Ohio State AD Smith against Fair Pay to Play Act

1:11 PM ET

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith on Tuesday said he is against the Fair Pay to Play Act, which was signed into law Monday and states that colleges in California cannot punish their athletes for collecting endorsement money.

“My concern with the California bill — which is all the way wide open with monetizing your name and your likeness — is it moves slightly towards pay-for-play,” Smith said, “and it’s very difficult for us — the practitioners in this space — to figure out how do you regulate it. How do you ensure that the unscrupulous bad actors do not enter that space and ultimately create an unlevel playing field?

“One of our principles is try to create rules and regulations to try and achieve fair play.”

California’s new law will not go into effect until January 2023. The NCAA is exploring options to modernize its approach to dealing with the name, image and likeness (NIL) rights of college athletes before that date.

Smith is one of two administrators leading an NCAA working group that is examining options for NIL rights. The group, which includes athletic directors, university presidents and conference commissioners from all levels of the NCAA, was assembled in May to examine those options and make recommendations about how to move forward.

Smith said he couldn’t comment on any specifics about what the working group has discussed, but he did say the group will submit its report to the NCAA board of governors on Oct. 29 in Indianapolis.

“When you think about this issue, you need to think about its complexity as it relates to the university of the membership,” Smith said.

“The NCAA is an organization that has taken a long time to try and modernize itself. Over the last five to eight years, improvements have been made in that space to become more modern.”

Politicians from several other states have recently proposed bills for laws that would be similar to California’s Fair Pay to Play Act. Some of those bills include elements beyond an athlete’s name, image and likeness rights. For example, a state senator in New York wants to create a law that would also require schools to directly give their athletes 15% of annual athletic department revenue. A state representative from Florida said he is hoping to introduce legislation that would become law by the end of the current academic year.

Smith and others at the NCAA are concerned about navigating a landscape where each state has different rules about compensating college athletes.

“What we can’t have is situations where we have schools and/or states with different rules for an organization that’s going to compete together,” Smith said. “It can’t happen; it’s not reality. And if that happens, what we need is federal help to try to make sure we create rules and regulations for all of our memberships that are consistent. And if that doesn’t happen, then we’re looking at a whole new model.”

A federal law is currently making its way through the U.S. Congress. Rep. Mark Walker (R-N.C.) has proposed a change to tax code that would force the NCAA to allow players to profit from their name, image and likeness or risk losing its nonprofit tax exemptions. That bill is currently in front of the Ways and Means committee.

As a member of the working group, Smith said he couldn’t comment on whether he would be in favor of players profiting off their likeness if it was regulated and on a national scale. Ohio State head coach Ryan Day said he stands with Smith on the fair pay argument.