Article from For Liberty by Norm Leahy.

College athletes got a win in Florida last week when Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation giving them the right to earn money from making endorsements.

“This whole issue of student-athletes and being able to receive compensations for their likeness or image is something that’s been bubbling to the surface in the last couple years,” DeSantis said during a news conference at the University of Miami’s indoor football practice facility. “I viewed it as something that was a matter of fairness.”

The move is a blow to the NCAA, which for decades has forbidden athletes from accepting any money from sponsors and aggressively punishing both players and programs for violating its rules.

College athletics generates billions of dollars in revenue each year, money that flows to universities, their athletic departments, and personnel – but not to players. The NCAA has long held that scholar-athletes are compensated in other ways, primarily through scholarships.

The NCAA has threatened to sue states that have passed laws similar to Florida’s, arguing they violate interstate commerce protections.

According to ESPN’s Dan Murphy, NCAA president Mark Emmert and others “strongly opposed” to individual state laws allowing players to profit from their own names and likenesses. The NCAA also is worried a state-by-state approach could create an incentive for recruits to pick a school “based on where they can make the most money and give some athletic programs an unequal recruiting advantage.”

Sounds a lot like the market in action – something a cartel-like the NCAA is desperate to stop.

Image Credit: By Jericho [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons