Lawmakers react to NCAA's initial proposal for athlete likeness compensation

While the NCAA announced Tuesday it would start the initial steps toward allowing student-athletes to be paid, legislators in Iowa said they might still proceed with plans to enact a law allowing that.

Democratic Representative Ras Smith of Waterloo and Republican Representative Joe Mitchell of Mount Pleasant planned to propose a bill on this topic in the state legislature, which would allow college student-athletes in Iowa to profit off their own names, images, and likenesses.

Mitchell said they might still move forward with their proposal once the new legislative session starts in January since they don’t know the details or the timeline of the NCAA’s plans yet.

"If states like Iowa, Florida, California had not put pressure on the NCAA to do this, they would not have done any initial steps to combat this issue, and so I think it was good that we have had this discussion brought up, and we're going to continue to have this discussion on what the details should be on all of this,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell said he’s happy the NCAA is taking these first steps and added that he believes it’s better this change comes from the association itself instead of individual states mandating it.