There are many things that are unique about the United States, like us love guns, Really big carAnd Ancient method for electing the President. But one that is overlooked is our love of college sports. And do we ever love them.
End there 520,000 college athletes In the United States, about 20,000 play for different teams More than 20 different games. College athletics as a whole Generating $13.6 billion in revenueMore NFL saves than any other professional team, when About 200,000 athletic scholarships The equivalent of about $4 billion is awarded each year. In 43 of the 50 U.S. states, a college coach for a big-time team at a top state university — a job that can easily pay eight figures — Highest paid government employee of the state.
That’s just money. Sports play a role in shaping the American college experience — Who gets in and who doesn’tEven at our most selective schools — unimaginable outside the US, where university sports are a sideshow at best.
And all of this sits on top of an essential contradiction: this whole commercial enterprise, this huge generator of alumni donations and TV rights, all to be amateurish. Athletes just playing for the love of the game and maybe a free college education, often struggle to get or get it Even feeding themselves — even a single top college football team like the University of Alabama’s Crimson Tide can Bringing in over $120 million a year. You don’t get more American than this.
Except, perhaps, for this: That conflict is finally on its way to resolution in a multibillion-dollar courtroom settlement.
Show them the money
Last Thursday, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and what are known as the Power Five college athletic conferences — the leagues with the biggest college football teams — An agreement is reached This will allow colleges to pay athletes directly for the first time (College athlete Now you can earn money legally (Indirectly, a Supreme Court decision in 2021 forced the NCAA to allow businesses to compensate them for the use of their names or similar, but the NCAA still prohibits colleges from paying them directly.)
The agreement, originally in response to a class-action lawsuit House v. NCAA, still needs to be approved by the federal judge overseeing the case. But if it goes ahead, it would represent a fundamental shift in how college athletics operates, resolving a conflict as well as potentially creating a host of other challenges.
The proposed settlement would distribute about $2.75 billion from the NCAA and schools to college athletes who played before July 2021, when the door opens for naming and similar compensation. The settlement would also create a revenue-sharing model that would allow Power Five conference schools to contribute about $20 million a year to athletes. (The Power Five is, for those who don’t wake up on Saturday mornings every fall College Gameday(the ACC, the Big 10, the Big 12, the Pac-12, and the SEC.) Schools outside of these conferences may also eventually be able to choose the model.
That’s what we know — but there’s a lot more we don’t know. It is unclear which athletes will be paid, or how much. We don’t know if steps will be taken to pay female athletes at par with male athletes. (Title IX prohibits sex discrimination at any school receiving federal funding — which is most of them — but it’s not clear that means a female athlete should be paid the same compensation as a male player for a football or basketball team, which often brings in much more.)
And then there’s the broader question of what it means to bring market logic into the world of college athletics. Already Alabama The budget is over $80 million Each year to its football team, the perennial SEC doormat is more than twice that of Mississippi State. (Apologies, Bulldog fans.) If Alabama and its Legions of deep-pocketed boosters Can now pay players directly, an already uneven playing field is about to become positively vertical.
The rich get richer
There is no doubt that big changes need to be made with big-time college athletics. A world where some of America’s best athletes had to toil full-time in front of a national TV audience making seven or even eight figures for coaches, making millions for their schools without receiving any compensation in return, was intolerable. (Yes, they get a free college education, but for the best, that’s hardly a fair return, even assuming you have time to go to class. Exercising more than 40 hours a week.) For many athletes on far too many teams, unprofessionalism was the convenient fiction of their schools that allowed them to make millions on their backs.
But while cold, hard capitalism is perhaps an upgrade over NCAA hypocrisy, the parents of college sports can solve a problem while creating more. Beyond further damaging the competitive balance in revenue-generating sports such as basketball or football, the deal could ultimately harm athletes in non-revenue-generating sports, which are The vast majority of them. (This includes many college football and basketball programs—more than half of the teams in those sports are for-profit.)
It’s not hard to imagine a future where colleges below high school, which are already feeling the pressure Declining enrollment and government supportto decide game cut In a more market-driven environment. of course, A wrestling team A school’s attitude may play a role, but if it is forced to pay a price, will the average college be willing to pay it?
Ultimately, we’ll likely see the rich get richer in college sports — which will make it that much more American.
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