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By: Taylor Kauffman
For a long time the NCAA banned college athletes from making money while playing their sport. Well, that changed this week — allowing athletes to benefit from their name, image and likeness.
“When it came out and I saw it I was like holy cow, like it was a huge surprise,” said Drury Lady Panthers’ Payton Richards.
This was a common reaction for athletes after the NCAA lifted the name image and likeness ban allowing athletes to make money while playing their college sports.
“Then I thought like you know, we’d at least have a couple more years before it would happen,” Richards said.
The fifth year senior from West Plains has high hopes for what this could mean.
“I think that’s going to help us expand and get us get attention, you know, and so you won’t see like discrepancy between the men men’s and women’s games to this offered for all of us now. So I think that’s something that’s super cool and can bridge that gap,” said Richard.
But before reaping the rewards of any endorsements many athletes like Payton are proceeding with caution.
“We couldn’t earn money from these kinds of things, so now they’re just, ‘Alright here you go, it’s out in the open,’ which is great, but what can I do to make sure that I’m not going to get in trouble for doing it, you know what I mean?” said Richards. “Because no one wants to get in trouble with NCAA because you’re right, you can get in trouble just like that and so we want to make sure that we’re doing the right thing on and off the court to abide by those rules and then of course, enjoy the benefit of having our image and likeness and making money off of it.”
The details of the new NIL rules are left to the states and schools — no word yet on what these policies look like for Missouri State or Drury.
