May 24, 2024

"What is unclear is who will get paid and how much. The $2.8 billion in damages is tied to revenue generated almost exclusively..."

"... by major conference football and men’s basketball, whose athletes represent one class of plaintiffs. Another class is women’s basketball players in the major conferences. And the final class is everyone else. Going forward, the settlement means that schools could set aside about $20 million each to pay their athletes as soon as the 2025 football season. Schools will have their own decisions to make on how to distribute payments to athletes. Does Michigan, for example, want to sprinkle money among its lacrosse and cross-country teams, or plow almost all of the money into football and basketball? And will Title IX require the money to be distributed equally among men and women?"

From "Decades in the Making, a New Era Dawns for the N.C.A.A.: Paying Athletes Directly/If approved by a judge, the $2.8 billion settlement of an antitrust lawsuit would allow for the first revenue-sharing plan for college athletes. The question now: How will it work?" (NYT).

45 comments:

imTay said...

I like Bill Burr's approach to thinking about this. If women's basketball is so important to women, why don't they watch it? Why do they insist that men watch it, but instead women watch Below Decks, or whatever show Kim Kardashian is on? I personally think that women's college golf is way underrated as a spectator sport for men, but women's basketball?

If you forced an NBA team to include the best female basketball player that they could find in their starting five, and made them play her serious minutes, that team would finish in last place, and if you took any division I women's team, and added a pine rider from the NBA, who's only contribution to that team was his minutes in practice, that team would win a title.

Kevin said...

Pay only the B/black kids.

Make the white kids work for free.

Call it reparations.

Narayanan said...

so lawfare did not get rid of NCAA
NCAA is the snake that bites the kind woman as told by Trump at Bronx campaign fest

Bill R said...

I don't care at all about college sports but I do have a question.

Why are the courts inserting themselves into this? There are zillions of dollars at stake here. It's a huge business that affects many millions of people. Having it decided by competing teams of greedy lawyers and an ignorant judge is surely the worst possible solution.

Humperdink said...

May I suggest the $2 billion be used to teach college B-ball and football players to read?

Ann Althouse said...

"Why are the courts inserting themselves into this?"

The technical answer is that a class-action antitrust lawsuit was brought, this is a proposed settlement, and judicial approval is needed to settle a class action.

Ann Althouse said...

The class was certified — https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/38813620/athletes-granted-class-certification-antitrust-case-vs-ncaa

Old and slow said...

Universities should not be involved in the business of professional sports. It is corrupting.

Enigma said...

Best solution: Get the sports minor leagues / training leagues out of colleges altogether. Model football and basketball on baseball's minor league system.

Many schools turned a blind eye and covered up unqualified sports "students" because of their athletic abilities and huge profits. This is a fully corrupt system that distracts from education per se, and it feeds the administration-alumni-government education-industrial complex.

It won't happen, but I can dream.

mindnumbrobot said...

imTay said, I personally think that women's college golf is way underrated as a spectator sport for men...

I vote beach volleyball.

GatorNavy said...

Due to the amount of money college football and men’s basketball ball generate; a star system will gradually form. In ten years, I predict a mega big ten football grouping and a mega SEC football group. I am less certain about men’s basketball. Also, gambling interests will have a big say.

AMDG said...

There are about 15 to 20 schools that will thrive under this model. The rest will die.

Narr said...

Vonnegut was so prophetic.

Our universities are becoming football and basketball teams with classrooms attached.

gilbar said...

i asked this question a few days ago (about high schools).. But i'll ask it again here.
WHY do we have sports in schools? SHOULDN'T these teams be private clubs?
WHY have them publicly funded? It seems to just cause ALL SORTS of problems

Temujin said...

One sport pays for all the nice things in these universities: College Football.
One other sport adds in a few bucks for a couple semesters of food: Men's college basketball (there are some outliers such as Iowa and Connecticut where the Women's Basketball pays for itself).

