NCAA Historic Ruling

On October 29, 2019, the NCAA Board took a historic vote and passed a resolution allowing NCAA college athletes to earn compensation for their popularity and likeness. Over the past few months, the voices of current and former student-athletes, coaches, college presidents, and faculty from all over the NCAA grew louder expressing their desires to allow these student-athletes to be paid for their status. The state of California had already passed legislation saying athletes playing in the state would be paid through endorsement deals and are eligible to hire their own sports agents should they decide to go pro. There were other states that wanted to pass a similar law that Calofirnia passed, so it was only a matter of time before the NCAA fell in line with the other states.  

This is the beginning of many new regulations to come, because although the new law states that student-athletes will get paid for their popularity status, others are wondering, including Pittstop, if one these players should also be paid for their labor, and two, how much money will they get? The NCAA annually brings in close to a billion dollars in revenue each in college basketball and football. Only 65 schools out of 2,078 in the NCAA (less than 3%) were responsible for $7.6 billion in revenue in 2018. That’s more than half of all college sports revenue. College sports programs took in $14 billion in 2018 through ticket sales, television contracts, apparel deals, and merchandise sales. Don’t forget, all this money is coming at the expense of student-athletes going through several hours of training a day, and then going out and performing in front of thousands of people. How much money the NCAA makes depends on how popular some of these student-athletes are, and when these games are shown on ESPN and are nationally televised due to the popularity of these players, the NCAA’s three divisions must separately craft their own rules and detail the specifics as to how much these athletes are being paid. A great example of popularity gone to waste in terms of potential earnings is Zion Williamson, who while at Duke as a freshman, had over two million Instagram followers and more than 200k Twitter followers. His freakish athletic abilities and his highlight reel plays steal the show on Sportscenter, but he could not profit on his popularity, despite companies wanting to sign him to million-dollar endorsement deals. When Zion blew out his Nike shoe in a prime-time game versus North Carolina, more than four million people were watching, and after that game, Nike’s stock dropped significantly, which shows the popularity Zion possessed. 

I believe that all players should be paid no matter what their personal status is because they are putting long practice hours in every week, play in marquee collegiate games, and the schools they play for make money off their play. I think it is not fair that approximately $1,2 billion is spent annually on coaches' salaries to pay just 4,400 coaches, which averages out to be $273,000 a year per coach, and the players get no reimbursement for their skills. A lot of the money comes from sport revenue these student-athletes are generating. I hope that this law shows that the NCAA cares and are looking out for student-athletes under the NCAA system, and are not just going along with what other states are doing to avoid conflict.