Georgia head football coach Kirby Smart is the king of the Peach State after leading the Bulldogs to national championships in 2021 and 2022. When the state senate drafted a bill to regulate NIL, Smart’s name was the only one that came up.
Brandon Beach, a Republican who represents Senate District 21 which includes north Fulton County and Cherokee County, spoke of Georgia Senate Bill 71 on Tuesday – and he specifically named-dropped Smart when talking about helping out in-state coaches.
“Listen, recruiting is a very, very competitive sport,” Beach told the Athens Banner-Herald. “When you’re recruiting these five-star athletes, they all have agents and we’re competing with Tennessee, Texas and Florida who have no state income tax. Eventually, we’ll get there and we won’t have a state income tax. I hope that happens, but until then we’ve got to get Kirby and these football coaches and basketball coaches, these coaches a tool in their toolbox to be able to compete.”
Per the Athens Banner-Herald’s Marc Weiszner relayed, the bill would “exempt college athletes from state income tax for the compensation they make through NIL deals.”
Beach admitted that there was gamesmanship involved in competing with a state like Texas, which does not have a state income tax.
“When you’re talking about a $750,000 to a $1 million contract, these young kids and the agents say, ‘Hey, if you go to Texas, you’ll make another $40,000 by not paying state income tax’ or whatever the amount is. That can sway the difference in an athlete going somewhere else,” Beach said.
In this brave new NIL world, Georgia needs all the help it can get to compete with deep-pocketed schools like Texas, Ohio State, Michigan, and Oregon.
GA SB71 seems to be helpful on that front.
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