Former Wildcat football standout Anthony Egbo, Jr., spoke on March 4 to a congressional committee about the potential changes to name, image and likeness deals for college athletes. 

Egbo, the vice-chair of the NCAA Div. I Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, spoke to the House Energy and Commerce Committee about the importance of letting student-athletes remain students. 

“There’s been a strong push to have student athletes classified as employees,” Egbo said. “What that would do is that student athletes wouldn’t be students anymore.”

This potential legislation is based on the fact that student-athletes may be considered employees of the university instead of students who attend the school for education. Egbo said this would be detrimental to student-athletes because the quality of their education could decrease. 

Egbo emphasized the importance of letting student-athletes remain students to the Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade Subcommittee. 

“They are students who dedicate their time and energy to their sport while simultaneously earning their degree and catapulting themselves into life after athletics,” he said. “For these student-athletes, the unique opportunity to do all these things at once is unique to college sports.”

Many departments of athletics across the country have seen how some schools have lobbied their congressional representatives to write different legislation, some asking for advantages over other states. 

“Some states are writing bills that will pretty much exempt NIL money from getting taxed,” Egbo said. “So now if the University of Oregon is trying to recruit a kid that also is getting recruited by the University of Idaho, now they can offer him this amount of money and tell him that it’s not gonna get taxed, versus if he goes to another state that doesn’t have that in place, he’s gonna get taxed.”

Egbo said the most important thing for legislators to realize when it comes to NIL is that all schools need to be on a level playing field.

“Uniform rules and clarity on them are needed to ensure that NIL is here to stay;” Egbo said, “it fulfills its intended purposes and is not harmful to the ones it was created to benefit.”

Another setback for smaller universities like ACU is that football has become the basis for how popular a school is, which widens the gap even further between Football Championship Subdivision and Football Bowl Subdivision schools, even if FCS schools have basketball programs far better than FBS schools.

“As beloved as the NCAA basketball tournament is to many,” said Paul Weir, deputy athletic director and chief operating officer, “college football has become the primary element in defining a school and its relevance in the national landscape and many schools right now are jockeying for where they will end up in that landscape.”

Another drawback to classifying student athletes as employees is that it would hurt the athletics programs that do not draw as much attention or revenue. While most sports bring in at least a little bit of revenue, the main revenue-gaining sports are football and men’s basketball, Egbo said. 

“Most every other sport across the NCAA doesn’t generate revenue,” he said. “So going to an employment model would just pretty much deteriorate the opportunities of all these sports that probably don’t generate revenue.”

Another result of NIL now being considered employment law is that Title IX legislation is no longer required to be taken into consideration. Previously, universities had to provide the same opportunities to male and female athletic programs but no longer do.

Hannah Gonzalez, sophomore volleyball player from Lucas, said this makes sense, as unfortunate as it is for female athletics. She said she understands sports that make more money should receive more money, no matter if it is a male or female sport. 

“It makes sense for schools to pay money to what brings in money,” she said. “So if football is bringing in the most money, then it makes sense that football is receiving the most money. But, for example, a school like Nebraska, where volleyball is one of their biggest sports, if it’s bringing in the most money, then give those student athletes the most money.”

Egbo said schools will have to be more intentional about giving female athletes opportunities since it is no longer required by law to do so.

“I think the biggest thing is that schools have to take the initiative to make sure that they’re highlighting and giving due attention to non-revenue generating sports, specifically their women’s sports,” he said. “There has to be more of an emphasis from institutions to push that forward.”

Gonzalez has an NIL deal as the brand ambassador for First Financial Bank, a role that belonged to Egbo during his time as a student athlete. The bank recently signed six other Wildcat athletes to NIL deals in addition to Gonzalez’s deal.

The three women are Bella Earle, senior women’s basketball player from Corinth, Lili Ross, junior soccer player from Beaumont, and Elizabeth Schaefer, junior softball player from Rockwall. 

The male athletes are Bradyn Hubbard, junior men’s basketball player from Tulsa, Oklahoma, Zion Stephens, sophomore baseball player from Missouri City, and Jed Castles, junior football player from Wichita Falls.

Gonzalez said the other six were signed to deals as a group effort to introduce a new First Financial debit card, and Samantha Baker, vice president of marketing at First Financial, believed a larger group would help sell to more people. 

“This particular advertising movement was that they wanted to promote the new ACU Wildcat debit card,” Gonzalez said. “But she just wanted to get a bigger audience because it is targeted towards Wildcats.”

Many people are concerned with how student athletes will have their academics impacted in this new “era of NIL,” but Weir said college athletics has faced threats to academics several times in the past.

“The ‘one and done’ basketball players, athletes who leave early for professional opportunities, the entire idea has been around for quite some time,” Weir said. “This new era of NIL will take on a new meaning, but nothing that the NCAA, the term student-athlete, or our higher education institutions haven’t faced questions about before.”

Egbo agreed this is not new for college athletics, but also said the education of these student athletes needs to be taken more seriously, especially when it comes to athletes potentially attending four schools in four years. 

“I think a lot of these student athletes, a lot in the revenue-generating sports, are chasing the dollars right now,” Egbo said, “but they’re sacrificing educational experience, and it’s sacrificing the networking experience you get when you stay somewhere.”