Imagine being 18 years old and making one of the biggest decisions of your life. You then sign a contract that gives you basically no rights or flexibility. You do it because everyone else does.
Every year, hundreds of young athletes sign National Letters of Intent [NLI] declaring their decision to play for a particular institution.
Signing this contract forces the school to honor its scholarship commitment to the athlete. However, this is only true if the admissions department accepts the athlete. Of course, no university would ever reject a prospective athlete in order to free up a scholarship for a better prospect.
If the player signs and the coach is subsequently fired, the school has no obligation to release the athlete from the agreement. The NLI says, “I understand I have signed this NLI with the institution and not for a particular sport or individual.”
Athletes are going to have to spend most of their college career with their team or coach. It is a major part of the process of deciding where to attend school.
Why would any athlete choose to play for someone he or she hates?
But if the athlete doesn’t get along with his/her new coach, the athlete could still be stuck playing for the team. If the player chooses not to honor the NLI – decide not to attend the school with whom he/she signed – he/she must sit out a season and lose a season of eligibility. So, if your coach gets fired and you want to break your commitment, you won’t play until sophomore year.
Another problem is that athletes don’t have a say in the contract negotiations. The NLI was founded in 1964 by an athletic representative from Texas Tech and in 1995 was taken over by the SEC with the NLI Steering Committee run by five conference commissioners. There is no student input.
Yet another reason is that the NLI program is not even run by the NCAA. It is run by the Collegiate Commissioners Association.
NCAA president told Sports Illustrated writer Seth Davis the NCAA’s only role is to “reconcile the books. … So, we’re doing the paperwork, we’re not running it.”
To play an NCAA sport, there is no reason to sign a NLI. It seems that players only do so to hype themselves by televising their final decisions.
No one has yet challenged the legality of this contract, but it is possible the contract wouldn’t hold up in court, according to Pete Rush who said in Sports Illustrated that it could be challenged on the grounds of “unconscionability.”
College sports are billion dollar businesses, and the NCAA has no reason to give students any more rights.
Yet, sometimes it isn’t even 18-year-olds making these decisions.
For the second straight year, USC has received a verbal commitment to play basketball from an eighth-grader. An athlete can go back on a verbal commitment, unlike the with an NLI, but it is still considered seedy.
USC Head Coach Tim Floyd received a commitment earlier this season from Ryan Boatwright, 14, who had yet to decide on a high school, much less a college.
Decisions as important as these should be made with more care and with more rights given to the athletes. The schools certainly make enough money off these students as it is.
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