Story by: Chapel Fowler
Photo by: Katie Clark
In 2010, Bob Orr’s view on college sports forever changed.
That year, he represented Devon Ramsay, a North Carolina fullback who’d been ruled permanently ineligible by the NCAA for alleged academic fraud.
Ramsay sat out nine games that fall — most of UNC’s 2010 season — as Orr and the university appealed his case, which centered around changes a tutor made to a sociology paper.
By February 2011, the NCAA reversed its ruling. But Orr said the damage was done. Ramsay’s name was forever linked to a scandal in which he was cleared of all wrongdoing.
“After seeing what happened to Devon and the gross miscarriage of justice,” Orr said, “I really started looking at how the NCAA operated, what the issues were from a player standpoint.”
This all goes to say: when an N.C. General Assembly legislative staffer approached him about two years ago, asking if he had any ideas for “poking the NCAA in the eye,” as Orr put it, he was all in.
“Well,” Orr told the staffer, “let me send you a proposal for a study commission.”
Much to his surprise, his ideas were “pretty well mirrored” in the Legislative Commission on the Fair Treatment of College Student-Athletes, the temporary committee the General Assembly established two summers ago to propose changes.
Such reform has been a hot topic across the country. Most notably, in September, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill that will allow student-athletes in the state to benefit from their names, images and likenesses, beginning in 2023.
In response, the NCAA Board of Governors announced in October it would direct all three of its divisions to “immediately consider updates” to their bylaws that would allow name, image and likeness compensation.
The news prompted many a reaction from prominent athletes, celebrities and politicians, including Rep. Mark Walker (in favor) and U.S. Sen. Richard Burr (not in favor) of North Carolina. It also begged the question: what state would be next?
In North Carolina, Senate Bill 335, the legislation proposed after the commission’s four meetings, has sat in the Senate’s committee on rules and operations since late March — a “place where they send bills to die,” Orr joked.
The bill, advocates said, has stagnated because it’s far-reaching.
One of its main stipulations is that institutions can only obtain revenue from student-athletes’ name, image and likeness with written consent, and such revenue can only be “derived from an athletic program event” — through ticket sales and game programs, for example.
It would also set up a University Student-Athlete Protection Commission within the UNC System. The commission, funded by a 1 percent tax on all UNC-system colleges’ ticket-sale revenue, would investigate student-athlete complaints against their universities — a process usually handled in-house.
But hope remains among those advocates that some of S.B. 335’s proposals may eventually go through. If anything, it started a conversation that isn’t slowing down any time soon.
“The proposals that came out of that were pretty far-reaching … it went so much beyond NIL,” said Maddie Salamone, an attorney and former Duke lacrosse player. “And that’s the reform that’s really needed.”
‘Comprehensive and even-handed’
Salamone, who works at a New York law firm, walked into the commission’s third meeting last winter with both “skepticism and optimism.”
In Durham, she was a midfielder for the Blue Devils’ women’s lacrosse team and discovered a passion for advocacy through the college’s student-athlete advisory committee.
Over her four years, she moved up to the larger ACC student-athlete advisory committee and, eventually, the Division 1 student-athlete advisory committee, which she chaired in 2013.
She was eager to voice her opinions, and other athletes’, on myriad issues: the stress of recruiting, transferring, the time commitments of injury rehab, which she had experienced first-hand experience. But bureaucracy quickly put a damper on that excitement.
“For a while, I really stepped away from college sports entirely,” Salamone said. “I didn’t want to have anything to do with them because I was so disheartened by the whole process.”
That’s why Salamone arrived at Room 643 of the Legislative Office Building in Raleigh with mixed feelings. She’d been motivated before. And disappointed before.
Reflecting on that day — Jan. 10, 2019, when she presented on athletes’ need for better legal representation — Salamone again felt indifferent.
“While there were some individuals in that room that I think were moved by the discussion,” she said, “there weren’t enough people paying attention, understanding why some of the major things North Carolina wanted to do were really important.”
Orr testified at that meeting. As did John Shoop, a former UNC football offensive coordinator turned NCAA activist. The commission also heard from UNC-Charlotte Chancellor Philip Dubois and Michelle Lee, an associate athletic director at N.C. State.
Such a “both sides” approach — a few people make an argument; a few people rebuff it — was frequent throughout the commission’s four meetings.
“Very comprehensive and even-handed in its inquiry,” Orr said.
The 12-person committee completed its final report in March, and, after a tie-breaking vote by Lt. Gov. Dan Forest, officially proposed the recommendations that factored heavily into S.B. 335.
The commission didn’t go as far to call for student-athlete compensation. That, it wrote, “will require significant investigation of legal and economic resources.”
But it did recommend a number of interesting reforms: most notably, the aforementioned limits on universities’ name, image and likeness revenue and the Student-Athlete Protection Commission.
Also within S.B. 335, introduced just weeks after the final report, are smaller changes: making pro-bono attorneys available to athletes; more transparency in disclosing athletes’ academic majors to the public and recruits, to combat the concept of “clustering”; and an injured athlete scholarship trust fund.
At the broadest level, the committee put it simply: it found “inconsistency in requirements for intercollegiate athletics” all across the state.
‘Remains to be seen’
Salamone has her guesses as to why momentum has waned.
One is the undeniable power of the UNC System, which made its opinion clear in a February statement warning the commission’s “one-size-fits-all” recommendations carried “significant risks to the continued viability” of its constituent universities’ athletic programs.
Another, Salamone said, is the simple passage of time.
It’s been three years since the NCGA passed its infamous “bathroom bill,” H.B. 2, and the NCAA pulled its championship events out of North Carolina in response. Within a year, Gov. Roy Cooper signed a partial repeal and the NCAA brought the events back.
“I think a little bit of the legislators wanted to stick it to the NCAA,” Salamone said, “which is helpful to the cause. Probably not for the reasons we’d hoped.”
Whether an eye poke, as Orr said, or not, support for the bill has been surprisingly bipartisan. S.B. 335’s primary sponsor is Democratic Sen. Don Davis; he’s joined in sponsorship by two Democrats and two Republicans.
That teamwork’s also evident at a national level. Walker, a Republican who represents North Carolina’s Sixth District, introduced in March the bipartisan Student-Athlete Equity Act in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The bill, which also aims to legalize name, image and likeness compensation for athletes, is co-sponsored by a Louisiana Democrat. But it’s also stalled, currently sitting in the House committee on ways and means.
In Walker’s home state, advocates remain optimistic for S.B. 335 nine months after it first appeared on the NCGA docket— but in a measured way.
They hope certain aspects of the expansive bill can be gleaned and eventually enacted. Salamone mentioned the name, image and likeness provision, which other states are considering, and neutral advisers for transfer decisions. Orr said more long-term health provisions could work.
Until then, though, they admit it’s mostly a waiting game — as is the case across the country.
“The conversation is there,” Orr said. “And that’s an important part of it, that we’re at least talking about the problem and talking about the solutions.”
“I think with the California bill, it’s more hopeful that there will be some more momentum that picks up in North Carolina,” Salamone said. “So, I guess that remains to be seen.”
