Originally published on Smerconish.com
Throughout my nearly 25-year career in intercollegiate athletics I’ve often been asked if the athletes should be paid given all the money generated in the industry. That wasn’t such a difficult question to answer in my early years in the field. I’d typically respond by saying that few athletic departments actually produce a profit, and the revenue from football and basketball funds opportunities for athletes in the other sports that wouldn’t otherwise be possible. I’d then add that very few people in the industry were getting rich off of this, and most athletic department staffers work hard, keep long hours and for the most part don’t make a whole lot.
That question is much more difficult to answer these days. The landscape of intercollegiate athletics is markedly different. People are getting rich. A lot of people. In most states, the highest paid public employee is now a coach at a public university – in some cases several of them, including assistant coaches. Million dollar-plus salaries, country club memberships and private jet travel are all commonplace today in so many of these “nonprofit” entities throughout Division I athletics – the colleges, major conference offices and at the NCAA office. The two largest collegiate multimedia rights holders, Learfield and IMG College, which recently merged, combine to earn over $1 billion annually. People are clearly getting rich.
It’s fair to say I’ve now come around to the other side on this issue. As much as I love the purity of the college game and the idea that a scholarship for a college education is itself an item of extraordinary value, I can’t ignore the drumbeat of reports of avarice so prevalent in the industry today, including the account of a prominent administrator staying in a $7,500-a-night hotel room during conference championships – a room that reportedly came complete with a private butler.
That said, I don’t believe the colleges themselves should necessarily pay salaries to the athletes. I still maintain that these athletes are in fact students, as opposed to employees. I think most in the world of academia would view salaries to athletes as simply too far afield from their core mission. Additionally, those clamoring for football and men’s basketball players to be paid by their schools are ignoring the implications for gender equity and compliance with Title IX.
Rather, I think the time has come to permit athletes to profit from their name and likeness, just as any other enterprising student can do. This is essentially what the recent bill passed in California would permit, in a direct challenge to the NCAA’s amateurism principles. That bill awaits Governor Gavin Newsom’s signature, and other similar bills are being drafted and introduced in state houses across the country.
Pursuant to the California proposal, schools would still not be “paying for play” beyond the scholarship and cost of attendance limits, but hundreds of college athletes whose hard work and talents have earned for themselves a marketable personal brand would be permitted to monetize that if they so choose. The free market would dictate who gets paid and how much.
While the funding would not come directly from the schools, the economics of intercollegiate athletics would clearly be altered. A fair amount of corporate money currently being poured into the system and funneled to coaches and administrator salaries, facilities, budgets, etc. would suddenly be diverted to prominent athletes. Shoe companies could sign the next Zion Williamson or the next hundred of them. Is that so terrible? I no longer think so. So many of those young men and women hail from challenging circumstances and could certainly use the money.
I grew up in LA in the seventies before baseball free agency when the Dodgers had the same four infielders for nearly ten years. I feared free agency would ruin the game. It undeniably changed the game, but hardly ruined it. And now baseball has a system that treats the athletes much more fairly.
Inevitably companies owned and operated by an alumnus of a school might seek the services of one or more team members motivated not purely for business reasons but to keep their alma mater flush with talent. While that may be inequitable, chances are those same companies were already funding the program in ways that shifted the competitive balance anyway. If, in addition to funding the coaches, budgets and facilities, they make a corporate decision to seek endorsements from prominent athletes, I am comfortable with that becoming the new status quo.
I run the ECAC, an 80-year-old intercollegiate athletics conference of over 200 member schools. Two years ago we began sponsoring intercollegiate competition in team e-sports (electronic gaming), and we now have 57 universities participating and fielding over 250 intercollegiate e-sports teams in our ECAC Esports program. We have no requirement that the competitors be amateurs. We see no reason to add such a restriction. I think that’s coming soon to intercollegiate athletics for some fairly sound reasons, and I no longer think that’s such a bad thing.