Utah House clears path to keep college athletes’ NIL deals private
The Utah House passed a bill Friday that would exempt college athletes’ name, image and likeness agreements submitted to universities for review from the state’s public records law.
And Rep. Jordan Teuscher, R-South Jordan, the sponsor of HB202, amended the legislation to ensure the exemption would apply not only to NIL contracts going forward but also to those in the past.
NIL deals are contracts between private entities and student-athletes, he said during a brief floor discussion about the bill.
“The only involvement that a university has is just to review to make sure it doesn’t violate their rules. But even then, they don’t have the ability to tell an athlete they can or can’t enter into an agreement,” he said.
“We just want to ensure that just because they hand that over to the university that private contract doesn’t become a public document.”
Only Rep. Brett Garner, D-West Valley City, argued against the bill, which passed 62-8 and now moves to the Senate.
Garner noted that college football coaches’ salaries and endorsement deals are publicly known. He said the proposed law would create a double standard among coaches and players.
“I feel like the openness and transparency is what we need more of in college sports,” he said.
Rep. Kera Birkeland, R-Morgan, accused the media of wanting to exploit college athletes.
“The people that don’t want this legislation to go forward are people who want to sell this information for clicks. They want to take private information between individuals that contract with businesses and they want to use that to drive people to their website, to their news articles,” she said. “We shouldn’t sell out our college athletes for clicks.”
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The bill is Utah’s first attempt at some regulation of NIL in college sports.
It would require athletes to submit any contract over $600 in value to the university. The school then must provide the athlete written acknowledgment regarding whether the contract conflicts with university policies or provisions of the proposed law.
The bill further states that the agreements, along with any other correspondence or material related to them, would not be subject to Utah’s Government Records Access and Management Act, or GRAMA.
The law also would prohibit college athletes from promoting tobacco and e-cigarettes, vaping products, alcohol, a seller or dispenser of drugs including marijuana, antibiotics and steroids, gambling or betting, sexually-oriented businesses and firearms they could not legally own.
If the bill becomes law, it would take effect May 1, 2024 and, with the latest amendment, apply to NIL agreements created before that date.
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The Deseret News is currently in litigation with the University of Utah, Utah State, Weber State, Utah Valley and Southern Utah universities over whether NIL contracts are public records.
Last October, the State Records Committee unanimously ruled that NIL contracts are public records and ordered the schools to release them. The universities challenged the decision in court.
“Considering the public interest in college sports, the fandom and the immense revenue our public institutions capture from athletics, it’s apparent to us that a university compliance officer reviewing these contracts to ensure players’ eligibility under the rules is indeed conducting the public’s business,” according to the committee.
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Jeff Hunt, a Salt Lake media law and First Amendment attorney, said the legislation would move Utah in the wrong direction on public oversight of college athletic programs.
As long as public universities regulate the NIL activity of college athletes to ensure compliance with NCAA rules, then the public has an interest in monitoring that compliance function, he said.
“How can the public have any meaningful oversight if all information concerning NIL activity is kept from the public?” said Hunt, who represents the Deseret News in the court case.
The Utah Media Coalition, a consortium of news outlets that works to keep government records open, opposes the bill.
The Utah Transparency Project, a joint enterprise among Utah media to provide real-time assessments of pending legislation and whether a law would make it easier or harder to know what’s going on in government, gave HB202 a “Closed Door” rating.
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