President Joe Biden met with former college football players and advocates at the White House on Wednesday to discuss the rights and safety of college athletes. Biden met with a star-studded group of former players that included Andrew Luck, Desmond Howard, Ryan Clark, Rod Gilmore, Keith Marshall and Jordan Meachum.
A White House statement said Biden attended the meeting to “learn why college football players – and all student-athletes – deserve consistent safety standards, a voice, and benefit from the revenue they generate.”
Biden led the group through the Oval Office and the Cabinet Room and listened to their collective thoughts on player rights – including the topic of name, image and likeness. NIL has been a hot topic since the NCAA adopted a policy in the summer of 2021 allowing college athletes to monetize their names, images and likenesses.
“We haven’t talked about the guidelines specifically,” Clark told The Athletic. “I think this conversation was about seeing what policies could be put in place. It was about seeing how to have the conversation with the NCAA. “It was about how to have the conversation with those who want to represent the student-athletes and what policies could be enforced.” And to be honest, it wasn’t about a policy that could only help student-athletes. We want it to benefit the NCAA. We want it to be fair. We want it to be fair in a way that it can be fair.
Last month, Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick advocated for the NCAA to engage in collective bargaining with athletes following his testimony on Capitol Hill. Swarbrick made it clear that he was against classifying players as university employees. He proposed giving athletes special status that would maintain their position as full-time students at a university but still allow them to unionize and bargain collectively with a larger organization.