Kevin Young is taking advantage of an era of NIL in college basketball that 70 years ago may have had then-BYU President Ernest L. Wilkinson on the warpath.
Conservative and carefully plodding forward when the NCAA approved payment of athletes for name, image and likeness, BYU basketball is now using one of the country’s most lucrative NIL collective operations in signing the 2024-25 roster. These are the times.
Critics of BYU, primarily the usual naysayers who want BYU out of the sports business, point to all this coin going against the mission of the university.
Nah. It’s been decided in a court of law, brought on by suits against the NCAA. Most recent court settlements direct conferences like the Big 12 to plan on paying athletes a salary to the tune of more than $20 million per school per year.
“We’ll just have to adjust and go forward now,” BYU athletic director Tom Holmoe told me in June.
So, how does this relate to the approach 70 years ago?
Back then, BYU President Wilkinson believed deeply in amateurism. He was a purist. He believed athletes should perform on the field and courts because of their love, passion and dedication to the sport, and any hint of professionalism should be avoided at all costs.
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Wilkinson pushed back against giving athletes scholarships because it would appear to blur the line toward professionalism.
Imagine.
Shortly after BYU’s Board of Trustees hired Wilkinson, a Harvard graduate and attorney, the Cougar basketball team won the 1951 National Invitational Tournament.
In a meticulously researched book out this summer, “100 Years of BYU Football,” by Duff Tittle and Brett Pyne (Deseret Book), the authors found a unique chapter focus on the Wilkinson era, in which he bucked the idea of recruiting athletes with benefit offers.
Wilkinson publicly proclaimed in October 1951, “Athletes should neither be given special favors nor be discriminated against. Unfortunately, at some universities there has been a double standard in administration, discipline, financial aid and academic standards.”
Wilkinson wanted to make sure BYU athletes were not receiving preferential treatment, more than their “proportionate share” of financial aid from the school and special treatment in “housing, registration and employment.”
In the meantime, other schools were recruiting using all these benefits, and generally kicking the crap out of BYU in football, especially in the Mountain States Conference, of which BYU was a charter member.
Wilkinson’s initial answer to discrepancies on campus “was to offer more benefits to scholars, debaters and drama and music students.” He then restricted special treatment in regards to housing and employment for athletes. His move drew praise from some faculty and concern from the athletic department and coaches, who saw it as a drawback in attracting athletes.
By the following spring, Wilkinson discovered just how common it was in the Mountain States Conference to recruit athletes and offer benefits and he changed his tune. He worked with the conference to create a uniform set of guidelines for recruiting with benefit offers.
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