I listened to two podcast episodes recently about the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) hearing the case of amateurism in college sports and how it seems the NCAA will likely lose their case. Here are the two episodes: NPR’s Planet Money - Amateur Hour at the Supreme Court and Extra Points’ Going For Two - Union Up. NPR digs into what was said by the NCAA and the SCOTUS and Extra Points discusses the difficulties and impact of even considering unionizing in college sports.
I’ll summarize it below.
What even is amateurism:
- Amateurism is that you play for the love of the game and not for the money.
- College football players (and general college athletics in P5) are anything but amateurs when you consider the amount of time and effort, and money, is invested by players and universities, respectively.
- The NCAA says that college athletes are not paid for their play. SCOTUS says that tuition and housing are a form of payment, so why not also actual cash? The NCAA calls these necessary expenses.
- NCAA argues these are threats to amateurism:
– school supplies (the ability of colleges to pay for different things depending on major),
– grad school and vocational school scholarships (offers for those who never get to the NFL; i.e. if you play for us but don’t make it to the NFL or graduate, we will pay for you to get another degree type), and
– internships (cash money for “internships” ala Big Red Sports and Imports in Norman).
NCAA and money:
- 1100 schools (all sports) in the NCAA, 25 of those schools make money on athletics (everyone else loses!!).
- If you want to play in the NFL, you have to go to college - that’s not the case for other sports if you want to play at the highest level.
- The NCAA is both a Monopoly and Monopsony - they are the only one selling college football and the only one buying the labor (no one else can compete in the market of college football or basketball).
- Colleges can only financially compete by offering tuition, housing, and books, but it cannot exceed the total cost of attending college.
– The NCAA allows up to $6k in athletic awards.
– Currently, students can receive any financial academic awards (some form of scholarships) that are only for academic achievement (i.e. GPA).
– So why won’t the NCAA allow the same thing for athletic achievement?
- All of these perks could eventually lead to these being actual jobs.
Politics:
- College Right to Organize Act by Sen Chris Murphy (CT) and Sen Bernie Sanders (VT) is the Unionization of college athletics and calls for college athletes to be “Employees.”
- This bill would expand the number of people who could unionize, however college professors cannot currently unionize so what would it mean if their student athletes were able to?
– Are professors are, in a way, contractors? I know they don’t regularly get raises like me and you (any professors on the board, please correct me).
- The states passing NIL bills are football hotbed states, however, the national-level push is coming from states where football is not king.
- State-level legislators are more concerned about their state universities getting their piece of the pie because these schools have influence in state politics
– federal-level legislators are influenced less by these schools.
How you would go about this:
- Not only would D1, P5 football players be considered employees, but so would your smallest G5 swimmers, golfers, and other non-revenue sports athletes.
- NIL was a non-starter a few years ago but today it’s almost a unanimous that people agree students deserve some level of compensation. In the same vein, we didn’t have alcohol allowed in many stadiums until recently and now it’s in most stadiums because it’s a revenue generator.
- Let’s say we they can set up a union, do you have separate CBAs? Conference-level CBAs? Sports-specific or University-specific CBAs? State-level CBAs?
- This past summer you had schools within conferences speak out to play football despite covid restrictions (see Nebraska within B1G).
- How do you get P5 and G5 players to agree to terms for collective bargaining? How do you get a P5 football player and a D2 or D3 swimmer agree on what’s important? How do you select representatives.
- There are a lot more athletes in ALL of athletics than just what’s in football - that’s thousands of more votes on CBA topics than you get if every college football player agreed.
- It’s not possible, let alone probable.
- The way college athletics works right now with access to players - you have to go through the coach, SID, and university to even have access to a player to interview them. How will this affect writers ability to pay students for access to interview? Will a coach be able to penalize players for doing this?
Some other thoughts:
- If we were to start college athletics over, do we start it in the same way? College athletics in the US is unlike anything else in the world.
- Amateurism in other countries is organized and defined differently and in many places are paid in some form.
- EP: ‘Anyone under 40 who says they’ll stop watching college sports if this happens, is a liar. Unless your sport goes the way of Kansas Football, you’ll be watching.’
– SCOTUS mentions that the evidence suggests people will continue to watch, regardless of what happens.
Tuition is like Chesapeake Energy paying for my health insurance. Organization will go under but what was I paid?
Was listening to the ExtraPoints podcast Going for Two episode with Katie Lever which focused on the definition of amateurism and came away with a few questions I would love to hear answered by recruits and former OSU players:
(1) how important is/was academics in your decision,
(2) does/did OSU take time to discuss degree options and your plans after college,
(3) how important is it to you that OSU prepare you for life after football/basketball,
(4) do you think OSU is partially responsible for your success after school, and
(5) is/was alumni relations mentioned during your recruitment (do you have an alumni relationship with your program).
I would love if @marshall or @kyleboone could ask some version of these in an interview with recruits and former players (Justice Hill comes to mind). You guys do ask great open ended questions, but I’m particularly interested in how they view OSU as a school and not as a sports only place (although I know they didn’t come here to play school).
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EDIT:
Relatively hard hitting stuff here. I don’t see how anyone can defend the NCAA against this.
To me, this all points to one outcome and that’s one where players are paid like employees lest we see the NCAA go through antitrust litigation. I think we see CBAs (esp at G5 conferences and lower) but market value for higher revenue schools (i.e., P5).
I think this might even cause conference realignment to happen quicker.
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Going to assume this means they’ve got time to address concerns before more trouble. I think we should treat them the same way they treat member institutions and punish them for all the years of wrong doing even if they end up correcting their mistakes.
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Kyle Boone provided coverage of this today but I think more needs to be explored and commissioners and ADs need to be questioned about their plans. I’m afraid if these people aren’t pressed about it then it can get out of control and we end up with reactionary fights from college athletes trying to get a CBA.
I’m curious how this will affect old school things like buying athletes cars or $100 hand shakes as well as whether or not donations and revenue pots of money will be mixed before doling out.
Also, I’d like the content.
We need some OSU mock ups.
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I’m interested to see how much money ends up flying around. NIL is where the money’s at, but I still think college athletics as a form of amateurism is definitely gone (rightfully so).
Will this pretty much be big donors paying athletes instead of donating to the schools? (A la ou and Big Red Imports)
Will it all be new money (those who otherwise would not have spent money at the school)?
Will it actually help businesses?
@marshall, have you thought through this for PFB?
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What about all of them. It’s gonna be wild until a bunch of rules get implemented.
Hey @marshall, would bringing athletes from different sports onto the podcast be a possibility? A summer series would be awesome!! Might also help the site creep back into the football world. Surely Gundy wouldn’t deny them the opportunity to talk to you guys.
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I think of they’re paid, he can’t, but then he might just kick them off the team so who knows.
I think that’s a possibility going forward: kids getting booted for a deal they made that the school or coach doesn’t like (are we going to see girls booted for an OnlyFans?).
Can schools now sell jerseys with names on the back? If so, that’s a win for everyone. Don’t have to order from China anymore 
I think it would be cool, but paying athletes we cover would be a major conflict of interest. If we did bring on athletes, it wouldn’t be a paid deal.
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Reggie Bush and the Fab Five officially happened! Yay
If you sponsored Sanders do you think Gundy would sit him out of spite?
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