When California passed its new state law making it illegal for colleges to prohibit student-athletes from making money off their likeness, many people wondered what that would mean for college sports. It won't go into effect until 2023, but it left many questions.
For starters, the law is most likely unconstitutional. A single state doesn't hold jurisdiction over a federal entity (just like how Congress doesn't have the authority to subject the entire world to U.S. law with its idiotic Rodchenkov Act!). So, what would it mean if NCAA rules and the California law ran contradictory to each other? And not to mention the ridiculous recruiting advantage it would give to all California schools, but UCLA, USC, Stanford and Cal especially.
LeBron James (who, ironically, never went to college) was among the bill's many advocates, saying it was about time that college athletes should be able to reap some of the benefits that their schools earn off them. Others thought it was a threat to the very model on which college sports are based. There's a very fine line between college and professional sports, and that line is definitely becoming blurred.
Gov. Rick Newsom, who signed the California bill into law, predicted that many other states would follow. That proved to be exactly the case. A number of other state bills were already in the works, then, after California's officially passed, more were fast-tracked. And it left the NCAA scrambling to come up with a response.
These laws stop short at allowing college athletes to be paid directly, but, frankly, what's the difference? Once agents become involved, you're opening the door to a lot of questionable tactics and a lot of money changing hands for performance-based reasons, whether it's technically "legal" or not. Right or wrong, that has always been the basic tenet of the NCAA and what separates college sports from open professionalism. Worse, it's going to make the difference between the "haves" and the "have-nots" that much bigger.
And let's not forget about the so many conflicts of interest this presents. Rick Pitino got fired at Louisville in part because of Adidas' influence with the program. Those relationships are only going to get worse. If an athlete is sponsored by Nike, you don't think Nike would prefer he go to Oregon or Texas (both Nike schools) instead of Kansas (Adidas) or UCLA (Under Armour)?
What really bothers me about the "Fair Pay to Play Act," though, is that, once again, it's only looking out for football and men's basketball players at big schools...those who are likely to make millions of dollars in the NFL and NBA! Just like every other piece of legislation regarding college sports that has been passed in the last decade, this law is designed to help them. Not the women's golfer whose scholarship is paid for by the money brought in from football/basketball ticket revenue. Not the Division III student-athlete who doesn't even have an athletic scholarship.
Not to mention the fact that 95 percent of student-athletes don't stand to benefit from this at all! It's great for the local business in Tuscaloosa, Alabama to use Crimson Tide athletes in their promotional materials (and that the athletes will be compensated for it). But which Crimson Tide athletes do you think they're going to seek out? I'm just going to play a hunch that it won't be anyone from the tennis team. So, once again, football and men's basketball players stand to benefit while everyone else will be in the exact same situation they're currently in.
I'm also curious to see what this does to the smaller schools. Supporters of these laws love to cite the NCAA's $1 billion in revenue among their reasons why change is needed. What that number doesn't show, though, is that most collegiate athletic departments lose money. When the "full cost of attendance" legislation was put into place a few years ago, it was the smaller schools that suffered. Because they didn't have the money to cover that additional expense.
The same thing appears likely again here. Because, while this sounds great for the athletes, none of that money will actually go to help the program directly. So that gap will still exist, and likely become greater. Which further puts those programs at a disadvantage. In recruiting and everything else. It'll also widen the gap between the richly-compensated men's basketball and football players compared to those athletes on their own campus whose only compensation is their free education (which used to be enough). You're also going to have situations where the athletes are making more than assistant coaches and other staff members at their own school (or even within their own program). How is that OK? (I can only imagine the headaches this will cause compliance officers!)
Did Newsom have a point? Yes. He's right in that there are certain areas where the NCAA's current model no longer works. And the organization knows that, too. But I don't think these laws are the answer. Because you're going down a slippery slope that seems like it'll almost certainly lead to corruption. And massive conflicts of interest. And a bunch of other unforeseen problems.
Nevertheless, Newsom forced the NCAA to act. Which they had to. Because you can't have different rules for schools in one state than you do in another. Beyond that, though, if they hadn't reacted now, all it would've done is lead to more attacks on the NCAA and its model. That model worked for more than a century. But this is a much different time, and those voices were only going to get more and more vocal until they were heard.
So, the NCAA did something about it. At the NCAA Board of Governors meeting on Oct. 29, in a move that completely shocked me, they unanimously voted to allow college athletes to be compensated. They left specific rules for each division up to the schools in that division. They also made it clear that there "should be a clear distinction between college and professional opportunities" and stressed that student-athletes shouldn't be treated as employees of their school (or differently than non-athletes).
This effectively renders the individual state laws moot. It also fundamentally changes the NCAA. There's still a long way to go before this goes into effect, but it's going to. And the NCAA will never be the same. Five years from now, college sports will look completely different than they do now. How different? That remains to be seen.
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