This week, the NCAA, ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC voted to allow schools to pay players.
Let's think about that for a moment.
A day that would have been unimaginable three years ago, much less 30 years ago, has (almost) arrived. Technically, their vote was just the first step toward reaching a $2.67 billion settlement in the landmark House v. NCAA antitrust lawsuit. The judge's approval is still pending; more hearings will be held. And yet, college sports leaders have agreed to something they've vehemently opposed for a century, albeit reluctantly, as a ruling that could bankrupt the entire system looms.
There are still a lot of details to be sorted out, including how many schools will actually provide the full amount of the roughly $20 million a year in revenue they are currently permitted but not required to distribute to players, how to meet Title IX requirements and whether to establish collective bargaining with players.
All I can predict at this point are all the widely predicted repercussions of paying college athletes that will never come to fruition.
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Fans won't stop watching college football.
It's the doomsday scenario that NCAA lawyers, expert witnesses and some fans have warned about for years: If players were paid more than their scholarships, the public would lose interest in college sports.
“If we go down the road of paying the players big money, it's all going to go to waste,” former CBS Sports president Neal Pilson testified in O'Bannon v. NCAA in 2014. Citing misleading polls the NCAA cited during the trial, he predicted ratings would drop by 15 to 20 percent.
Well, we now have nearly three years of data proving this argument to be complete and utter bullshit: Many college athletes, not just those in football and men's basketball, began receiving “significant” NIL funds on July 1, 2021. What has happened since then?
Last season, 37 regular-season college football games were watched by at least 5 million people, up from 29 a decade ago. Last year's Ohio State-Michigan game drew the sport's largest regular-season audience (19.1 million) since 2011, when serving cream cheese on bagels was still illegal under the NCAA. And, of course, women's basketball attendance has skyrocketed, in part because megastars like Caitlin Clark, JuJu Watkins and Cameron Brink are being paid to appear in national ad campaigns.
People continue to watch college football because A) there's nothing in American sports that commands more loyalty than their favorite university, and B) fall Saturdays are still as great as ever.
Athletes' academic experience will not be affected
The NCAA has long touted preserving amateurism as a noble endeavor. protect Those “student athletes.”
“It is critical that we protect the amateur spirit of college sports and support, not undermine, our student-athletes' educational experience,” former NCAA president Mark Emmert said in 2020 testimony before the Senate.
That would be fine if that were actually what was happening, but if it completely ignored decades-old practices of steering athletes into the easiest classes possible, of “focusing” athletes into relatively easy majors, of athletes spending far more than the 20-hour per week limit on sports activities, of low graduation rates, and in some cases, of outright academic cheating.
it is all Football players treat the school like a joke. On the contrary, like any other campus, there are highly motivated students who are well prepared for life after college and students who can't even find where the library is on a map. Revenue sharing is not going to change that for better or worse.
NIL populations do not disappear
In the administration's ideal world, the House settlement would bring an end to the “Wild Wild West” era that began in 2021 when the NCAA was forced to allow NIL but with few to no regulations around it. That's unlikely.
The settlement allows Ohio State, for example, to distribute up to $20 million to its players, which seems like a lot of money, but the university probably can't give the full $20 million to its football team for fear of being sued by the female athletes.
in AthleticIn a recent report on the transfer portal and NIL, the CEO of one organization said, “We're going to spend about $14.5 million this year, and 80 percent of that will be on football,” while another CEO said, “$12 million to $13 million,” and this reporter has heard there are several major programs spending more than that.
NIL organizations wouldn't have to raise as much money as they do now, but they would likely function as a sort of salary-cap workaround for top programs with national championship aspirations — after all, boosters were recruiting new students long before the NIL, and it's hard to imagine them stopping under the new model.
The NCAA won't stop the lawsuit.
The NCAA and conferences chose to settle the House lawsuit in part because it would be consolidated with several similar lawsuits filed by the same lawyers, but the first sign that the defense will be waiting on more billable hours came Thursday when a Colorado judge denied a motion to transfer another athlete compensation case, Fontenot v. NCAA, to a Northern California court that has jurisdiction over the House.
Meanwhile, the NCAA remains embroiled in litigation over player employment (Johnson v. NCAA, an NLRB case involving USC, Dartmouth, and Notre Dame), transfer rules (Ohio State et al. v. NCAA), and booster involvement in recruiting (Tennessee and Virginia v. NCAA). There are also lawsuits filed by Florida State and Clemson challenging the granting of ACC rights that could have ramifications for the industry as a whole.
The House may change the face of college sports unlike any lawsuit before it, but a larger overhaul project may still be in its early stages.
Learn more
Commissioner's response to NCAA's Charlie Baker player compensation proposal
People will continue to complain about the current situation.
College football is a rare phenomenon in that it is both incredibly popular and incredibly frustrating to consumers in every way.
While the House settlement may bring some much-needed stability to the NIL/portal world, it does not resolve widespread dissatisfaction, including:
- Exorbitant ticket prices (which may increase further to make up for lost revenue)
- Transportation to and from the stadium
- Inconvenient kickoff time
- Reorganization of the meeting
- Targeting
- Refereeing in general
- Long replay reviews/too many commercials
- End Zone Fade
- Clock Management
- Extra Time Format
- Coaches depart before the bowl game
- Too many bowl games
- Your team's recruiting ranking
- Quarterback Decision Making
- Lose to a rival
Considering we’ve endured all that and still continue to watch, it’s unlikely that running backs getting paid will be the final straw.
(Photo by David E. Cruso/Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)
