On payments to college athletes for names, likenesses and images. According to this story, members of Congress are puzzled that a system exists where schools make billions on the backs of athletes who get zero compensation. And they seem likely to do something about it, even if it’s just putting the NCAA on notice to fix the system or risk losing tax-exempt status.
NCAA is likely to do something along those lines this week, but the devil is in the details as always. Here’s one possibility:
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At least that would end the term “amateur athlete”
I fear it would destroy recruiting since sponsors could guarantee a given high school kid more money than others to attend a given school.Under the table of course, but
I fear for the future of college athletics in general. Corruption is not a new word.
According to the AP story, the NCAA would review the contracts kids have with their sponsors, just as MLB, the NBA and the NFL have to approve contracts with their players (and some of them get thrown out as not allowable).
The horse left the barn on amateur athletics when shoe company and TV billion$ entered the picture. The shoe companies are already getting around the limits through bagmen and under the table payments. TV isn’t (as much) because that comes through the conferences and schools. But those sources of big bucks aren’t going away.
I see lawsuits for the deals the NCAA turns down. Just wait.
Will take awhile to tweak all of this and make it work.
If the NCAA caps how much you can make from a sponsor, I don’t see that being thrown out. There’s a cap now, which is zero, and I can’t imagine that easing that cap is gonna get thrown out. The ruling in the O’Bannon case envisioned a cap on NLI payments anyway.
I’m referring to some that might not meet the criteria of the NCAA. Whatever that will be.
If the government gets involved, it will be a mess.
What they should do is what the pro leagues do: Provide a template for such contracts which can be tweaked to some extent, but if you stick to the template you’re generally okay.
If you read the SI story, the Republican congressman from North Carolina who came up with the bill threatening the tax exempt status basically agrees; his bill is intended to get the NCAA to fix it themselves.
Has anyone ever read what Eric Dickerson got before entering SMU? It led to the death penalty of course but I do not fecall ever seeing how much it actually was.
Dickerson got a Trans-Am, which was rumored to have been bought by an Aggie booster.
In this article, Dickerson claims he got spending money but not big sums or money or a condo. Says he was offered $50,000 in cash by a representative of another school.
What got SMU the death penalty was continuing to pay players after the NCAA sanctioned it and basically told it to stop. The PTB (including Gov. Clements) determined stopping the payments was not as easy as it sounded, and basically decided they had to run off the payments quietly. One of the SMU players — not even a good one, David Stanley I think was his name — spilled the beans. It went south quickly after that.
No football my last two years at SMU.
Glorious. Quite a time to have been a student there.
There were lots of Trans Ams being bought without any money. Strange.
Then you go back to the Oklahoma days where players sold their OU-Texas and OU-Nebraska tickets. And then the tickets were in glove boxes of new cars sold game week.
That’s what changed way game tickets for player families distributed. Referred to as “the Oklahoma rule.”
I’m sure Clay has heard stories from Dean Campbell like I have. He coached from 1973 until he joined Petrino’s staff as high school relations director.
I forgot the kid he was recruiting for Texas but he’s a well known player. The kid was offered a very good sum of money but was upset at the school because he refused to be bought. He signed with Texas.
Schools have a lot of sponsorships already with non competes. So does the conference. It will be hard to do sponsorships. It’s better to just pay players a percentage of school revenue.
Why should an athlete get paid plus a full tutition free while regular studnts pay a lot of money to attend that school?
I know full well about the situation but feel it is shame that houses of education have become so absorbed by money making they seem to forget what their function really is.
Or was.
Regular students are able to make money while they are students. Musicians can form a band and play Dickson Street on Saturday night. Michael Dell started Dell Computer in his dorm room at Texas. If Michael Dell had been an athlete, he couldn’t have done that under NCAA rules.
And your average student isn’t generating additional revenue for the school. Football and basketball players do.
More to the point, they should be able to because the law says they should. The NCAA is not exempt from federal antitrust law. Or not as exempt as you would wish. And if Congress does anything, it will be in the players’ benefit, not the schools.
Bobghawg makes a very good point. This payment to college athletes may finally kill college football. Why not just support your favorite NFL team if everybody is getting paid?
I am not going to give money to the Razorback Foundation if they are going to use some of it to pay players. My little donation won’t matter, but when you multiply that by many people it will.
Has anyone ever declined a scholarship to play college football because the they couldn’t afford it?
At the risk of this being thrown out, Congress only does what benefits themselves. Getting relected is their primary objective…