That immediately raised questions of whether it impacted her eligibility. But the NCAA responded quickly on social media:
MORE: Mo’ne Davis in photos
When the NCAA announced this decision, it looked like a major concession, allowing an athlete to profit on their likeness. But reading the NCAA’s release carefully shows that while there might be an option to loosen rules further, the decision was as limited as the NCAA indicated.
While the NCAA did not cite a bylaw, the rule it is relying on seems to be that prior to full-time enrollment, an athlete may profit off his or her name, image or likeness and still remain eligible in sports other than the one which created the athlete’s reputation. The NCAA is simply taking this one step further: allowing Davis to profit off her name, image, or likeness and remain eligible in the same sport.
The NCAA gave two justifications for this decision: the limited opportunities for women in baseball and Davis’ age. The first is the one which prevents this decision from having as much value as a precedent. By definition, it requires athletes to excel in sports not traditionally associated with their gender. It may exclude young male athletes entirely in a similar situation.
But the second is the opportunity. To boil it down, Davis’ athletic reputation and talent is not the same type as that of a high school or college athlete. Whether she will be good enough to play basketball, baseball or any other sport at the collegiate level is still highly speculative. The odds that this would have been a problem are low enough that it does not make sense to have a blanket rule which prohibits it.
Perhaps the way for the NCAA to ease into allowing athletes to profit off their talent and reputation is to start young. A rule which says athletes may profit off their name, image and likeness prior to high school would start to establish the scope of what such a system would like for high school and college athletes. If there is a massive endorsements and memorabilia market for middle schoolers, that would say a lot about how big such a market is for college athletes.
More likely is that this market is smaller that many think. So it would give the chance to see what happens in a few exceptional cases like Mo’ne Davis before moving up to high school and watching it become more prevalent as well as more lucrative for athletes.
