S.C. lawmakers override Gov. on bill keeping college athletes’ pay private

The South Carolina Senate “joined the House in overriding” Gov. Henry McMaster’s veto of a bill that keeps the state’s college athletes’ NIL deals private, officially “shielding universities’ revenue-sharing deals from public view,” according to Jon Blau of the Charleston POST & COURIER. The Senate voted 30-12 in favor of overruling McMaster, who “quibbled with a broad carve-out in open records law that not only protected individual athletes’ revenue-sharing contracts but also how much public institutions are doling out to each sport.” State lawmakers’ main argument for making information about revenue-sharing confidential, as it has been for the last two-plus months, was “competitive disadvantage.” State Sen. Tom Young said that he was told by ADs at Clemson, the Univ. of South Carolina and Coastal Carolina that the NCAA will “require member institutions, beginning in 2027, to include in their annual financial disclosures how much revenue they share with each sport.” Young argued that even if those per-sport totals will soon be disclosed by every school in the NCAA, “in-state schools would be disadvantaged for the remainder of 2026 if they had to reveal information that schools in other states didn’t.” He said that the legislature “will pass a budget proviso specifying that state dollars can’t be used for athlete pay.” State Sen. Russell Ott questioned if “anyone will be able to check if the proviso is being followed if the state’s open records law exempts revenue-sharing details” (Charleston POST & COURIER, 4/1).