Athletic directors Graham Neff of Clemson and Jeremiah Donati from the University of South Carolina talk with Senate President Thomas Alexander, R-Walhalla, at Senate hearing in Columbia, South Carolina, on name, image and likeness legislation on Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2026. (Travis Bell/STATEHOUSE CAROLINA/Special to the SC Daily Gazette)
COLUMBIA — Gov. Henry McMaster vetoed legislation allowing South Carolina’s public colleges to keep secret what they pay student athletes, throwing the proposed public records exemption back to the Legislature.
The bill goes too far in exempting “any and all” records paid to both individual players and entire teams, the Republican governor explained in his veto message, issued about 7 p.m. Wednesday.
“This legislation presents a conflict between serious concerns and a clear principle,” he wrote. “On the one hand are the privacy rights of student-athletes and the competitive interests of our state’s collegiate athletics teams on the other hand is the right of the people to know how public funds are being spent.”
In conclusion, McMaster wrote that he’d sign a bill that strikes a balance between those issues. But this legislation does not, he wrote.
McMaster’s first veto of 2026 came hours before his deadline. The governor had until midnight Wednesday to sign, veto, or let the legislation become law without his signature.
The Legislature will decide whether it becomes law anyway. An override would allow colleges to disclose only the total share of profits from media, ticket sales, and sponsorship agreements distributed to athletes schoolwide.
That will require a two-thirds vote in both chambers. The House is expected to easily clear that hurdle. The bill passed that chamber almost unanimously in the first week of session after bypassing the committee process altogether.
But reaching a supermajority threshold from senators could be tough. They initially gave it a 30-13 vote of approval, with all “no” votes coming from Republicans, before concerns prompted Senate leaders to bring in coaches for questioning. There was no roll call for the final vote sending the bill to the governor’s desk.
The bill’s ultimate fate won’t be known for at least two weeks. The House must vote first, and they’re on break through next week.
The legislation came in response to a public records lawsuit filed against the University of South Carolina by a Mount Pleasant businessman seeking information about so-called name, image and likeness payments made by the school to Gamecock football players.
Colleges argued being forced to disclose that information, either on an individual athlete basis or on a team-by-team basis, puts South Carolina at a competitive disadvantage.
It’s the second of those exemptions McMaster took issue with. If the General Assembly were to remove team-level exemptions from the bill, the governor said he’d sign it.
Federal student privacy laws protect an individual student’s records and information.
“This is where South Carolina should draw the line, too,” McMaster wrote. “The people’s right to know extends to every dollar that their colleges and universities choose to spend on various sports programs.”
The payouts began last June, after a federal judge approved a settlement of a long-running lawsuit between players and universities. It allowed each college to share up to $20.5 million in annual revenue with its students, an amount that will increase 4% annually under the settlement agreement.
Athletics directors from the University of South Carolina and Clemson University told senators last month that each school will spend the full $20.5 million.
Coastal Carolina University’s athletics director, Chance Miller, did not say how it planned to spend, but the Myrtle Beach-area school does not earn revenues high enough to pay the full amount.
Neither of the athletic directors for the state’s two largest schools were willing to say how many of their more than 20 sports teams receive shares of revenue. However, they did specify that not all teams, or their players, benefit.
Even though not all sports get a share, Clemson’s athletics director, Graham Neff, told senators the legal settlement that opened the door to these payments also upped what schools could give out in athletics scholarships. The Upstate college went from 275 athletics scholarships last school year to 425 scholarships on the books this year across all 21 sports teams.
At Coastal and other schools in the Sun Belt Conference, Miller said only two out of 19 sports generally receive a share of revenue.
“If everyone knows your number in one sport, they would take their money in another sport, put it in there and try to get a competitive advantage,” Miller said, explaining why the schools don’t want to give tallies by team.
Similar laws have already passed in five other states: Louisiana, Kentucky, Utah, Arkansas and Colorado.
Bills also are pending in New Mexico and Wisconsin.
And when news outlets filed public records requests with the University of Alabama, University of Florida, Florida State University and University of California of Los Angeles, all denied the requests for a multitude of reasons, some citing student financial privacy laws and others saying the records were not considered public.
However, Alabama’s athletic director has spoken more publicly about how the school divvies up its payments between sports, giving the most to the only two sports that actually bring in revenue to colleges — football and men’s basketball. The Crimson Tide also gives out shares to four other sports: softball, baseball, gymnastics and women’s basketball.
H. 4902 Veto Message (1)Courtesy of South Carolina Daily Gazette
