Excerpts
“The landscape of college sports was changed forever on July 1 when NIL--Name, Image and Likeness, became available for student-athletes to market themselves.It's unclear how it will affect college athletics and student-athletes in the long run, especially because there is no uniformity at the moment. That was something Big East Commissioner Val Ackerman and the NCAA Working Group she was on had hoped to help provide, but their recommendations were put aside, at least for now, after the Supreme Court’s unanimous verdict against the NCAA in the historic NCAA vs. Alston case last year”
“Thus, rather than having a standardized approach, each Big East university must follow the NIL laws as set forth by the state it is in.Ackerman continued, “So, we’ve got a patchwork right now, which I think is disadvantageous. Whether Congress ultimately intervenes to create a national standard that would pre-empt the states remains to be seen. The approach we are taking is the interim approach. Maybe it will get replaced at some point by another framework but that’s an unknown. So, I think we’re in a kind of wait-and-see mode in terms of how these disparate rules function, how many student-athletes benefit from NIL, and whether they have time to pursue their NIL endeavors. Some of them could be very time-consuming.”
“As it relates to the Big East, I think our schools will be in a position to benefit,” Ackerman said. “We're in large markets. We have high visibility, particularly in both men’s basketball and women’s basketball, with our television contracts. We excel in other sports. Our schools are committed to the educational component of this, so I think we’ll be fine, but again, I think the bigger question is how college sports will evolve with this.”
“Ackerman was peppered with questions on the conference’s virtual media day last fall about the possibility of needing a bubble concept to get through the regular season, but ultimately, the league was able to use the traditional format successfully.“We had a lot of different (scheduling) models on the board,” Ackerman recalled, “and were ready to pivot if needed, including a single-venue model for up to two weeks tops, 10 days maybe, or more realistically, a week. But we didn’t go that route.“Our schools favored what we call the travel model,” she continued. “Most of our schools charter so they felt that they could travel safely, the way that they flew and how they were going to manage hotel stays and the like, so we ended up just going with that for the year.”
“The good news was that we still got in about 80% of our games,” Ackerman noted. “We lost 14 games on the men’s side and we got in both tournaments, with really elaborate protocols at both our men’s and women’s tournaments. We had everybody in a bubble at the Conrad Hotel downtown (in New York City). We elected to have just a handful of people in the building.“The Garden had elaborate protocols to get in,” Ackerman added. “We were testing every day. It was quite a lot of effort to make both tournaments happen. … We were very happy we were able to preserve those opportunities for the players and frankly, the NCAA was able to pull it off on a larger scale nationally. And I don’t think they’re getting the credit they deserve. … What they did was extraordinary.”Looking back on it, Ackerman says, “I think it proved just how adaptable you can be when you have to be. Our scheduling people were kind of on overdrive all season long.”
“It was wild, to be honest,” Ackerman continued, “to get through the year, but we did it. Again, I think it proved, when you have to be nimble and adaptable, you can be. But it was disruptive. And we did not have fans, for the most part, which made it easier to reschedule games because you didn’t have to return tickets and re-issue tickets. I think (this upcoming) year our expectation is that we will be back to having fans. On the men’s side we draw very well, nearly 100% capacity in most cases around the league."
https://setonhall.rivals.com/news/val-ackerman-big-east-commissioner-looks-back
“The landscape of college sports was changed forever on July 1 when NIL--Name, Image and Likeness, became available for student-athletes to market themselves.It's unclear how it will affect college athletics and student-athletes in the long run, especially because there is no uniformity at the moment. That was something Big East Commissioner Val Ackerman and the NCAA Working Group she was on had hoped to help provide, but their recommendations were put aside, at least for now, after the Supreme Court’s unanimous verdict against the NCAA in the historic NCAA vs. Alston case last year”
“Thus, rather than having a standardized approach, each Big East university must follow the NIL laws as set forth by the state it is in.Ackerman continued, “So, we’ve got a patchwork right now, which I think is disadvantageous. Whether Congress ultimately intervenes to create a national standard that would pre-empt the states remains to be seen. The approach we are taking is the interim approach. Maybe it will get replaced at some point by another framework but that’s an unknown. So, I think we’re in a kind of wait-and-see mode in terms of how these disparate rules function, how many student-athletes benefit from NIL, and whether they have time to pursue their NIL endeavors. Some of them could be very time-consuming.”
“As it relates to the Big East, I think our schools will be in a position to benefit,” Ackerman said. “We're in large markets. We have high visibility, particularly in both men’s basketball and women’s basketball, with our television contracts. We excel in other sports. Our schools are committed to the educational component of this, so I think we’ll be fine, but again, I think the bigger question is how college sports will evolve with this.”
“Ackerman was peppered with questions on the conference’s virtual media day last fall about the possibility of needing a bubble concept to get through the regular season, but ultimately, the league was able to use the traditional format successfully.“We had a lot of different (scheduling) models on the board,” Ackerman recalled, “and were ready to pivot if needed, including a single-venue model for up to two weeks tops, 10 days maybe, or more realistically, a week. But we didn’t go that route.“Our schools favored what we call the travel model,” she continued. “Most of our schools charter so they felt that they could travel safely, the way that they flew and how they were going to manage hotel stays and the like, so we ended up just going with that for the year.”
“The good news was that we still got in about 80% of our games,” Ackerman noted. “We lost 14 games on the men’s side and we got in both tournaments, with really elaborate protocols at both our men’s and women’s tournaments. We had everybody in a bubble at the Conrad Hotel downtown (in New York City). We elected to have just a handful of people in the building.“The Garden had elaborate protocols to get in,” Ackerman added. “We were testing every day. It was quite a lot of effort to make both tournaments happen. … We were very happy we were able to preserve those opportunities for the players and frankly, the NCAA was able to pull it off on a larger scale nationally. And I don’t think they’re getting the credit they deserve. … What they did was extraordinary.”Looking back on it, Ackerman says, “I think it proved just how adaptable you can be when you have to be. Our scheduling people were kind of on overdrive all season long.”
“It was wild, to be honest,” Ackerman continued, “to get through the year, but we did it. Again, I think it proved, when you have to be nimble and adaptable, you can be. But it was disruptive. And we did not have fans, for the most part, which made it easier to reschedule games because you didn’t have to return tickets and re-issue tickets. I think (this upcoming) year our expectation is that we will be back to having fans. On the men’s side we draw very well, nearly 100% capacity in most cases around the league."
https://setonhall.rivals.com/news/val-ackerman-big-east-commissioner-looks-back
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