SEC, Pac-12 commissioners to visit Washington in pursuit of help with NIL policies

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SEC commissioner Greg Sankey and Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff will meet with United States senators in Washington, D.C., on Thursday to ask for legislative help surrounding name, image and likeness policies.

I have been invited to meetings with several senators tomorrow to discuss the issues we are seeing with name, image and likeness, and with the threat of our student-athletes being deemed to be employees.

NCAA president Mark Emmert and other leaders in college athletics have been asking for federal lawmakers to regulate NIL policies. There are no federal regulations around NIL.

The Democratic Washington senator was contacted by the man who worked with her at RealNetworks. He and Sankey are hoping to meet with other senators from both parties.

The goal is to discuss a few of the issues facing college athletics with influential senators.

The meetings come on the heels of the Pac-12 spring meetings in which athletic directors and coaches sought solutions to better control the NIL landscape.

It is imperative to enforce rules prohibiting the use of NIL as a recruiting inducement or pay-for-play.

Either the NCAA is going to get its act together in enforcing this, or I will be pushing for a smaller group to figure out how to enforce the NIL rules that we all agree on. The work done as a backstop should be taken into account when calculating the amount of an NIL payment.