But no other college sports pay for themselves.

The've killed college football over the last few years with NIL's, wide open transfer portals, broken and blended conferences, broken rivalries. The only thing left to do is completely blow the thing up, and adding them onto payroll should do it.

Just open up a minor league for football and let the rest of the college sports go back to their status as amateur sports to take part in while gaining an education. Not a degree, but an education. Anyone can get a degree- as illustrated by the world around you.

Howard said...

So old and slow believes that the free market economy is inherently corrupting. Probably true but that's what reasonable regulation is for. I think what pisses people off is that those black kids are going to start making some of the money that was being paid to the fat white bloated coaching staffs. This way they won't be able to control and manipulate the student athletes. One reason I don't really care for popular college sports is people treat it like it's a religion with the coaches as Jesus and the alumni boosters as the apostles.

n.n said...

Follow Obama and Biden's precedent for medical, pharmaceutical, and loan forgiveness, where the industry, schools, and some select lives will benefit, and redistribute the cost through progressive price and tax schemes.

MadTownGuy said...

"And will Title IX require the money to be distributed equally among men and women?"

What, then, for the transsexuals, the furries, and those who identify as trees or patio furniture?

Oligonicella said...

Regardless of how colleges decide to distribute the money there will be a plethora of law suits.

Yancey Ward said...

Easy question to answer- the lawyers will get most of it.

mezzrow said...

Good. Let's talk about paying the band and the cheerleaders, while we're at it. They get recruited, too.

Dave Begley said...

This is, in essence, a salary cap. The Power 5 (and the BE) will be in the catbird's seat. The Badgers lost two basketball players this year to the transfer portal because the players got more money. Now all the P5 schools have a fixed pool of money to pay the players.

Paddy O said...

"If women's basketball is so important to women, why don't they watch it"

This shows a fundamental disconnect about how and why sports are valued by different people.

I love sports. Playing that is. Watching sports is rather boring to me unless I'm with a big group.


I don't watch any sports except my kids playing. My just turned 12 yr old daughter is almost 5'9" and loves basketball. So I really like encouraging her to play.

I don't care about watching WNBA but I do want my daughter to have the opportunity to be active athlete rather than a passive observer. I want the same for my almost 10 yr old son

So I care about access to participation not access to the passive and often corrupt businesses of sports or the emotional investment of sports fans into those businesses.

Yancey Ward said...

There should literally be no rules on who gets paid to play college sports and no rules on who can pay them. Until recent years, I watched college sports (mostly mens' basketball) a lot, and always found it amusing that the NCAA pretended to enforce rules that the players couldn't be paid, and that they had to maintain academic standards to continue to play. Sure, they would occasionally make an example of some program or person, but everyone knew it was all a sham. The hypocrisy of it all is part of what turned me off the sports in the end. Perhaps the big colleges should just form a professional league for ages 17-22 and be done with the NCAA altogether.

Anthony said...

I think it's going to ruin college football, but can't see any way around it. Universities (and a lot of others) have been making obscene amounts of money off of these guys and they (the vast majority) get relatively nothing. The transfer portal and conference realignments have caused me to lose the great amount of interest I used to have in college football, and I'm. . .not sure what to do now. I may give it up completely. What's the point? It's now just minor league NFL.

It saddens me though. I used to so look forward to the Fall and college football season. Saturdays were my Field of Dreams.

RCOCEAN II said...

I used to be against paying College athletes but the NCAA Basketball and Football have become so commericialized and semi-pro, I'm ok with it now. the pretense of the "scholar-athelete" was dropped a long time ago. Many of these athletes come from foreign countries or places thousands of miles from the college, they don't study, and they are just there hoping to get a spot in the NBA/NFL.

The NCAA meanwhile has sold its soul to ESPN and forced many games off "free TV" for an extra buck.

