Andrew Luck, More to Meet with Biden Administration over College Athletes' Rights

President Joe Biden's administration is getting in on the discussion around the economic rights for college athletes.

Per The Athletic's Seth Emerson, the White House will host several former college athletes at an event on Wednesday to discuss topics ranging from revenue sharing, safety standards and student-athletes having a say in these matters.

Andrew Luck, Desmond Howard, Ryan Clark and Rod Gilmore are among the six former college athletes set to attend. Former running backs Keith Marshall and Jordan Meachum received invitations, though it's not specified if they accepted.

The NCAA and most states across the country have adopted name, image and likeness rules. The first set of state laws and NCAA rules allowing NIL went into effect on July 1, 2021.

For most of the past two years, the NCAA has been trying to get Congress involved to create a federal NIL law. As of July 28, 2023, there have been 10 bills related to NIL introduced at the federal level. None of them has advanced beyond being read and referred to at committee meetings.

There have been 10 Congressional NIL hearings over the past two years, most recently on Oct. 17 with a seven-member witness panel featuring NCAA president Charlie Baker.

National Labor Relations Board general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, who was appointed to the position by President Biden in 2021, said in a September 2021 memo that certain college athletes "are employees" and should be protected by labor laws.

In December 2022, the National Labor Relations Board regional office in Los Angeles found merit in an unfair labor practice complaint filed by members of USC's football and basketball team that could open the door for college athletes to unionize.

The NCAA is currently in the midst of a class action lawsuit filed by three classes of former college athletes, totaling more than 184,000 people in various sports, seeking more than $1.3 billion for use of their name, image and likeness. U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken ruled on Friday the lawsuit can move ahead.

It's unclear if Wednesday's meeting at the White House will move the needle of any of the arguments made by athletes, but it's at least another step in the process to potentially getting federal NIL legislation passed at some point in the future.