A top Utah government leader expressed this week how much he dislikes college athletes getting paid for the use of their name, image and likeness, saying NIL is “messing up their mind.”
State Senate President Stuart Adams said during a media availability Tuesday that he’s not a fan of NIL. “And that’s probably an understatement. I really don’t like it.”
The issue arose during an exchange between reporters and the Layton Republican over a bill aiming to regulate NIL in Utah, including a provision to exempt athletes’ NIL agreements from the state’s public records law.
“I’ve heard some of these athletes are talking about whether they ought to buy a Rolls Royce or what they ought to buy. Their focus has gone away from going to school, from getting an education to totally athletics,” Adams said.
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“And I think it’s messing up their mind, and I feel strongly about it. I don’t like it. It’s a problem, quite frankly.”
The Senate president said he’s talked to professional athletes who believe NIL is “messing up their focus and their mind” and players shouldn’t get paid until “they’ve proven themselves and actually gone through a collegiate program.”
Asked why college athletes are allowed to get paid if it’s problematic and wrong, Adams said, “Oh man, you have walked into something that I am passionate about.
“I wish I could control the federal government. I wish I could control the national media. But we can’t. So we have to compete within what we’re given.”
Proposed Utah NIL law
Adams favors HB202, a bill that would require college athletes to submit any NIL deal over $600 to their university for approval. The school then must provide the athlete written acknowledgment regarding whether the contract conflicts with university policies or state law.
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The measure also says NIL contracts and any related correspondence would not be subject to Utah’s Government Records Access and Management Act, or GRAMA.
Media outlets in the state oppose exempting NIL agreements from public records laws, contending there is compelling interest in understanding how much money is flowing to college athletes, who is paying them and how universities are monitoring compliance with NCAA eligibility rules.
The Deseret News is currently in litigation with the University of Utah and Utah State, Weber State, Utah Valley and Southern Utah universities over whether NIL contracts are public records.
Adams said if schools have to “disclose those salaries, even though I would love to, and I think it might be good policy,” it would put Utah at a competitive disadvantage when it comes to attracting top athletes.
Asked what he thinks about college athletes becoming university employees, Adams didn’t directly answer the question but said the University of Utah and others are working through that issue.
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“I’m not sure what is the best process coming out of it. But I know the current process of the NIL, as you’re giving these athletes astronomical monies, it’s unsustainable from a state perspective, from a budget perspective, that I think is wrong for the athletes themselves,” he said.
“I think it’s way too early and refocuses their mind away from what they ought to be focusing on at college and that’s getting an education along with their athletic activity.”
Dartmouth basketball players could unionize
On Monday, a National Labor Relations Board regional administrator ruled that Dartmouth men’s basketball players should be classified as university employees and can hold an election to form a union.
Dartmouth administrators are appealing the decision.
All 15 players signed a petition in September asking to join Local 560 of the Service Employees International Union, which already represents some other employees at the Ivy League school.
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Unionizing would allow the players to negotiate not only over salary but working conditions, including practice hours and travel, ESPN reported.
“Because Dartmouth has the right to control the work performed by the Dartmouth men’s basketball team, and the players perform that work in exchange for compensation, I find that the petitioned-for basketball players are employees within the meaning of the (National Labor Relations) Act,” NLRB regional director Laura Sacks wrote.
The ruling could be a potential first step toward employee status for college athletes. A lawsuit in Pennsylvania is also pending on the issue.
The NCAA, college athletic conferences, school athletic directors and coaches have steadfastly opposed players being deemed university employees. Last year, 28 conferences including the Power Five called for federal NIL legislation, including clearly establishing that college athletes are not employees.
The original Utah NIL bill made clear that college athletes are not employees of their schools. It was removed in the current version.
Like many utilities in the Trump era, Rocky Mountain Power is pulling back on its renewable energy plans. But more than a dozen Utah communities are taking matters into their own hands.
About 300,000 homes and businesses will soon be part of a novel, bottom-up program to bring new clean power to the state’s fossil-fuel-heavy grid. The Utah Renewable Communities initiative allows city and county governments to offset their electricity use with 100 percent renewable power, backed by a $4 monthly bill surcharge.
“There’s no other program available to our residents that is this affordable or this impactful to Midvale’s environmental and economic future,” said Dustin Gettel, mayor of the Salt Lake City suburb of Midvale.
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Midvale is set to vote Tuesday on whether to join 15 other communities that have signed up ahead of an enrollment deadline next week. Three other eligible communities have opted out, although one may reconsider.
This coverage is made possible through a partnership between Grist and The Salt Lake Tribune, a nonprofit newsroom in Utah.
A sprawling, 40,000-acre data center planned for northern Utah has stirred up controversy across the state over the past month, partly because of the pollution it’s expected to contribute to a region that already struggles with smog.
Officials with the quasi-governmental Military Installation Development Authority, or MIDA, which approved the project and created tax incentives to spur its development, have become de facto cheerleaders for the data center campus, called the Stratos Project. They say Kevin O’Leary, the Canadian TV personality and the main backer of Stratos, specifically selected a remote valley north of the Great Salt Lake because a gas pipeline runs through it.
