Monday, May 18, 2015

State of Georgia Steps Into College Football

Finally, there is some good news this past week in college football, (if you are in favor of keeping the amateurism of the sport).
The state of Georgia has taken its own steps to help control the illegal payments to college players. New legislation aims to punish those who pay athletes, and tempt them with benefits while they are in school.The new legislation is named for, and shaped around, Georgia running back Todd Gurley, who signed autographs in exchange for payment earlier this year. Gurley obviously knew about this NCAA rule restricting that type of action. It is made obvious to all athletes, and especially high profiles ones such as him where the rule is actually relevant. However the punishment if he were to be caught was not enough of a deterrent. He knew of the potential consequences and broke the rules anyway. Hence lawmakers have now taken it into their own hands to help regulate the violations in college football. This time they moved to protect the universities, and penalize those who are involved in these illegal activities with student-athletes.
Usually the legal system does not have much interaction with these violations(rather leaving it to the NCAA), but Georgia felt it was necessary to step in. This is extremely important to the universities as well because they have a way out of the mess now. They don’t have to take down banners and gets wins taken away after scandals. Now they have a more significant penalty in place to help deter people who could potentially involve athletes with these activities.
Barry Fleming, the man who drafted the bill, had this to say about its intent.“We plugged it into a law about alumni being overzealous. Now it's a misdemeanor of a high and aggravated nature. It can be up to a year in jail and a $5,000 fine. On the civil side, the university can sue the person who does this for any damages sustained, like losing a TV contract, not going to bowl games.” Often times illegal activities are a joint operation between universities and boosters, but this law targets those outside the school to help keep any temptations for the schools and athletes away.
This new law aims to discourage NCAA rules violations moving forward. Only the state of Georgia will enforce this rule as of now, but hopefully other states will follow suit and enact similar laws to help discourage the glaring violations that go along with college football.

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