Baylor Athletes to Receive $5,980 Annually by Meeting Academic Requirements
The Baylor athletic department has been actively communicating with the public in the last two weeks its intentions to capitalize on name, image and likeness processes and other recently altered NCAA rules that benefit college athletes.
“We've been very, very active,” Baylor Director of Athletics Mack Rhoades told SicEm365 Radio on Tuesday.
Just last week, Baylor’s official athletic social media accounts began to promote officially licensed men’s and women’s basketball jerseys and t-shirts through the university’s official bookstore.
Names of eligible student athletes, accompanied by the jersey number of each player, were placed on the back of the jerseys and t-shirts. Athletes who chose to take part of the program are compensated for the use of their personal name, image and likeness. A similar agreement with other athletes, including members of the football team, are also expected.
“We're certainly excited to do that, and to give the opportunity for our young men and our young women to have that opportunity,” Rhoades said. “For us to be able to do that and provide our fans the opportunity to get jerseys with with particular individual names on it, I think it's a really cool step that we took as a program, athletic department in getting into that space.”
Rhoades followed up that specific NIL news from last week with a more impactful piece of news related to current and future Baylor athletes. While not tied directly to NIL, beginning in the fall of 2022, athletes will have the opportunity to benefit monetarily at Baylor by reaching academic requirements each semester.
In June of last summer, the ruling of the NCAA vs. Alston Supreme Court case found that NCAA rules limited education-related compensation violated section 1 of the Sherman Act. In response to that, Rhoades told SicEm365 Radio that Baylor Athletics has established a $2.1 million annual fund for it’s 500-plus student athletes to benefit from.
Baylor is now one of roughly 25 athletic programs that have decided to take part of this allowed but not required incentive program. Baylor athletes will have access to $5,980 per academic year by meeting academic requirements.
“This is now permissive,” Rhoades said. “You don't have to do it, but you can do it. Different conferences have have governed it different ways. Some it's open to any student athlete no matter whether or not they're on athletic scholarship or not. Some it's just open to the student athletes that are on athletic scholarship.”
Rhoades did not clarify what those academic requirements would be.
The $2.1 million will be fully funded by Baylor’s athletic department on an annual basis. Two payments divided equally, one for each semester, will be available to student athletes if academic requirements are met. Payment for the fall semester will be made during the spring.
“We're not going to distribute the one for the fall semester until the until the spring,” Rhoades clarified. “You can't earn it in the fall semester and then decide to go transfer somewhere else and pay it to you.”
Rhoades, who said the plan for the academic incentives have been in place for nearly sixth months, added that the additional incentive would not alter what each athlete receives for full cost of attendance. That figure, estimated to be around $1,300 monthly for scholarship athletes, will come in addition to any payments made for meeting academic requirements.
By that estimation, scholarship athletes could be compensated nearly $22,000 annually before any additional NIL income.
“We have student athletes that are being fairly well compensated,” Rhoades said. “We'll have some other student athletes here in the near future that are going to be compensated extremely well via name, image and likeness.”
“But again, we're gonna be careful and thoughtful on how on how we do it.”