National signing day for football is quickly approaching.
Most top high school players will sign the National Letter of Intent (NLI), a voluntary program now administered by the NCAA, without question.
Marc Isenberg has been arguing that the NLI should either be abolished or rewritten and has put together a piece for SportsAgentBlog.com, seen below.
National Signing Day has become a national holiday for college football coaches, players and especially fans. Recruiting is big business as hope springs eternal. Finally, the process ends and the celebration begins. But first athletes must sign the National Letter of Intent, a horribly one-sided agreement that binds player to the school.
Most top high school players will sign the National Letter of Intent (NLI) without question. After all, this is what to athletes do on National Signing Day. They don’t read the fine print. They don’t consult attorneys. They just sign on the dotted line, put on the school cap and smile for the cameras. I have argued that the NLI should either be abolished or, at the least, rewritten.
Background of the National Letter of Intent
The National Letter of Intent (NLI) is an agreement that heavily favors athletic departments over recruits. Many lawyers believe the NLI is what can legally be defined as a “contract of adhesion,” which is “a standard-form contract prepared by one party, to be signed by the party in a weaker position…who adheres to the contract with little choice about the terms.”
Technically, the NLI is a voluntary program, but unless an athlete is a superstar, he or she does not have market power to dictate terms of enrollment. Sign on the dotted line or risk losing the scholarship offer.
The NLI program was founded in 1964. From 1995 through 2006, it was administered by the Southeastern Conference. From the NLI’s website: “From 1964 to 1973, the NLI rules were very specific, with little flexibility provided to meet the needs of a particular sport…student-athletes failing to fulfill the obligations of an NLI were charged with the loss of two seasons of eligibility in all sports, and few appeals to the rules were ever considered.”
From the athlete’s perspective, the NLI is a bad deal today. And 35 years ago it was even worse.
An interesting dimension of the NLI is the fact that it is written in first-person singular (”I understand that if I do not attend the institution named in this document for one full academic year…I may not represent the latter institution in intercollegiate athletics competition until I have completed one full academic year in residence at the latter institution…”).
First person seems odd because this document was crafted by-and clearly represents the interests of-athletic directors and coaches, rather than the athletes who must abide by the NLI’s onerous terms, even if they later have misgivings or outright regret about their decision to sign it.
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