I agree with others that this is a slippery slope. At the same time there are some students that deserve and should be compensated…but that is a small number. I think many folks see the money in college sports and make lots of inaccurate assumptions. This decision is likely to make some of the college sports issues worse not better. Consider the following:
There are well over 350 D1 college programs in the country not including D2, D3, NAIA etc. The vast majority of those operate at a loss or maybe break even. I haven’t referenced numbers in a few years but low level D1 programs have annual operating budgets below 20 million a year while big time programs have in excess of 150 million a year. That doesn’t really make for a level playing field. Lower level D1 programs have no funds to pay athletes. Nor are they capitalizing in any meaningful way on those athletes. There is not significant TV money, jersey sales etc at those schools
As a parent who is now paying for college, I cringe at the idea that D1 athletes are not being paid already. If you are a full scholarship athlete your compensation includes anywhere from 25-80k per year, not to mention the education and opportunity that comes with that.
However, there are a few student athletes who under the current system are taken advantage of. Jersey sales, advertising, TV contracts etc. but those are the elite of the elite at top flight programs.
The slippery slope? Non-revenue sports could be cut. You could see semi pro type conferences where athletes are paid and the rest fall into a lower level amateur league. maybe that’s OK?
I found Justice Kavanaugh’s opinion interesting. If you read it in light of the fact that the athletes did not continue “their across-the-board challenge to the NCAA’s compensation restrictions,” one could conclude that Kavanaugh wished they had.
Kavanaugh indicated that he believes the Court would be sympathetic to much stronger claims regarding compensation. It’s an invitation for lawsuits that will undermine the entire financial structure of the NCAA. I for one welcome the destruction of this cartel.
An interesting question will be, if the NCAA was found to have been operating illegally, can former players also sue for compensation? And how many years back can the claims go?
We can put some bounds on this by looking at other sports. In the NFL, players get 48% of total revenue. The NBA is about 50%. This sets an upper bound in terms of total compensation to the NCAA players.
Let’s take a look at basketball. There are about 4500 Division 1 players, and the NCAA makes about $1.2B during a normal year, mostly from college basketball. That’s about $267K per player.
This is aside from the revenues the school gets from ticket sales, shoe contracts, basketball camps, etc. To get a rough idea of what a middling basketball program can do, I picked Missouri. It generated almost $11M in revenues for 2019, or about $733k per player. By pure coincidence, this adds up to about $1M in revenue generated per player.
So IF basketball players were able to negotiate a contract as good as the pros could, they would be averaging $500k per year (cost of tuition, room, and board would be part of that). This gives you an idea of why the NCAA cartel would like to keep things exactly the way they are, where the labor is unpaid.
How do you account for the non revenue generating sports? The vast majority of D1 programs operate at a loss. Basketball and football defray some of those losses but in most cases not all.
But here’s the question: Are talented male basketball or football players, who bring in lots of revenue, responsible for funding non-revenue sports? For those that think so, explain why without resorting to “that’s how it’s always been done”.
It would be interesting to quantify how many student athletes fall into this category. I suspect the number is lower than many assume. However, I agree with your point.
The problem is that Justice Kavanaugh should recuse himself as he has already taken a clear position exhibiting bias on certain potential future issues.
I expect some of those sports to disappear. The question is how the schools will satisfy the requirements of Title IX. Where does the budget for the mandated women’s sports come from?
The case only allows schools to pay for academic and sports related costs. In the past, schools weren’t allowed to pay for transportation for the student to get to school, for the dorm supplies, for food except as outlined in the rules (no meals for non-scholarship athletes, for example). That all changed when schools were allowed to give the students stipends which could include, in the COA, the cost of transportation, toothpaste, supplies, clothing. Schools like Alabama raised the cost of incidentals, transportation, etc in the COA from ~$3000 per year to $6000. Why? Because Penn State’s COA had about $6000 built into the COA for incidentals.
This ruling allows the schools to widen what the ‘related’ costs are - better computers, headsets, work study jobs, more food. For right now, I don’t see athletes getting contracts FROM THE SCHOOLS for millions.
Six states have laws, I think beginning July 1, allowing students to be compensated for use of their Name/Image/Likeness. I can see them getting big bucks for showing up at a car dealership and signing autographs, being paid to show up at booster events, giving interviews. Not money from the school, but from those associated with the school. All those things that drove the SMU boosters to get the school the death sentence . Instead of a briefcase full of cash being secretly given to a player’s parents to buy a house, the player will be given a job at the local car dealership and get to drive a corvette as an employee benefit, in exchange for doing ads in the paper for the dealership.
I think the schools can only cover expenses related to academics and sports. When the 6 state get the Name/Image/Likeness laws active, the school could pay an athlete, like an employee, for those things (modeling, making appearances).
I don’t think they will pay. They’ll use a picture of the team on the program, they’ll use the mascot, they’ll find a player who will do it for free.
I hope it lets the players who want to be the model, who want to do autograph signings, who want to be on the Madden college edition to do that.