Georgia Governor Signs Executive Order Allowing State Schools to Pay Athletes

As the court case nears its conclusion, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp has decided to take matters into his own hands.. September seventeenth he signed an executive order that enables universities within the state to directly pay athletes based on name, likeness and image (NIL) transactions.

According to the , Kemp’s order violates NCAA rules and prohibits each the governing body and any conference that Georgia schools belong to from imposing penalties on schools that pay players under NIL agreements.

The settlement already includes an identical resolution, but those rules, once agreed to and finalized, wouldn’t go into effect until the beginning of the subsequent academic 12 months, whereas Kemp’s executive order is effective immediately. An analogous law was passed in July 2024 by the Virginia legislature, giving Virginia universities the flexibility to pay their athletes directly without fear of NCAA punishment.

According to sources, neither the University of Georgia nor Georgia Tech, the state’s two flagship universities, have immediate plans to pay players. Georgia athletic director Josh Brooks and Georgia Tech athletic director J Batt issued a joint statement thanking Gov. Kemp for essentially giving them a head start on recruiting, but they took no motion on paying players right now.

“We extend our sincere gratitude to Governor Brian Kemp for his leadership today,” the athletic directors told ESPN. “In the absence of statewide name, image and likeness regulations, this executive order helps our institutions have the necessary tools to fully support our student-athletes as they pursue NIL opportunities, remain competitive with our peers and ensure the long-term success of our athletic programs.”

The Georgia and Virginia laws mean that schools in each states could start paying players immediately and and not using a cap on the quantity, unlike the proposed antitrust settlement, which might limit NIL payments to just over $20 million in the primary 12 months and increase 12 months after 12 months. If schools in those states were to start paying their players, the NCAA’s only recourse can be one other court battle.

According to , the implementing regulation stated that the estate had introduced inconsistent regulations regarding intercollegiate sports“Legislative and regulatory actions across the country create a patchwork of inconsistent rules governing intercollegiate athletic competitions,” the chief order states.

The NCAA, the Power Five conferences (SEC, ACC, BIG 12, PAC 12, BIG 10) and attorneys for plaintiffs in three antitrust cases asked a federal judge in California to approve a settlement involving nearly $2.8 billion in damages, but on September 5, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken said she wouldn’t approve the present settlement.

Wilken reportedly has an issue with the proposed NCAA rules, calling them “pretty harsh” and wondered whether the agreement would cause athletes to lose payments they’d already received from the NIL collectives. The parties, Judge Wilken and the attorneys, agreed that the attorneys would return with an amendment to the agreement by September 26.