Marquan McCall takes a stand for paying college athletes

College athletes have been making a big push to be allowed to profit off their name and likeness.

Various states have already signed off on legislation to do so in the near future including California, Colorado, and Florida. The first of these to go into effect will be Florida’s which starts on July 1, 2021.

On Friday, Kentucky Wildcats nose guard Marquan McCall took to Twitter to take a stand for college athletes to make it clear that it was time for change.

Not long after McCall sent out the tweet, he added to it noting that student-athletes aren’t asking for much but just enough to justify the amount of money that the schools are making each year based on their play.

The NCAA’s board of governors already announced in April that they would be open to and supportive of potential rule changes for players to profit off their name, image, and likeness but noted that it would have to be done so under specific guidelines.

SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey recently told a U.S. Senate committee that this change would have to be a uniform federal law instead of each state making their own laws with varying details and requirements.

“It would be difficult and confusing,” Sankey stated, per KUSports.com. “Knowing the competition within my 11 states, I can foresee quickly the other 10 one-upping each other. And I think that’s a problem for fair and equitable competition.”

Also, Sankey said that all Power 5 conferences (SEC, ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, and Pac-12) support a rule change but believe name, image, and likeness deals should not be approved during the “pre-enrollment process” and the student-athletes’ first semester of courses.

While we are not yet going to be seeing this rule changed, it appears that we will soon see student-athletes being allowed to profit off their own name, image and likeness, which is how it should be.