With the expansion of the College Football Playoff and $2.4 billion in annual broadcast rights to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, the most marketable player in women’s basketball history — Iowa State’s Kaitlyn Clark — is putting her sport on the line. Driving unprecedented television ratings, college sports appear healthy, vibrant and lucrative. This applies to everyone except participants.
University officials and legal scholars have questioned whether athletes should get a cut of postseason earnings. Those discussions have spilled over into athlete rights and employment status, both of which will likely be decided in federal court.
NCAA President Charlie Baker gave brief remarks before Sunday’s women’s championship game, saying he hopes to “make some changes in how Division I supports its student-athletes.”
“We’ve done a lot of preparation to deal with this, but I’m not going to get ahead of the membership on this type of thing,” Baker said. “I’m sure we’re going to have a conversation.”
But where do members stand on paying players? Judging from a recent panel discussion at the University of Iowa, legal scholars and experts abound. Lawsuits threaten to undermine the current amateur model, and with the prospect of a college football premiership looming, questions abound. But authorities agree that change is coming, and fast.
“The avalanche has officially hit the NCAA,” said Dan Matheson, director of Iowa’s athletics and recreation management program and former NCAA associate director of enforcement.
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The NCAA’s legal troubles continue to mount in 2021 after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 9-0 against Alston, allowing athletes to obtain name, image and likeness damages (NIL). The National Labor Relations Board’s regional director ruled this year that Dartmouth men’s basketball players were employees. In a complaint filed with the NLRB and in ongoing testimony, the National College Players Association has argued that USC athletes are employees of the university, the Pac-12 and the NCAA. Additionally, a class-action antitrust lawsuit over past NIL rights could cost the NCAA and its members more than $5 billion.
Since players can earn zero income, employment is the final step in blurring the line between amateur and professional status. For most experts, this is the hardest one to navigate because no one can agree on the parameters. Is it just athletes from revenue-producing sports or all athletes? How will it affect Title IX? How much does each athlete earn? Can non-profit sports survive?
Looking forward to an engaging panel discussion and 2.0 CLE hours for all attorneys in the area! There is a live streaming option here: https://t.co/6iM16S9F7y pic.twitter.com/TZSgHoCUga
— Dan Matheson (@DanMatheson) March 27, 2024
Alicia Jessop, a professor of sports management at Pepperdine University who also serves as the school’s NCAA faculty athletic representative, asked the NCAA to implement a shift system and recognize athletes as employees. Jessop, a member of the NCAA’s Division I men’s basketball oversight committee and a practicing attorney, believes resistance and talk of collateral damage is “fear-mongering.”
“The NCAA continues to spend millions of dollars in lobbying dollars trying to persuade Congress to grant it antitrust immunity, but without success,” Jessop said. “The odds of Congress passing such a bill are about as likely as the odds of Caitlin Clark not being the No. 1 pick in the WNBA draft.”
Jason Montgomery, a law partner at Husch Blackwell and a former NCAA chief investigator, disagrees.
“Obviously, the NCAA is in the midst of the worst losing streak in sports since the Bills’ four Super Bowl losses. They’re terrible at litigation,” he said. “But the current and well-established laws of this country say that college athletes are not employees. The Department of Labor says they are not employees. No federal court has ever said they are employees.”
Universities worry that staffing conditions and salaries will bankrupt athletic departments. Paying athletes could force some departments to eliminate many of the nonprofit sports that make up the lifeblood of Olympic rosters. Libby Harmon, a Nevius Law attorney who served as the NCAA’s chief investigator for 10 years and also served as Michigan’s director of compliance, said that of the 626 athletes on the U.S. team competing in the 2020-21 Olympics, 76% is a body for current or former athletes from 171 different countries.
To Jessop, any attempt to cut Olympic sports is an excuse. She cited data from USA Today that most Division I coaches are getting an average raise of 15.3% in 2021 (after the pandemic left many departments in financial distress), coupled with salary spikes and modest scholarship increases. In fiscal year 2023, Ohio State athletics spent more than $90.7 million on coaches and staff salaries while paying out $23.8 million on athletic scholarships, according to the data obtained. Competitor. “That could fund a Division I athletic department many times over,” Harmon said of Texas A&M’s $75 million deal to acquire football coach Jimbo Fisher.
“Don’t believe there’s no money in the system,” Jessop said. “This will require a reallocation of funds. Top college coaches will have their salaries reduced and strength trainers will no longer make $1 million a year.”
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Still, it would be naive to expect that athletic departments won’t continue to invest in football and men’s basketball, since those are the only two sports that generate profits for most power conference schools. Montgomery believes that breaking the system to include workers could cause everything to collapse. For the past three years, athletes now have access to zero-income (NIL) earning opportunities, full scholarships up to the cost of attendance, and educational awards of approximately $6,000 per year.
“The popularity of college sports is at an all-time high,” Montgomery said. “The popularity of television in college sports is at an all-time high. Women’s sports are at an all-time high. Member schools in the NCAA system produce the most Olympic athletes. So things are going really well for college sports. Let’s change things. This It doesn’t make any business sense, it doesn’t make any practical sense.”
Additionally, if athletes are considered employees, programs can hire and fire them strictly based on performance.
“What would that relationship look like if student-athletes became employees?” asked Josh Lens, an Arkansas athletics and recreation professor who worked in Baylor’s compliance office. “I think the relationship between athletic departments, coaches and athletes is more of an alienated relationship and more of a career model.
“There are great coaches and great people out there who truly care about their athletes; that doesn’t necessarily go away. But I think that would change if athletes knew their scholarships might be taken away.”
future
So what will happen in five or ten years? Most experts believe there will be changes, including those who want to keep the current system. But just how extreme is still debated.
“The dominoes are going to fall. It’s not a question of if, it’s a matter of when,” Jessop said. “Some universities will have a broad range of staff.”
“I think it’s either some kind of employment model or some other revenue-sharing model. Either way, the athletes will be fully compensated over the next five years,” Harmon said. “What that looks like remains to be seen.”
“I strongly disagree that we should change our successful model that is the envy of the world and move to an employment-based model,” Montgomery said. “We can come up with different distributions, and there are certainly areas where the university model needs improvement. But I think There will still be lawsuits for the next five years.”
Some believe schools or conferences will funnel revenue directly to athletes. Lens said he knows a lot of sports administrators who want to bargain with athletes right now.
“The NCAA may try to kick them out,” Longs said, “but someone is going to take a very progressive step and do it themselves.”
Many, if not most, athletic departments are preparing for the next step and hoping to get it over with as soon as possible.during an interview Competitor“We talk about the future of college sports all the time,” Iowa State athletic director Beth Goetz said. That also includes discussions about the Super League, as reported last week Competitor, an entity that would control college football through unions and collective bargaining. This would alleviate long-standing antitrust issues faced by the NCAA.
“We all want what’s best for college athletics and college athletics, and if you really want to figure that out and put constraints on the ideas that come up, I don’t know if that always makes sense,” Goetz said. the football superstar said of the league. “I don’t know yet if this is something we should actually pursue. But some parts of this might actually lead to solutions. … I think these are good conversation starters.”
(Photo: Stephen Chambers/Getty Images)
