With the expansion of the College Football Playoff and NCAA men’s basketball tournament rights totaling $2.4 billion annually and the most marketable women’s basketball player in history – Caitlin Clark of Iowa – launching its sport to an unprecedented television audience, college sports appear healthy, vibrant and lucrative. This goes for everyone except the participants.
College officials and legal experts question whether athletes should receive a portion of playoff revenue. Those discussions have spilled over into athletes’ rights and employment status, both of which will likely be determined in federal court.
NCAA President Charlie Baker, who spoke briefly before Sunday’s women’s championship game, said he wants to “make some changes to the way student-athlete support works in Division I.” .
“We’ve done a number of things to prepare to address this issue, but I’m not going to get ahead of the members on this stuff,” Baker said. “I’m sure that’s a conversation we’ll have.”
But what about members versus paying players? Judging from a recent panel discussion at the University of Iowa, lawyers and experts are everywhere. With lawsuits threatening to destroy the current amateur model and the prospect of a college football super league looming if that happens, the questions are endless. But officials agree that change is imminent — and fast.
“The avalanche has officially hit the NCAA,” said Dan Matheson, director of the Iowa Sports and Recreation Management Program and former NCAA associate director of enforcement.
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Following the United States Supreme Court’s 9-0 Alston ruling in 2021, which allowed athletes to receive compensation for their name, image, and likeness (NIL), legal issues continue to arise. multiply for the NCAA. A regional director of the National Labor Relations Board ruled this year that Dartmouth men’s basketball players were employees. In a complaint filed with the NLRB and ongoing testimony, the National College Players Association considers USC athletes to be employees of the university, the Pac-12 and the NCAA. Additionally, an antitrust class action over prior NIL rights could cost the NCAA and its members more than $5 billion.
With players allowed to generate income with their NIL, employment is the final step in the blurred barrier between amateur and professional status. This is the most difficult area for most experts to navigate because no one can agree on the parameters. Is it just athletes in revenue-generating sports or all? How will this impact Title IX? How much will each athlete earn? Will non-profit sports survive?
Looking forward to an engaging panel discussion AND 2.0 hours of CLE for all area attorneys! There is a live streaming option here: pic.twitter.com/TZSgHoCUga
-Dan Matheson (@DanMatheson) March 27, 2024
Alicia Jessop, a professor of sports administration at Pepperdine who also serves as the school’s NCAA faculty athletics representative, demanded the NCAA staggered course and agreed to have the athletes be employees. Jessop, a member of the NCAA Division I men’s basketball oversight committee and a practicing attorney, argued that putting up resistance and talking about collateral damage is “alarmist.”
“The NCAA continues to attempt, unsuccessfully and to the tune of millions of dollars in lobbying fees, to persuade Congress to grant it antitrust immunity,” Jessop said. “The likelihood of Congress passing such bills is as good as Caitlin Clark not being the No. 1 pick in the WNBA draft.”
Husch Blackwell law partner Jason Montgomery, a former lead NCAA investigator, disagreed.
“It is clear that the NCAA is experiencing the worst losing streak in sports since the Bills’ four Super Bowl losses. They are very bad at litigating,” he said. “But current, well-established law in this country is that college athletes are not employees. The Department of Labor says they are not employees. No federal court has ever held that he was an employee.
Universities fear employee status and compensation could put athletic departments out of business. Paying athletes could force some departments to eliminate many non-revenue sports, which are the lifeblood of Olympic rosters. Nevius’ attorney, Libby Harmon, who worked as the NCAA’s lead investigator for 10 years and also served as Michigan’s director of compliance, said that of the 626 athletes on Team USA in the 2020 Olympics- 2021, 76% were current or former athletes from 171 different athletes. establishments.
For Jessop, any attempt to curtail Olympic sports is an excuse. She cited figures from USA Today that most Division I coaches received an average of a 15.3% pay raise in 2021 — after the pandemic crushed many departments financially — as well as salaries rising as well as modest increases in scholarships. In fiscal year 2023, Ohio State athletics spent more than $90.7 million on coaching and staff salaries, while paying $23.8 million in athletic scholarships , according to the figures obtained by Athleticism. Harmon discussed Texas A&M’s $75 million buyout of football coach Jimbo Fisher, saying, “That could fund Division I athletic departments many times over.”
“Don’t think there’s no money in the system,” Jessop said. “This will require a reallocation of funds. Top college coaches will see their salaries cut, strength coaches will no longer make $1 million a year.
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Still, it’s naive to expect that athletic departments won’t continue to invest in football and men’s basketball, the only two sports that generate profits at most Power Conference schools. According to Montgomery, disrupting the system to include employee status could derail everything. Over the past three years, athletes now have opportunities to earn money through NIL, full scholarships up to the cost of participation, and approximately $6,000 each year in educational awards.
“The popularity of college sports is at an unprecedented level,” Montgomery said. “The popularity of television in college sports is at an unprecedented level. Women’s sport reaches a record level. And the system’s NCAA member schools produce the most Olympic athletes. So things are going very well in university sports. Let’s change everything. This makes very little business sense and very little practical sense. »
Additionally, if athletes are considered employees, programs could hire and fire them based solely on their performance.
“If student-athletes become employees, what will that relationship look like? asked Josh Lens, an Arkansas sports and recreation instructor who previously worked in Baylor’s compliance office. “I think it becomes more of an arm’s-length relationship between the athletic department, the coaches and their athletes, and it becomes more of a professional mode.
“There are great coaches and great people who truly care about their athletes; it doesn’t necessarily disappear. But I think the dynamic changes if an athlete knows they can have their scholarship taken away.
The future
So what will happen in five or ten years? Most experts believe changes will take place, including those who want the current system to remain in place. But how extreme it is remains up for debate.
“This domino is going to fall. It’s not if, it’s when,” Jessop said. “There will be a large number of employees at some colleges.”
“I think it will either be an employment model or another revenue sharing model. Regardless, the athletes will be fully compensated over the next five years,” Harmon said. “It remains to be seen what that will look like. »
“I completely disagree with the idea that we should change our successful model, which is the envy of the world, to a job-based model,” Montgomery said. “We can come up with different distributions, and there are certainly areas where the collegiate model needs improvement. But I think this will still be the subject of litigation over the next five years.”
Some believe that a school or conference will direct its revenue toward athletes. Lens said he knows many sports administrators who want to negotiate with their athletes right now.
“The NCAA might try to kick them out,” Lens said, “but someone is going to take a very incremental step and do it on their own.”
Many, if not most, athletic departments are preparing for the next step and want to close as quickly as possible. In an interview with Athleticism, Iowa athletic director Beth Goetz said, “Not a day goes by that we don’t talk about what the future of college athletics would look like. » This also includes discussion of a football super league, reported last week by Athleticism, in which one entity would control college football with a union and collective bargaining. This would eliminate the antitrust issues that the NCAA perpetually faces.
“We all want what’s best for college athletics and college sports and if you really try to understand that, putting limits on the ideas that come out, I don’t know if that still makes sense.” , Goetz said of super football. league. “I don’t know yet if it’s something we should really pursue.” But there may be some elements that actually lead to a solution. …I think they’re good conversation starters.
(Photo: Steph Chambers/Getty Images)