US Supreme court just hammered the last nail in the NCAA coffin

[vandy05]

The quote from Justice Kavanaugh is essentially the argument that I've been making for the longest time regarding this topic:

"Nowhere else in America can businesses get away with agreeing to not pay their workers a fair market rate on their theory that their product is defined by not paying their workers a fair market rate. The NCAA is not above the law."

How about major league baseball? First, once you are drafted, you have to negotiate with just one team. You can't pick who you want your employer to be. When they make you an offer, and you negotiate a little, in the end you have to take it or leave it. If you leave it, don't you have to wait another year before you can get $, unless you go to Japan or Mexico or wherever? And once you sign with a club, until you have the required length of service (and I forget now what that is) aren't you in the same boat -- sign with team X or sit out a year? All of this in the name of competitiveness. And things were much less "fair" for the player until Curt Flood came along.

That's collectively bargained by the union. But to be fair, there are some that don't love that system either and think that player should be able to choose where they play. I can see the merits to some of that, but I also think the compromise that has been struck in pro sports around free agency is a good one.

[vandy05]

Ok, so let assume this thing goes the way many fear, and there is a bidding war for the players. Lets look at football only here. I can see A&M, LSU, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and Tennessee jumping on the price war. The rest of the SEC will become has-beens. No top star will want to go to Missouri where there will be minimal pay and/or exposure. They will want to go to Alabama, where they will be on national TV weekly, will be paid big bucks, and will win weekly.
Meanwhile, QB Joe Average will play for a less than mediocre Missouri team that will win 3-4 OOC games and hope to beat one of the other SEC teams.
Now, you say that is pretty much the way it is now? Well the disparity will get worse and worse. The rich will get richer and the poor will not increase slightly, but indeed will get poorer and poorer until the universities will cease to make money even on the big sports. At that point, they will drop back to a lesser division.
This may take 6-10 years, but will happen.
To keep this from happening, the NCAA needs to step up and set out some guidelines (which even then may be challenged) to prevent the "big boys" from totally taking control of everything. And, sadly, I don't see them doing squat.

I still think the scholarship is the heavy in the room over the cash payments. There are stars all over the sport of college football, but they're concentrated in certain positions and teams. I can't rule it out, but I'm not necessarily sure that Bama being able to pay a kid more than Missouri is going to lead to a competitive disadvantage for Missouri vs. Bama. Mizzou is already losing that recruiting battle 98 times out of 100.

Now I do think that it makes sense for the NCAA to cap what can be offered. A rough example would be that each team gets to allocate $10,000 per year per full scholarship (which is still capped at 85 per year). But the schools won't want any part of that. Recruit two quarterbacks in a class? You have to figure out who gets $5,000 and who gets $15,000. Does the kid who got $15,000 get a leg up on starting? As I said above, I'm not in favor of direct cash payments. I don't think they're needed in order for the bargain to be fair to the students and on top of that they are a logistical nightmare.

[commadore]

Ok, so let assume this thing goes the way many fear, and there is a bidding war for the players. Lets look at football only here. I can see A&M, LSU, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and Tennessee jumping on the price war. The rest of the SEC will become has-beens. No top star will want to go to Missouri where there will be minimal pay and/or exposure. They will want to go to Alabama, where they will be on national TV weekly, will be paid big bucks, and will win weekly.
Meanwhile, QB Joe Average will play for a less than mediocre Missouri team that will win 3-4 OOC games and hope to beat one of the other SEC teams.
Now, you say that is pretty much the way it is now? Well the disparity will get worse and worse. The rich will get richer and the poor will not increase slightly, but indeed will get poorer and poorer until the universities will cease to make money even on the big sports. At that point, they will drop back to a lesser division.
This may take 6-10 years, but will happen.
To keep this from happening, the NCAA needs to step up and set out some guidelines (which even then may be challenged) to prevent the "big boys" from totally taking control of everything. And, sadly, I don't see them doing squat.

