On March 9, 2023, a delegation of Title IX and NIL experts from The Drake Group (TDG) met with Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR) staff members to ask for the assistance of OCR to ensure gender equity and compliance with Title IX in the new chaotic environment created by NIL (name, image, … Read more
The Drake Group believes that the current NIL chaos can be relieved by DOE/OCR clearly and precisely warning institutions, their conferences, and national governance organizations of their obligations under existing Title IX requirements, explaining how those requirements apply to these new NIL-related activities, and warning that actions by “NIL booster collectives” will be attributed to the universities when appropriate. The … Read more
Andrew Zimbalist, Robert A. Woods Professor of Economics, Smith College; President-Elect, The Drake Group; author of Unpaid Professionals: Commercialism and Conflict in Big-time College Sports (1999), The Economics of Sport, I & II (2001), Unwinding Madness: What Went Wrong with College Sports and How to Fix It (2017) with Gerry Gurney and Donna Lopiano, and Whither College Sports (2021), explains the economics of … Read more
Representatives of the NCAA, prominent athletic conferences, and athletics administrators have been pacing the halls of Congress asking their Senators and Representatives for federal laws that would negate the patchwork of state laws that gave college athletes name, image, and likeness employment rights outside their education institutions. Such employment is a good thing for athletes, … Read more