Big time college athletics - football and basketball - is like the wild west, $ bidding wars for 19 year old kids. Some top players make more staying in school than turning professional -- with billionaires propping up programs.
It’s unwieldy and unequal.
It also is better than five years ago. The marketplace now plays a role and is bridging a bit of the huge divide between young, disproportionately Black players and older predominately white coaches and administrators.
Still, some reforms are necessary. Both President Trump and a bipartisan bill authored by Texas Republican Ted Cruz and Washington state Democrat Maria Cantwell are pushing changes.
There are promising elements in these efforts but major shortcomings.
The NCAA, the band of colleges that governs these programs, caused many of the problems. Under the old system, coaches and colleges were raking in big bucks while players, apart from scholarships, were more like indentured servants.
The underlying fiction was this was all about amateurism and student-athletes.
The NCAA also had checkered enforcement especially against blue bloods. “The NCAA is so mad at Kentucky they gave Cleveland State two more years of probation,” cracked Jerry Tarkanian, the late University of Nevada at Las Vegas coach.
Under the table payments and skirting of rules was common. At a forum on college athletics years ago one coach suggested, “what we need is more prayer.” To which John Thompson, the great Georgetown coach, responded, “what we need is for you M***** F******’s to quit cheating.”
A 2021 unanimous Supreme Court decision upended this NCAA monopoly declaring that restrictions on education-related compensation violated antitrust laws. There wasn’t much clarity but it opened the doors.
The proposal in the Senate calls for an antitrust exemption and an expanded compensation cap on school payments to athletes. There would be new protections for benefits like health care and the ability to sue in federal courts for legitimate grievances. It would seek to narrow the disparities between the haves and have nots by proposing a media revenue shaaring pool with participants.
The legislation still tilts heavily to colleege administramtors and coaches, says Jay Bilas. He is a former Duke basketball star, with a law degree and now the top ESPN basketball analyst; few are as knowledgeable or thoughtful about college sports.
The bill, he says, falls short for the athletes: “they want to give an antitrust exemption which protects coaches and administrators but restricts players.”
What’s needed, Bilas argues, “is a pathway for a collective bargaining unit,” like professional football, basketball and baseball have. There are complexities --should this be done by individuals, schools, conferences or overall? What are the options if there’s an impasse; there is strong opposition to unionization.
There would still be the NIL’s -- Name, Image and Likeness -- which boosters use to monetize opportunies for players.
The odds of anything happening this year are low. There are two dominant conferences - the Big Ten with teams in the populous Midwest and the West Coast with large media markets, and the almost as powerful SEC, stretching in the South from Texas through Florida and Georgia. They have most of the cards and will resist reforms like media revenue sharing.
Blacks comprise a sizable number of basketball and football players, and some civil rights groups are objecting to these reform proposals.
At some stage the colleges, NCAA, will have to figure out a more player-friendly reform, building on some of the changes suggested by the Cruz-Cantwell measure.
In the meantime, I’m not going to worry about some talented young college quarterback or power forward making $10 million. I do worry how those substitutes or those in minor sports or women’s sports are treated.
I also don’t worry about exceptional coaches - Jon Scheyer of Duke and Connecticut’s Dan Hurley in basketball or Indiana’s Curt Cignetti and Ohio State’s Ryan Day in football - having big pay days. They deliver; that’s the marketplace.
Unacceptable are coaches who are fired - presumably for not being good enough - and walking away with unconscionable sums. That includes two football coaches, LSU’s Brian Kelly, out the door with $54 million, and $48.6 million was due for Penn State’s James Franklin. In basketball, fired Kansas State coach Jerome Tang is seeking $18.7 million. While in 2020, Wake Forest’s (my alma mater) Danny Manning got $14.7 million after he was terminated.
No caps or limits on player compensation should be acceptable without looking for any way to limit these payouts.
Overall, once you accept that this is not about amateur student-athletes, the current state of play, with its inequities, looks okay. Some schools in conferences like the Atlantic Coast (ACC) and the Big East (basketball) may have to move down to a less financially competitive league.
We’re not going back. “Those who say we want it to be like it used to be,” Bilas says, are out of touch with realities. “Players have to have a voice.”