Hi, and welcome back to Legal Geek. This week, we review an interesting recent decision of the NCAA to allow a current player to make and keep prize money from appearing on the TV show Dancing With The Stars, without exhausting her eligibility.
The latest season of Dancing With The Stars premiered this week, and this all athlete-season is the biggest opening since Avengers Infinity War came out last weekend. Jokes aside, this season of the dancing competition show features several human interest stories in the competitors, including a current college athlete in Notre Dame women's basketball player Arike Ogunbowale.
Ogunbowale hit last second shots in the national semifinal against Connecticut and again in the national championship against Mississippi State to lock up the NCAA title for the Fighting Irish last month. Needless to say, she's at the peak of fame in college athletics, and she plans to return for one more season in which she will be the face of women's college basketball. However, as we've covered before on this segment, the NCAA strictly prohibits athletes from profiting on their likenesses while playing college sports. These rules are under siege in court cases ongoing around the country, but they do stand currently.
What happened here was a narrow reading or interpretation of those rules. NCAA Bylaw 12.4.1.1 prohibits college athletes from being paid "for value or utility that the student-athlete may have for the employer because of the publicity, reputation, fame or personal following that he or she has obtained because of athletics ability." The NCAA is allowing Ogunbowale to accept prizes from Dancing With The Stars because such prizes will not be awarded based on her athletics ability, meaning basketball ability. The NCAA is not allowing her to participate in any promotional materials for the show, however.
The NCAA may be backing down a bit because the writing is on the wall for this rule and modern college athletics. By showing some flexibility, albeit with a flimsy interpretation of rules since Ogunbowale is only on the show because she's an athlete with specific abilities and achievements that make her an interesting story, the NCAA may be trying to forge a new path forward in defining what it means to be an amateur athlete. But we really won't know for sure until other athletes are in similar positions and asking for NCAA permission.
The Bottom Line is, the NCAA has had to bend the rules in certain circumstances like for Olympic games athletes, but this television appearance based on recent fame generated from playing college basketball is new ground that the NCAA used to be much more wary of allowing. We will continue to monitor whether the NCAA becomes more flexible or stands its ground as the court cases continue against it to try and allow payment of college athletes in some manner.
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