The National Collegiate Athletic Association has for decades fought to protect its founding principle of amateurism, defined in its constitution as competition for athletes who “have not profited above his/her actual and necessary expenses or gained a competitive advantage in his/her sport.” In the 1950s, NCAA President Walter Byers coined the term “student-athlete” to differentiate college athletes from professionals.
It’s a fight that has become harder and harder for the NCAA to justify as college sports turned into a billion-dollar business in the 21st century. With money flooding into athletic departments from lucrative television contracts, schools spent lavishly on facilities, stadium upgrades and ever-higher salaries for coaches.
Money flowed to practically everyone except the athletes on the field. It created uncomfortable optics given that the majority of participants in the highest grossing sports—football and men’s basketball—are Black. Mr. Byers, the NCAA president, later characterized college sports as having a “neo-plantation mentality” where “the coach owns the athlete’s feet, the college owns the athlete’s body,” and wrote in his memoir that he regretted creating the “student-athlete” term.
Advocates of college athletes being paid argue that they should be treated no differently than any other student employed by the school in the library or cafeteria, for example.
Others note that athletes who compete for the most high-profile universities in Division I already receive rich rewards: thousands of dollars in academic scholarships that fund their education, mountains of school swag for training, rooms in luxe athlete-specific dorms as well as access to tutors, nutritionists and mental-health professionals.
Since the summer of 2021, the climate has become more favorable for college athletes seeking employee status. The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the NCAA had illegally sought to limit educational benefits available to college athletes in NCAA v. Alston. The case wasn’t explicitly about athlete pay, but Justice Brett Kavanaugh criticized the NCAA’s model more broadly in a concurring opinion, writing, “Nowhere else in America can businesses get away with agreeing not to pay their workers a fair market rate on the theory that their product is defined by not paying their workers a fair market rate.”
In July 2021 the NCAA, responding to pressure from Congress and state legislatures, began allowing college athletes to sign endorsement deals and profit from their likeness. It helped normalize the concept of college athletes having an income. In September, National Labor Relations Board General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo published a memo expressing support for reclassifying college athletes as employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act.
These events galvanized moves that were already under way, including a handful of legal efforts that allege the NCAA and its member institutions have stifled athletes’ attempts to organize. Three charges of unfair labor practices relating to athletes are before the NLRB. A case arguing that schools have violated athletes’ ability to collect wages, brought against the NCAA by a former Villanova University football player, is being tried in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Pennsylvania. And, in Congress, several bills that aim to protect and expand college athletes’ rights have been introduced with bipartisan support.In July 2021 the NCAA, responding to pressure from Congress and state legislatures, began allowing college athletes to sign endorsement deals and profit from their likeness. It helped normalize the concept of college athletes having an income. In September, National Labor Relations Board General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo published a memo expressing support for reclassifying college athletes as employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act.
These events galvanized moves that were already under way, including a handful of legal efforts that allege the NCAA and its member institutions have stifled athletes’ attempts to organize. Three charges of unfair labor practices relating to athletes are before the NLRB. A case arguing that schools have violated athletes’ ability to collect wages, brought against the NCAA by a former Villanova University football player, is being tried in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Pennsylvania. And, in Congress, several bills that aim to protect and expand college athletes’ rights have been introduced with bipartisan support.
In one scenario, only athletes in the handful of sports that generate a net profit, primarily football and basketball, would become salaried employees. Players could elect to unionize, either by team, conference or state, to collectively bargain their salaries—minimum wage, a predetermined share of the proceeds their program generates or some other amount—and working conditions, such as start times for morning practice, what meals they are served on road trips or vacation time.
“You could imagine revenue-sharing agreements… by which the higher earners do make more but the lower earners don’t make nothing,” Mr. Schwab says.
However, a model where a disproportionate amount of male athletes make money could violate Title IX, says Maddie Salamone, an attorney and former chair of the NCAA’s Student-Athlete Advisory Committee.The federal statute requires public institutions to provide equal benefits and financial assistance to men’s and women’s teams.
One possibility would be to classify all college athletes as salaried employees, no matter how much revenue their sports generate. But even the most strident advocates for college athletes worry that turning on the employment spigot for all athletes at once would create a financial crunch for universities, possibly prompting them to cut certain sports, with men’s Olympic sports like gymnastics or soccer facing the greatest risk of elimination.
“The challenge has been to try to avoid unintended and collateral consequences that most people would find unfortunate,” says Purdue University President Mitch Daniels, who has publicly opposed imposing a pay-for-play model in college athletics.
Michael Hsu, a former University of Minnesota regent who is independently pushing to pay student athletes, acknowledges that paying a football team a minimum wage, let alone hundreds more athletes in other sports, would require a substantial sum. For instance, salaries for a football team of about 124 players at the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour for the officially allowed 20 hours of weekly practice over 22 weeks in the fall would come to roughly $395,000. But he points to coaching contracts of as much as $10 million per year as evidence that there is plenty of money sloshing around the system that could be redirected.
Among the most radical visions, most recently backed by Ohio State University athletic director Gene Smith, is the idea of a formal divorce between athletic departments—or perhaps just single sports—and academic institutions. Athletes might be hired by teams similar to the way professional sports teams sign prospects. Going to school while playing a sport might not be required—a development that could render the NCAA irrelevant and end college sports as we know it.
It’s unclear how much support such a disruptive model would garner. Mr. Smith received scant support when he publicly discussed the idea recently; even those in favor of athletes gaining employee status question the utility of removing education from the college-athletics equation.
Those involved say that the timeline is murky as litigation can drag on for years. But they do expect the move to pay college athletes’ salaries to happen eventually. “If the industry sees the writing on the wall, maybe they won’t resist as much,” predicts college-rights advocate Ramogi Huma, adding, “It’s already in motion.”
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