KU’s chancellor to join NCAA president at Senate hearing on athlete compensation
Kansas chancellor Douglas Girod will testify at a Senate hearing next week on NCAA student-athlete compensation.
The hearing, which will be overseen by U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kansas), will have testimony from both NCAA and Big 12 officials, including conference commissioner Bob Bowlsby and NCAA President Mark Emmert.
Moran is the chairman of the Subcommittee on Manufacturing, Trade and Consumer Protection. He will convene the hearing — “Name, Image, and Likeness: The State of Intercollegiate Athlete Compensation” — at 9 a.m. Central on Tuesday in the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington. A live stream of the event will be available on the Senate’s website.
Other scheduled speakers include National College Players Association executive director Ramogi Huma and NCAA Student-Athlete Advisory chair Kendall Spencer.
Those five witnesses, according to a release from Moran’s office, will “examine ongoing issues that surround compensating collegiate athletes” and also will discuss “the use of third party agents, current definitions of amateurism, and allowable incentives made available to today’s college athletes.”
KU director of strategic communications Joe Monaco said it was important for people like Girod to lend their voice to the process of finding solutions that can benefit student-athletes.
“As the leader of a top research institution with a major athletics department, Chancellor Girod is well-positioned to share his thoughts on the evolving landscape of collegiate athletics to help advance the conversation,” Monaco said. “We appreciate Senator Moran inviting KU to be part of this hearing, and we look forward to helping the process however we can.”
In October, the NCAA moved toward allowing college athletes to profit off their stature, voting unanimously to allow them to benefit from their name, image and likeness. The next step for the NCAA will be figuring out how the best enact this with the organization currently functioning under an amateurism model.
The NCAA’s action came one month after California passed a law in September that made it illegal for schools to prohibit their athletes from profiting off endorsements.
Girod’s school faces five Level I NCAA men’s basketball violations because of alleged payments made by representatives of Adidas, KU’s apparel sponsor, to families of Jayhawks recruits in order to secure their commitment to play at Kansas.
Girod was hired as KU’s chancellor in May 2017, while Bowlsby has been head of the Big 12 since 2012. In addition to Kansas, Big 12 schools TCU and Oklahoma State have also face NCAA allegations related to men’s basketball recruiting.
This story was originally published February 6, 2020 at 12:21 PM.
