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PROVO — If the NCAA — or anyone other administrator in college athletics, for that matter — wants to knock on BYU's door and ask about the Cougars' handling of name, image and likeness legislation, then athletic director Tom Holmoe has one response: come on in.
BYU has nothing to hide and Holmoe would be glad to share what his school — which has been on the cusp of the new legislation since the Supreme Court overturned colleges' ability to police the ability for athletes to make money off their personal name, image and likeness last summer — has done over the past year.
"I'm super comfortable and excited about BYU and NIL," Holmoe said. "We feel that we had a good understanding of what it was and what it should be in the BYU way; we could do some of the things that are a little bit out-of-balance … but we're not going to do that. It wouldn't fit us.
"Some of our fans might think it would be great, but most of them would say no. We don't set those deals up; we have to monitor them to make sure they are compliant with NCAA rules to keep our players eligible. But we feel like as we monitor them that this is what NIL is about."
NCAA officials acknowledged this week to the Associated Press that the Indianapolis-based organization had sent letters of inquiry to "multiple schools" over the last several months over their name, image and likeness policies. NCAA vice president of enforcement Jon Duncan declined to identify any school, but the Cougars have publicly acknowledged they received a notice.
"It's just dialogue with a school to get more information about whether violations have occurred," Duncan told the AP this past week.
"We're not enforcing NIL deals, and we're not enforcing the interim policy, which is largely permissive" he added. "We're looking at rules that are still on the books and behaviors that are still violations. Or potentially (violations)."
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As the market for college athlete to earn money off their names, images and likenesses rapidly evolves, NCAA enforcement is faced with the tricky task of trying to police activities currently unregulated by detailed, uniform rules.Holmoe would agree with the assessment, and he's OK with it. Call it an inquiry, a probe or simply a phone call; just don't call it an "investigation," a word with which he bristled during his semi-annual roundtable with local media on Thursday.
"The NCAA called us and asked us to talk to them about these deals," he said. "We gave them the answers, and we feel at this point in time that we are in a good spot.
"We've been under investigation at BYU in the past for NCAA violations, and this doesn't feel anything like those investigations. We're more than happy to chat with the NCAA or other schools about what we are doing with NIL, because I think that is important to share those ideas. I've spoken with dozens of ADs at other schools about what we're doing with NIL."
When the NCAA, at the behest of the Supreme Court and several affronts from state legislation, backed off enforcing athletes' name, image and likeness, it did so in opening up a Wild, Wild West for multiple schools — especially those with no existing state legislation for NIL on the books, like Utah.
Holmoe acknowledged that the NCAA is likely stepping farther back from enforcement of multiple policies, including NIL control, under the association's new constitution that grants greater autonomy to each of its three divisions to separately govern themselves. But he welcomes any insight the NCAA or any other schools may offer his department in managing the future of the process.
"There are a lot of shenanigans going on right now; everybody knows it," he said. "How it continues? I don't know, but you'd think there'd be some type of standardization. But it's a law."
BYU and Miami were both mentioned by Sportico for their roles in the current inquiry, largely because the schools put together two of the more remarkable pieces of group NIL together in the country. The Cougar football team's deal with Built Bars, for example, would pay every player that opted in between $3,000 and $6,000 — roughly the price of a semester's worth of tuition — in exchange for promotional duties for the American Fork-based protein company.
A similar deal worth roughly $2 million with Provo-based location data service SmartyStreets offered up to $6,000 for similar promotion for any BYU female athlete that opted in to tech CEO Jonathan Oliver's offer.
Both deals were organic — like every other deal a BYU athlete has signed — and brokered between the companies and each athlete personally. BYU's role involved vetting the organization of the deal to make sure they were in line with the NCAA's other policies and keeping their athletes eligible.
So far, no BYU athlete has been declared ineligible under the new rules. And a lot of athletes have signed NIL deals.
"One thing I like is that a number of athletes have NIL deals that you all (the media) don't know about," Holmoe said. "They like it; they're happy that they have this opportunity that they didn't have. It's no woe-is-me because they don't have a six-figure deal, but they feel that the deals they have fit them.
"Then there are the Built Bar deals and the Smarty deal, and those are awesome. Those are brought by individual people in our community who came out, talked to our coaches, and said, 'what do you guys need?'"
