At a reception attended by several university presidents in Manhattan, Arizona State President Michael Crowe was asked to ponder a not-too-distant future where Sun Devils football and basketball players get a cut from the billions of dollars their sports generate in media rights deals.
“I don’t support that. And so are we preparing for it? The answer is no, we’re not,” Crowe recalled. “That is not an outcome which is conducive, in my view, to the success of the pluralistic, gender-balanced, college-sports framework that we presently have in the United States.”
All the same, the NCAA and major college sports conferences are facing yet another antitrust lawsuit — among other legal and political challenges — that could force decision-makers to reckon with a reality where some athletes are paid employees or at least get money in a revenue-sharing model that looks a lot like professional sports.
House vs. the NCAA is a class-action lawsuit being heard in the Northern District of California by Judge Claudia Wilken, whose previous rulings in NCAA cases paved the way for college athletes to profit from their fame and for schools to direct more money into their hands.
This is by design of the NCAA. They purposely washed their hands of having any control over NIL deals. Likely in the hopes it goes crazy and the resulting chaos makes it fail.
Mens basketball and football is already like 95% divested from anything college, at the top levels. There’s a handful of kids getting real degrees that aren’t trying to go pro, but their basically the minority now.
This is hyperbolic, although certainly has a base in reality. Lots of players are getting free educations along the way to deluding themselves they will play professionally. Are there a lot of kids that don’t take academics seriously and are there ways to get an easy degree, sure, but it’s not like non-athletes don’t pursue similar strategies, too.
There are still standards they have to meet, and not every player on the team is getting a scholarship. It’s actually more common now than when I was in school for athletes to just decide to stop playing. Their scholarships (at least in the major conferences) are still honored and they can still graduate.
The majority of players that get drafted may never have taken their education seriously, but the majority of players that never even sniffed that opportunity probably did.
if the highest paid department at your ‘school’ is a sports ‘program’, youre not a school, youre a professional sports team with an education wing.
the idea that some people benefit from the education wing of a sports program shouldnt make it ok.
It really depends on what you define as top schools I guess. All fbs is probably majority non-pro, top 25 aren’t there to play school.