BIRMINGHAM, Ala.-- Today we continue the Samford Sports Wrap Up, Presented by Alabama Power, a series highlighting Samford's coaches and staff throughout the academic year. Today's edition will feature Assistant AD for Compliance Cody Jackson.
 
Jackson is in the sixth year of his second stint working in the Samford Athletics Department. He served as compliance coordinator from 2013 to 2015, and then returned in 2016 as the school's director of compliance. Jackson talked a little about his professional journey so far.
 
"I started at the University of Alabama as a graduate intern," Jackson said. "Jonathan Bowling, who is now at Texas A&M, gave me my shot there. I was able to take that into an internship here at Samford, roll that into a coordinator position for a couple of years. I went from here to my undergrad alma mater, MTSU and was there for a year as the coordinator as well. And then I was able to come back here to navigate us through some things as the director of compliance and just a couple of years ago was elevated to Assistant AD. It's interesting to have two stints at one place but have still been here for so long."
 
The biggest news in compliance, and in athletics in general in the last year has been the NIL legislation, allowing student-athletes to profit from their Name[MJ1] , Image and Likeness. Jackson talked about how the legislation has changed college athletics.
 
"It has, in a good way, completely upended collegiate athletics," Jackson said. "We're now able to allow our student-athletes to use their name, their image, their likeness to profit off of commercials, social media posts, advertisements, camps, clinics, you name it. They're able to use their personalities, their standings as student-athletes and finally be able to make a little money that's probably been owed to them for a long time."
 
Jackson talked a little about how the Samford student-athletes have handled the NIL opportunities.
 
"We thought in July that it was just going to be floodgates," Jackson said. "We were all just prepared for deals, left and right. We had our first one at 12:15 a.m. on July 1^st, but it's been a steady flow of deals. We're about 15 weeks into NIL right now and we've had almost 100 deals total for our student-athletes. Close to $15,000 total that our student-athletes have earned. Some from our smallest deal of $3, to upwards of $2,000 for some of our kids. They're doing really well, I'm happy to see that they're able to take advantage and use their platform to grow their marketability and make a little bit of money on the side."
 
Jackson added that the legislation the state of Alabama has put in place has helped guide the way Samford has approached the new rules.
 
"The NCAA kind of washed their hands of it once July hit," Jackson said. "They weren't able to come up with any sort of national standard. Obviously, Congress has a lot more going on than working on the NIL landscape, so they left it up the states. We are one of the states that has a state law that guides our NIL policy, it's what our university policy is based off of."
 
In addition to the new legislation, Jackson talked about some other changes that are on the horizon from the NCAA national office.
 
"On top of NIL, on top of the transfer portal changes from last year, the national office is changing their constitution," Jackson said. "We're looking at what is essentially going to be a two-part deal. First, we're going to figure out what the NCAA should look like going forward, and then from a divisional landscape, how that's going to look and how that's going to affect Divisions I, II and III. So, we're looking for a lot of legislative change, a lot of foundational change.
 
"I think we're still going to stick to the cores of amateurism, sportsmanship, that kind of stuff," Jackson said. "From the surveys I've seen, people want the NCAA to still promote amateurism, to promote championships, to promote fair play, that kind of stuff. So, I think that's going to stay, but there are a lot of legislative pieces that will probably change in the next 12, 18, 24 months."
 
Anther issue that compliance offices have faced throughout the country is how to manage the transfer portal. Jackson talked about that as well.
 
"We thought until NIL came up that the transfer portal was going to be the biggest change," Jackson said. "Allowing our student-athletes to transfer once, to enter that transfer portal rather than restricting those transfers and then this year added on with basketball, football, baseball and then men's ice hockey for other institutions, to transfer once without any sort of penalty, to add those into what all of our other sports had, it was great to get a level playing field for everyone."
 
"It's been a change for sure," Jackson said. "We're still navigating, trying to get our coaches educated, our student-athletes educated on their options for transferring. I tell them in all of our squad meetings when we go over transfer stuff that inevitably, among 390-plus student-athletes, we're going to lose some of you, though we certainly don't want to. We love getting transfers in, they're usually program changers when we get them in, and we love to have them. But we certainly don't want to lose them, but we do everything we can to make sure they're educated to make the best decisions for themselves and their future."