IMO, the NBA and NFL should be sued by the NCAA. The colleges are in effect, the semi-pro league where BB and football players are given training to allow them to move to the next level. So, they should be reimbursed.

Anyway, Title IX will require the money to be split evenly. And stars will be paid the same as bench warmers. Next, we'll hearing about how "Unfair" it is that star QB X is getting the same as benchwarmer Y, or how a College Female Cross country winnner is getting the same amount. It will never end. but sports fans lap this crap up.

MadisonMan said...

It seems to me that if your sport generates revenue, you as a player should share it. That's the easiest way to determine who gets what.

Dave Begley said...

From the Winston PR, "In the first year of the settlement, each school can share 22% of the average Power 5 school’s revenues, which is currently projected to be significantly more than $20 million per school, per year. These new payments and benefits come in addition to scholarships, third-party NIL payments, health care and other benefits that college athletes already receive, and schools can choose to make the new payments and benefits to athletes playing any Division I sport.

The settlement also eliminates NCAA scholarship caps to open the door to more opportunities for Division I athletes across every sport."

Nebraska can have 110 scholarship footballers now.

Curious George said...

"Nebraska can have 110 scholarship footballers now."

They'll still get crushed.

Curious George said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Original Mike said...

My interest in watching college sports has tanked since the portal has turned it into a game of musical chairs.

PM said...

High schools quietly inching towards the door.

mccullough said...

The sports that generate the most revenue (Michigan football) get the most.

The Big Ten Conference football the last decade has been Michigan and Ohio State.

Ohio State football should get $5 million of the Big 10 money. That $5 million should be split $1 million to Justin Fields, 1 million to CJ Stroud, and $1 million to Marvin Harrison Jr.

As for women’s sports, they don’t generate revenue. Maybe Iowa women’s basketball should get $100,000. And all of it should go to Caitlin Clark.

As for the bench warmers, they get nothing. They got a free education. Given their meager contributions to their teams, athletic programs, and conferences, they should be grateful they don’t owe money.

Joe Bar said...

These farm teams for professional sports should have been removed from the higher education system long ago. Do they have this kind of system anywhere else? When I lived in Germany, I don't recall hearing of the Max Planck Institute Tigers, of the Heidelberg University Trojans. I did hear of local clubs that established teams for all kinds of sports in every town.

Privatize this stuff.

Lars Porsena said...

Scraping the last thin layer off the pretense of amateur sports in college.

Michael said...

Pay but hold back until they graduate and release when they can demonstrate they can read and do basic math.

Narayanan said...

will school Presdients and Athletic Directors send staff to learn Hollywood accounting tricks?

Narayanan said...

will school Presdients and Athletic Directors send staff to learn Hollywood accounting tricks?

Narayanan said...

will school Presdients and Athletic Directors send staff to learn Hollywood accounting tricks?

Static Ping said...

If women's sports get the same money as the men's sports, that could effectively make college sports the highest paid for women athletes, at least in America and for some sports.

Kevin said...

"Nebraska can have 110 scholarship footballers now."

Their helmets are already advertising for Netflix.

Joe Smith said...

So the women get less?

: )

Joe Smith said...

'Their helmets are already advertising for Netflix.'

Lately their helmets are advertising for failure...

mccullough said...

I don’t care if college players get paid.

College sports are pretty much a joke compared to professional sports.

A handful of the college players will make the pros and a handful of those pros will be great.

College football is very slow compared to the NFL. There are some fast and quick players but overall it’s closer to high school football than the NFL.

The college players switch teams constantly. I don’t blame them. They are trying to get to the pros.

But I’m not paying to watch inferior athletes.

Joe Smith said...

'But I’m not paying to watch inferior athletes.'

I'm not a huge fan of any sports really.

But if you enjoy a sport like basketball, watch for the generational players.

Jordan in college would have been one of the best players in the NBA.

He was a generational talent.

Of course, these days the rules are different and great players go the pros straight out of high school.