NCAA rules on NIL have always been a joke, but now they're even funny in court | Goodbread

On Tuesday, Knoxville News-Sentinel staff traveled to the Greeneville (Tenn.) Federal Courthouse and, amid a thorough summary of the NCAA's latest losing legal stance on the subject of its rules about name, image and likeness (NIL), reported some muffled laughter in the courtroom.

I'm reporting some decidedly unmuffled laughter in my house.

The Tennessee state attorney's office, in pointing out to Judge Clifton Corker that amateurism is a bygone notion in college sports, pointed out that Georgia Bulldogs quarterback Carson Beck is now wheeling around in a Lamborghini. Beck, clearly, is laughing all the way to the bank.

This is all relevant to Alabama athletics, of course, because the ramifications of the case could impact, perhaps permanently, every athletic program in the country. So let's see if we can pull all these chuckles together.

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The NCAA is investigating UT for recruiting violations regarding its NIL rules, specifically that, while a school's NIL collective and recruits are allowed to discuss NIL opportunities, they can't negotiate a specific dollar amount until after the player has enrolled. To prevent boosters from usurping the pure concept of NIL value by simply paying recruits to sign, NCAA rules envision each signee's NIL windfall as some sort of wrapped Christmas gift that can't be opened until National Signing Day.

That's a joke, of course, because pay for play has ruled the realm since NIL rights were born nearly three years ago. Even coaches don't deny that.

State attorneys for Tennessee and Virginia, in turn, have filed an antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA, alleging that NIL recruiting rules are an unlawful free-market restriction. As a preliminary salvo in that fight, they were in Greeneville Tuesday to argue for an injunction — on which Corker's ruling is pending — to prevent the NCAA from enforcing its NIL rules until the lawsuit has been settled. Part of that argument was that recruits are irreparably harmed by not being allowed to negotiate up front.

Every aspect of this is comical, but not just from the NCAA's perspective. Sure, its NIL rules are doomed to be target practice in the legal system because they're vague and can't possibly be policed.

But this irreparable harm thing is a pretty good joke, too.

Remember, NCAA rules don't police what recruits can make after they've enrolled. A signee who's unhappy with his initial NIL deal can go straight into the transfer portal in April — three months after signing and at no cost of playing eligibility — and go get his Carson Beck Lamborghini from some other school. Lord forbid, an 18-year-old kid who's yet to play a down in college should have to wait 90 days for his Lambo.

That's an extreme, hypothetical scenario, and not representative of every recruit's leverage, but where the NCAA's farcical rules and the reality of pay-for-play currently intersect, it's more than possible. And more than absurd. Then there's the hilarious notion that the gobs of money college athletes are making is ever actualized into real NIL value, in the form of advertising or endorsements, by the donors paying them. Endorsements we should be seeing everywhere, given the money flying around, yet we see almost nowhere.

See? The jokes aren't just coming from the NCAA. But the best ones are.

Which brings us back to Tuesday's courtroom laughter, as relayed by News-Sentinel gumshoe reporter Adam Sparks: during the NCAA attorney's stand-up routine, he told Judge Corker he wasn't even aware of the NCAA's investigation of Tennessee. You know, the investigation that is ultimately the reason he was arguing in court in the first place.

Excuse me.

This is too funny.

Tuscaloosa News columnist Chase Goodbread is also the weekly co-host of Crimson Cover TV on WVUA-23. Reach him at cgoodbread@gannett.com. Follow on Twitter @chasegoodbread.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: NCAA rules on NIL are a joke, but now they're even funny in court