By David Ubben
I rolled my eyes when I heard about pieces of similar legislation circulating in three states.
Last month, Illinois state Rep. Travis Weaver filed House Bill 3871, which would exempt college athletes’ name, image and likeness money from state income tax.
Also in February, Georgia state Sen. Brandon Beach and four other senators introduced what’s being called the Kirby Smart Bill. Their bill would do the same for athletes who choose to play college sports in Georgia. Rep. Joe Lovvorn and Rep. Chris Blackshear filed a near identical bill in Alabama.
The whole idea felt like a step too far to me. A state can’t literally choose to win at all costs.
But it’s worth hearing people out. So I called around to the politicians pushing these bills. I wanted to hear the legislators explain why this was anything more than the latest example of a society’s priorities run amok.
And they convinced my cynical heart it’s a worthwhile pursuit.
One coach, two athletic directors and a deputy athletic director in his home state of Illinois all reached out, Weaver said, saying state income tax was becoming an issue in recruiting. In-state schools were losing recruits to schools based in some of the seven states that didn’t have income tax, such as Florida, Texas, Tennessee and Washington. People on the ground on campuses across the state were seeing it firsthand.
Weaver, who attended Alabama as an undergrad, has seen the value of college sports to the institutions themselves and the states they represent.
“Every time a basketball team makes the NCAA Tournament, applications go up 10 percent,” he said. “Every time the football team makes a bowl game, applications go up 15 percent. We’ve got declining enrollment at a lot of our mid-major universities.”
Beach was having dinner with no other than former Alabama coach Nick Saban when Saban pointed out a controversial bill that passed in Missouri in August 2023. It allowed high school athletes to earn NIL money only if they were committed to an in-state school. Both Power 4 coaches in Georgia — Georgia’s Smart and Georgia Tech’s Brent Key — were former assistants under Saban.
“If you want to give them a tool in their toolbox, look at what they did in Missouri. Because they were losing athletes to Texas and Texas A&M,” Beach remembered Saban telling him. “That’s where I got the idea. I’d love to take credit for it, but it was something he talked to me about and I said, ‘That’s a good idea.’”
(Messages to Lovvorn’s and Blackshear’s offices weren’t returned.)
Beach said he doesn’t think the average citizens understand how much NIL influences recruiting.
“I just wanted to give Georgia and Georgia Tech a chance to be competitive,” he said.
Beach also pointed out former Georgia quarterback Carson Beck — who transferred from the Bulldogs to Miami this offseason — would save more than $200,000 in taxes by leaving the state of Georgia, even though it wasn’t the reason behind his transfer.
Even with a state income tax, however, Georgia has never signed a recruiting class ranked lower than No. 3 nationally since players were allowed to monetize their name, image and likeness in 2021. And having no income tax doesn’t guarantee success for schools across those states (Florida State went 2-10 in 2024 with a roster being paid around $12 million).
We know much of the country — perhaps more so in the South where I was raised and live, because of its passion for football — will do almost anything to win. Give a championship coach a fully guaranteed, $95 million contract? The NCAA rulebook? They’ve often been closer to loose guidelines in Texas and the SEC.
But Beach has heard from plenty of his constituents who think the tax break is going too far. Weaver has fielded dozens of calls about it in less than a month. He’s filed around 50 bills since beginning his time in the state senate in January 2023, and this piece of legislation has produced as much response as any.
“Some people feel like, ‘I pay taxes. Why don’t they?’ That’s the gut reaction,’” Weaver said. “But once you have a minute to explain the strategy behind it, I see heads nod. People agree. They get it. It’s a benefit to the athletes, but it’s really a benefit to all of us. We’re investing in them to grow our economy and grow our state.”
When he explains the bill to people upset by it, he comes back to the potential impact that money staying in athletes’ pockets has on the state. If a handful of basketball teams in Illinois had a better chance to make the NCAA Tournament as a result and Illinois football found it easier to become a mainstay in the postseason, the payoff would far outpace the cost.
Data he’s seen showed him that for every eight students like him who leave the state of Illinois to attend college, just one comes to Illinois for college. For better or worse, nothing grows enrollment faster than fixing up the front porch of every university: football and basketball teams that draw national television audiences every weekend.
Illinois has nine Division I basketball programs, two Big Ten football programs (Northwestern, Illinois) and one additional FBS football program (Northern Illinois). Winning sports programs also contribute to more alumni engagement, Weaver said.
“I don’t know of a bill that has a higher ROI than this one,” Weaver said. “Not just in enrollments but sales tax when merchandise is sold, gas tax, hotel tax.”
Said Beach: “A winning football product brings millions into the state’s coffers.”
It’s not the same in every state, but in each case, there’s one constant: The state isn’t missing out on very much money. Weaver estimates the missing tax dollars would total around $750,000.
Weaver’s bill didn’t include a clause he plans to add later: Only the first $100,000 of an athlete’s NIL earnings would be untaxable, so high-dollar deals like the one Beck earned at Miami would still have a percentage making its way into the state’s budget.
“I do think it’s fair for somebody to say, ‘I’m working my butt off at a factory making 60 grand a year and some 19-year-old making 2 million bucks isn’t paying income taxes but I am?’ I think that’s a very, very fair argument,” Weaver said. “So I’m going to start pushing for it to be the first $100,000. I think that probably is a lot more sensible.”
Weaver has to worry about being re-elected so he can’t say it out loud, but I can: Even the best factory workers are going to have a minimal impact on the state’s overall economy.
A star quarterback?
Baylor estimated that Robert Griffin III’s Heisman season in 2011 was worth around $250 million to the university. Johnny Manziel’s Heisman season brought an estimated $37 million to Texas A&M in media exposure alone from November 2012 to January 2013, A&M officials said. In the NIL era, surely Heisman winners such as Caleb Williams, Jayden Daniels and Travis Hunter created gains in California, Louisiana and Colorado.
And Beach’s bill is only one more step in his goal of eliminating state income tax altogether in Georgia, a joint effort between himself and Lt. Gov. Burt Jones.
“We’ll do it a quarter at a time,” Beach said. “We can’t just go from 5.39 percent to nothing overnight.”
Being politicians partly responsible for the success of a state’s sports team plays well come election years, too.
There are legal challenges to getting the bills passed. Neither Beach nor Weaver wanted to offer a percent chance their bill would become law, but both were optimistic.
Excusing athletes from tax responsibilities is an idea that seems outrageous on its face. But even the biggest cynic has to admit there are far worse ideas rattling around state legislatures than forgoing a tiny fraction of the state’s tax income for an idea that could pay exponentially more than a state sacrifices.
