The Paid College Athlete Era
So much for the student athlete.
Used to be athletics was a way for wannabee students to earn scholarships.
With the settlement of House v. NCAA, the concept of the student athlete has changed to something other than the previous requirement that college athletes be strictly amateur.
The case was filed by former Arizona State swimmer Grant House and former TCU basketball player Sedona Prince. The plaintiffs argued that athletes who didn’t get to earn NIL money before the NCAA changed its rules in 2021. They argued athletes deserved damage payments. And, going forward, they wanted to force the NCAA to classify broadcast revenue as a form of NIL, given that players’ faces and likenesses appear during games, instead of salary or direct compensation.
In case you didn’t know, the NCAA’s NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness) rules allowed college athletes to pursue NIL opportunities without limitations. These opportunities include endorsement deals, sponsorships, and other commercial activities. Athletes must disclose NIL agreements of $600 or more to their universities within 30 days. However, the NCAA rules stated NIL activities cannot be used to compensate athletes for athletics participation or achievement. In other words, it allowed student-athletes to make money from their personal brand. The 2021 NIL rules made the NCAA “a little bit pregnant.”
In October 2024 the House v. NCAA and the Power 5 conferences — the Atlantic Coast Conference, the Big Ten, the Big 12, the Pac-12 and the Southeastern Conference – settled the lawsuit against the NCAA and those conferences.
The NCAA requirement that all athletes be amateurs is now gone.
Here’s the gist of the settlement.
Each school will be allowed to distribute up to around $20 million to its athletes, an amount based on a percentage of the average revenue earned annually by the power conference programs. That percentage begins at 22 percent and could go up over time.
So, the colleges can now use 20% of any “profit” from their sports programs to compensate athletes. Those “big” schools with tons of “profit” from their athletics can now pay their athletes directly. Obviously, football is the biggest moneymaker for most of those schools. And in addition to ticket sales and other sundries, both the schools and the NCAA get paid for broadcasting games – in many cases ‘big bucks.’
Add a quick glance at what’s happened in recent years to the salaries and bonuses of head coaches, it gives one the realization that the game hasn’t been played for some time for the fun of the cheering fans and tailgate parties, or the college tuition and other expenses of the athletes. It’s being played for money – billions of it. BTW, the average Division I football coach makes $3.5+/year, not counting perks and bonuses.
And when professional sports dropped their rules disallowing the drafting/acquisition of athletes before the time they would normally graduate from college, we’ve seen many ‘star’ athletes leave their colleges early. Heck, we now have kids playing professionally right out of high school.
With the House v. NCAA settlement, the athlete recruitment gloves are off, and the emphasis is now on paid athletes and not on attaining a college degree. Expect bidding ‘wars’ to sign star athletes and monetary enticements to use the NCAA loosened transfer rules.
I add here that when judge hearing the case expressed concern about the agreement on new ‘roster caps’ on football and basketball, a grandfather clause was added giving athletes who would be cut from now capped teams their continued scholarships and aid – at no penalty to the schools’ financial caps of 22% of revenue or $20 million. The grandfather clause applies to all students in all athletic programs back to 2016.
In all, the NCAA and the 5 largest conferences will be paying $2.77B in damages to thousands of former and current college athletes who say now-defunct NCAA rules prevented them from earning endorsement money.
Will all college athletes get paid now? policy in that arena.
It’s a historic step toward a more professional model for college sports. Proponents of the new field of play say the previous rules were absurd, that nearly every other aspect of college sports has been monetized, ergo, the players should be paid also.
While I can see it’s too late to close the barn door when the horse is already out, I am fearful of what this will do to college sports programs.
The current suit’s settlement just opens the door to more suits as colleges like Marquette with no football and an emphasis on basketball will not have the largess of football funds to compete for top basketball players.
The questions around Title IX haven’t even started, as women athletes will not be compensated in their sports on a comparable basis, if at all.
I’m not sure how the fans will take it either.
Now you can follow your college team just like you may do with a professional one.
***************
Have a great and prosperous week.
Hug somebody.
References:
https://www.npr.org/2024/05/24/nx-s1-4978680/house-ncaa-settlement-pay-college-athletes
https://www.britannica.com/procon/paying-college-athletes-debate
https://www.ncsasports.org/name-image-likeness
https://sports.yahoo.com/gets-paid-much-know-landmark-001311431.html
SPIDER Bytes
This week’s trivia question is: What U.S. state is home to no native poisonous snakes? The answer to last week’s question re the last pitcher to win 30 games in a single MLB season. Denny McClain. During his career with the Detroit Tigers, he won 32 games in 1968, including a World Series game, pitching 336 innings, and completing 28 games with an ERA of 1.96. He won the Cy Young Award in ’68 & ’69. Modern-day expectations of starting pitchers are no longer to complete games, but to normally work 5 innings and pitch no more than 100 pitches every fourth day.
Moody’s downgrade of the country’s credit rating a notch to Aa1 from Aaa on May 16 due to likely difficulty financing the federal government’s growing budget deficit and the ramifications of rolling over existing U.S. debts in a period of high borrowing costs. While losing the top-rating is a negative, hopefully government spending will be reduced to keep from falling further.
The new space race to provide the dominant broadband internet service in the world is clearly being led by SpaceX as it launched its 1000th satellite last week. BTW, the other three in this game are HughesNet, Viasat, and the fledgling Amazon-owned company, Project Kuiper.
A Los Angelos resident has filed a lawsuit against Tesla alleging the company inflates its odometers up to 50 miles/day to create an artificial early end to the vehicle’s warranty. Elon Musk called it idiotic.
The President signed the bipartisan ‘Take It Down Act’ Monday which requires online platforms to remove artificial intelligence-generated deepfake pornographic images and other forms of ‘revenge.’ Further, the bill imposes new criminal penalties on individuals who post such images and videos. It was a First Lady objective.
Florida’s Fish & Wildlife commission voted 4-1 last week to have a black bear hunt for 23 days in December, the first since 2015. But the measure must be voted on again in August to be finalized. The goal of the hunt is population control to remove 187 bears from an estimated population of 4,000.
17 states suing to interdict California from its 2036 mandate that only EV trucks be sold, reached agreement with CA to totally repeal the requirement. The judge agreed with the argument that the mandate interfered with interstate commerce. Truckers contend EV trucks are unreliable, can’t get the job done in cold conditions, and are no match for diesels when pulling heavy loads. E-trucks also cost more than workhorse diesels, have shorter ranges, and can take up to 10 hours to guzzle a full charge.
Related, Biden administration’s waivers to CA allowing the state to set its own vehicle emissions were nixed by the U.S. Senate last Thursday. If passed by Congress, it will likely nullify all of California’s EV mandates and combustion engine restrictions.
Rep. Summer Lee of PA reintroduced legislation to pay descendants of slaves some $14T in reparations last week. I thought we were over this stuff.
