in the face."
Contact Tony Garcia at apgarcia@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter at @realtonygarcia.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Big Ten commissioner wants Congress' help so there can be 'true NIL'
