NIL for Foreign Players
I have seen it mentioned on here previously that NIL was an issue for foreign players, but I found it noteworthy that University of Kentucky found a way to legally use NIL to keep Oscar Tshiebwe in Lexington for another year. Tshiebwe is the reigning National Player of the Year, and is reported to be getting over $2 million in NIL deals.
Tshiebwe was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and has been in USA since freshmen year of high school on a VISA. I would hope that the University of Michigan can use this as a roadmap to formulation of NIL deals for their non-US citizen student-athletes, as something similar may have been enough to keep Dajid Ojabo in Ann Arbor for another year.
https://www.si.com/college/2022/04/20/oscar-tshiebwe-kentucky-return-name-image-likeness-deals
Seth had commented on this on the Roundtable sometime in the past couple of months. The difference between UK admissions office making the effort with the Democratic Republic of Congo for a national player of the year award winner and the UM admissions office making the same efforts to cut red tape with less publicity concerned governments like France is likely to be huge here.
Sounds like a combination of laziness and snobbery to me. Disappointing.
French snobbery perhaps. France is far less likely to cooperate than the Congo.
Seth is privy to information I'm not, but NIL isn't an admissions office question--it's for the school's international student immigration office, whose role is to ensure compliance with federal laws. To my understanding, NIL violates USCIS/Customs and Border Patrol regulations which would result (over time) in revoked visas.
Seth is just speculating and it almost certainly has nothing to do with admissions (which I don't Seth says it does). The issue at hand is the Visa, not how the school treats the visa. Most student visas prohibit the ability to get paid for work, having a visa that allows you to work professionally in the united states is a very different visa with a different process.
I don't know what Kentucky did or didn't do, but in these cases its going to be unique solutions, because its an immigration and visa issue, not a school issue. It could be he is getting a new kind of visa, it could be due to how long he has been in the US, it could have to do with Kentucky's NIL law compared to Michigan's, it could be a million different things that look different than Diabate or Houstan's situation.
There is no reason to assume snobbery or admissions policies have anything to do with this.
It could be that a Senator or Congressman from KY has pulled some strings to make it happen.
I am not so sure that Objabo, after his astronomical rise as a prospect, would have stayed around for that money. I bleed blue and that would be a difficult decision if i were in his shoes.
Let's hope that Michigan can figure something out, as we have had some extremely interesting international athletes in the past 5 or so years. It would have been nice to have another year with them. It would also have felt nice to reward some of them while they were excelling on our football and basketball teams, when so many of their peers were relatively well compensated.
One of the other things mentioned in the MgoRoundtable today is that Tshiebwe has been in the US for almost 5 years which makes the road a bit easier. This topic is more relevant for Diabate, not Ojabo. I'd love to keep Diabate for another year, but since he's been here for a year, getting the proper (i.e. compliant) NIL deal is a lot more difficult.
Well Diabate has been at Michigan for only 1 year, but he's been living in the US I think his whole high school career at least, no?
Yes, that is a noteworthy bit of news, but relative to Ojabo's earnings upside with the NFL after his last year with us, there simply was no NIL deal that would have kept him with us.
I don't understand why this is an issue. Student is German citizen. Draft and sign the NIL deal in Germany under German law. BOOM! Problem solved and you can tell the NCAA and ICE to go ... investigate each other.
OBTW, I believe the law school has an international law program of some repute. I remember my internal law professor (a Europhile German citizen) saying that in his opinion the law library's international collection was the third best in the world. Just sayin'
This issue came up here at MGOBLOG on March 25. I posted then that foreign students could legally do NIL deals as sales of intellectual property rights in the athletes' name, image and likeness. To mix metaphors, as a legal matter, this is not rocket science. The foreign student visa restriction is focused upon off-campus employment.
I thought the loophole is that he isn't actually doing any work for the money. They are just using his likeness. Like a company can use his picture to promote a product, but he can't actually film a commercial for someone or do a signing or anything like that.
April 22nd, 2022 at 10:27 AM ^
Yes, it appears the "loophole" is that licensing one's NIL in exchange for licensing royalties (which the IRS distinguishes from employment income) does not constitute either "on-campus employment" or "off-campus employment" per ICE (https://www.ice.gov/sevis/employment).
I imagine the issue was just getting The Familie agency and UK to sign off in order to give Tshiebwe comfort that his visa would not be in jeopardy--which may have required interfacing with ICE.
In the case of Tshiebwe the POY he was apparently able to obtain the use of a free Porsche and "about $2m" in NIL deals arranged via The Familie (which presumably takes a large cut of the proceeds). In the case of Diabate, it would be ideal if there was a way to support him in a compliant way, but with more transparency and more of the proceeds going to the player.