Recently Virginia passed groundbreaking legislation, thanks to efforts led by Delegate Austin, which provides significant name, image, and likeness (NIL) opportunities for student-athletes in the commonwealth. This trailblazing law positions Virginia schools at the forefront of change in intercollegiate athletics, offering opportunities for both in-state and out-of-state student-athletes.
 
Effective July 1, 2024, the legislation grants VCU with the ability to provide its student-athletes with enhanced assistance in navigating NIL opportunities. Most importantly, this includes being able to assist our student-athletes with contract review, understanding negotiations, financial management and other areas related to NIL. The newly passed legislation empowers VCU Athletics to better assist its student-athletes from negotiation to execution of an NIL opportunity.
 
Later in the week, the NCAA passed similar legislation, which provides all NCAA institutions with a clearer understanding of their enhanced institutional involvement capabilities.
 
Although the legislation also gives Virginia colleges and universities the discretion to directly  compensate student-athletes for their NIL, consistent with other institutions in Virginia, VCU Athletics will continue to evaluate the feasibility of direct payments. VCU will work with University Counsel and the NCAA to determine the viability of direct payment NIL opportunities. Student fees are explicitly prohibited from being used for these prospective payments.
 
VCU Athletics has consistently proven to be competitive in all continuing and emerging areas of college athletics. Whether it be facilities, personnel, team travel, Alston academic awards, with your support, VCU has always risen to the challenge of providing additional resources at the first opportunity and at a level of excellence. Having said that, Head Women's Basketball Coach, Beth O'Boyle acknowledges that, "[t]his landscape is really changing our day-to-day coaching."
 
Head Men's Basketball Coach, Ryan Odom is encouraged by VCU's NIL efforts but understands additional progress is essential, "[t]he next step for us as a department, as a basketball program, as a fan base, is to jump all in on the NIL side and really help out our basketball programs, our athletics programs, to compete on the national level. We are making major strides but we're not where we need to be right now. We've got to keep going."
 
The Department has a clear goal of working towards the same resource standard in the NIL space. Great strides have already been made, but your support is more important than ever for VCU to remain competitive at a national level and continue to meet the high expectations of our alumni and fans. Expectations which VCU Athletics internally mirrors. Let's work together to achieve these aggressive goals.
 
Ed McLaughlin, VCU Director of Athletics emphasizes that, "[t]he opportunities provided by NIL programs become more and more important each day to student-athletes and university athletic departments alike. We want to create the platform for student-athletes to grow and develop athletically, academically and socially at VCU and we need to provide a Top 25 NIL program to match the facilities, academic support, coaching and student-athlete experiences that we currently provide. With the support of our fans, our campus stakeholders and the Central Virginia community, I know we can do it."
 
Every contribution to VCU's NIL initiatives helps. Please consider supporting the Havoc Unlimited Collective and VCU's other NIL efforts today.