The plant that will generate electricity for the data complex would be powered “100 percent off the Ruby Pipeline,” a MIDA official said in April.
But after weeks of protests, reams of comments against the project, and disgruntled Utahns digging into state leaders’ finances and family businesses, the state’s Republican governor has now asserted the project will “never” be solely powered by natural gas.
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“That’s never going to happen,” Governor Spencer Cox told The Salt Lake Tribune last week. “The very first phase will be natural gas, but the other phases should not be. They should be nuclear, and they should be geothermal, and solar and other technology.”
The proposed Stratos Project is light on details so far. O’Leary has said that at full build, it will be one of the biggest data centers in the world, as large as Washington, D.C. Scientists, environmental advocates and some residents have raised alarms about the impact that the project — and the possibility of a massive natural gas plant to power it — could have on air quality, greenhouse gas emissions, and water supplies near the shrinking Great Salt Lake.
According to some estimates, a 9-gigawatt power plant entirely powered by natural gas could raise Utah’s carbon emissions by 64 percent. Although it’s still unclear how much water the facility would need, the project’s developers have said they’re working to secure 13,000 acre-feet in Hansel Valley and the surrounding area, which is mostly agricultural. That’s enough water to meet the needs of more than 20,000 households in Utah.
The north end of the Great Salt Lake and Hansel Valley, the planned site for the Stratos Project.
Trent Nelson / The Salt Lake Tribune
Opposition to the proposal has been intense. A water right filed to support the data center and power plant received nearly 4,000 letters of protest this month. Opponents held a rally at Utah’s Capitol last week and delivered a letter to Cox with more than 6,000 signatures urging him to take “binding action” to preserve the Great Salt Lake instead of issuing platitudes over social media.
During a news conference on Wednesday announcing a geothermal partnership with the neighboring states of Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico, Cox acknowledged problems with the rollout of the Stratos Project in Box Elder County, saying future decisions like it should involve his office and elected representatives.
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“There’s no question, the process was not good,” Cox told reporters. “It’s something I’ve worried about for a long time with that entity that made that decision.”
Cox appeared to be referring to MIDA, a development authority ostensibly meant to fund projects to support the military. Its biggest developments in recent years, however, include a hotel at the Deer Valley luxury ski resort and a swanky ski village. MIDA officials and other Stratos supporters have called the project a matter of national security.
“That was not a decision that was made by me or the Legislature,” Cox said. “In the future, those are decisions that should be made by us, so that we can do these types of things ahead of time to make sure people understand what’s actually happening out there. That did not happen, and it should happen.”
When he made his comments, Cox was hosting the final workshop in his “Energy Superabundance” initiative as chair of the Western Governors Association, part of a broader push that complements his “Operation Gigawatt” goal to more than double Utah’s energy production over the next decade.
Electricity use across the country has held relatively steady for decades, but a surge in demand for artificial intelligence computing and data centers is putting a strain on the electric grid. That’s left Western states scrambling to build new energy supplies.
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At the same time, public skepticism toward large data center developments appears to be growing, particularly over concerns involving water use, noise, energy costs, and pollution.
“It feels like the future is here,” Cox said during his opening remarks at the workshop. “It’s coming quicker than people asked for, and there are so many amazing things that can come from that future, and some pretty awful ones as well.”
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Cox has also pushed for faster permitting timelines for large energy and infrastructure projects, arguing that environmental review processes often take too long. “This whole idea of being rushed — I’m so tired of our country taking years to get stuff done,” he said in April. “It’s the dumbest thing ever. We think that taking time makes things better or safer. It absolutely does not.”
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Last week, Cox struck a more measured tone as criticism of the project continued to mount. “One of the things people are worried about, and rightfully so, is air quality,” he said in a brief interview as he left the workshop. “That’s a yearlong [permitting] process. … We’re not speeding those up. Those are really important, and we want to make sure that things are done the right way.”
Earlier this month, O’Leary, who was featured on the reality show “Shark Tank,” also seemed to suggest that renewables could help power the Stratos Project. He described other technological advances — such as turbines cooled with air rather than water — before turning to the natural gas power causing a stir.
“We can also put a percentage of the power generation through solar, wind, and batteries, because the battery technology is 10x more efficient than it was just five years ago,” O’Leary posted on X on May 5. “So that’s very helpful, because it makes the cost of energy lower.”
But he stopped short of fully endorsing renewables for his project.
Logan Mitchell, a climate scientist and analyst with Utah Clean Energy, calculated that a 9-gigawatt natural gas power plant will produce around 35 million metric tons of carbon emissions each year. By comparison, the entire state of Utah generates 55 million metric tons annually, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. So the Stratos Project could raise Utah’s emissions by about 64 percent.
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“That’s massive,” Mitchell said. But it could be even more, because his estimate didn’t account for “any additional methane leakage” from piping and using the natural gas, he said.