I still think the scholarship is the heavy in the room over the cash payments. There are stars all over the sport of college football, but they're concentrated in certain positions and teams. I can't rule it out, but I'm not necessarily sure that Bama being able to pay a kid more than Missouri is going to lead to a competitive disadvantage for Missouri vs. Bama. Mizzou is already losing that recruiting battle 98 times out of 100.

Now I do think that it makes sense for the NCAA to cap what can be offered. A rough example would be that each team gets to allocate $10,000 per year per full scholarship (which is still capped at 85 per year). But the schools won't want any part of that. Recruit two quarterbacks in a class? You have to figure out who gets $5,000 and who gets $15,000. Does the kid who got $15,000 get a leg up on starting? As I said above, I'm not in favor of direct cash payments. I don't think they're needed in order for the bargain to be fair to the students and on top of that they are a logistical nightmare.

And how does Title IX come into play.

[vandy05]

Ok, so let assume this thing goes the way many fear, and there is a bidding war for the players. Lets look at football only here. I can see A&M, LSU, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and Tennessee jumping on the price war. The rest of the SEC will become has-beens. No top star will want to go to Missouri where there will be minimal pay and/or exposure. They will want to go to Alabama, where they will be on national TV weekly, will be paid big bucks, and will win weekly.
Meanwhile, QB Joe Average will play for a less than mediocre Missouri team that will win 3-4 OOC games and hope to beat one of the other SEC teams.
Now, you say that is pretty much the way it is now? Well the disparity will get worse and worse. The rich will get richer and the poor will not increase slightly, but indeed will get poorer and poorer until the universities will cease to make money even on the big sports. At that point, they will drop back to a lesser division.
This may take 6-10 years, but will happen.
To keep this from happening, the NCAA needs to step up and set out some guidelines (which even then may be challenged) to prevent the "big boys" from totally taking control of everything. And, sadly, I don't see them doing squat.

I still think the scholarship is the heavy in the room over the cash payments. There are stars all over the sport of college football, but they're concentrated in certain positions and teams. I can't rule it out, but I'm not necessarily sure that Bama being able to pay a kid more than Missouri is going to lead to a competitive disadvantage for Missouri vs. Bama. Mizzou is already losing that recruiting battle 98 times out of 100.

Now I do think that it makes sense for the NCAA to cap what can be offered. A rough example would be that each team gets to allocate $10,000 per year per full scholarship (which is still capped at 85 per year). But the schools won't want any part of that. Recruit two quarterbacks in a class? You have to figure out who gets $5,000 and who gets $15,000. Does the kid who got $15,000 get a leg up on starting? As I said above, I'm not in favor of direct cash payments. I don't think they're needed in order for the bargain to be fair to the students and on top of that they are a logistical nightmare.

And how does Title IX come into play.

I'll preface my response with a few things. I don't want my main point be sidelined by the difficulty of a separate, but interesting discussion. NIL is the right thing to do and should have been in place a long time ago. by saying that I don't know. Second, I'm not advocating for cash payments to the players. This is all a hypothetical situation. Third, I don't have enough knowledge to stand firmly, but I can offer my opinion as it relates to Title IX.

My understanding is that Title IX mandates that the schools can't act in a discriminatory way. So that means they have to treat men's and women's sports the same. Assuming that a school is already in compliance with Title IX, cash payments allocated based on the number of scholarships would seem to be in compliance to me. Women's basketball gets 13 scholarships (I think), so in my example they would get $130,000 to allocate. Baseball gets 11.7 scholarships so they get $117,000 to allocate to its players. If women's bowling gets 2.5 scholarships then they get $25,000. So forth and so on. I don't think that part is that hard.

As for Title IX as it relates to NIL, I don't think there is any impact. The schools are not involved. If they do get involved then I would think that would be an NCAA violation.

[Golddore68]

1. Schools in small conferences like Conference USA definitely will be financially affected by this. Schools like MTSU won’t be able to afford this.

2. As far as the argument about what happens in baseball, what about the minor leagues? I have always wondered how minor league teams don’t get sued. They pay less than minimum wage to players. Minor leaguers have to work over 40 hours a week with training, practices and games, and they are paid only about $10,000-$15,000 a year, which is less than people working at McDonald’s would make.