NIL Policy and the Future of College Sports
(Keith Srakocic / Associated Press)
Change is coming to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), and it’s coming soon. For too long, the NCAA has operated under a restrictive model of amateurism for its student-athletes. Under this model, the only compensation that a student-athlete can receive is an athletic scholarship, in addition to secondary aid such as tutoring, medical services, or equipment. But when student-athletes fill out their clearance forms prior to the start of every new school year, they sign away something crucial: control over their Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL). They forfeit control over how they are presented for marketing purposes, or otherwise, and lose the right to endorse or support anything that they, as a result of their athletic achievements, might wish to. This issue has been simmering below the surface for years now, and it is now coming to a boil.
I should be clear: I am a student-athlete. I run cross country and track and field at UC Davis. I receive zero athletic aid, and frankly I haven’t done anything to deserve any. I have loved my time getting to represent my university, and I view it as a privilege and a lot of fun. Furthermore, I believe that the athletic department at UC Davis is run very well and is quite supportive of its student-athletes. I think they truly understand that our athletes have more on their plates than just practice and want us to do well in everything we do.
How can I be so strongly opposed to the NCAA and still enjoy my time as a student-athlete? One great positive for my athletic experience has been my team’s relatively meager practice time compared to other teams. When a team is in season, which, as a distance runner, I always am, the NCAA allows 20 countable hours of mandatory team activities a week, such as practice or watching film. I only have five practices, plus two weights sessions, for a total of 12 hours per week. Running is a sport with a definite upper limit on training volume, which limits the amount of practice time that can be held. Furthermore, it is a highly autonomous sport, so on each of those two days off per week, every person on the team will still be training, just individually.
Many other teams will reach that 20 hour limit weekly. This amount does not include time that an athlete might spend in the training room receiving medical help or hosting a recruit. Nearly all activity initiated by a student-athlete themself is excluded, too. As a result of these “voluntary” activities, the time that many student athletes spend per week ends up comfortably above the 20 hours of countable activity.
This time spent per week on athletics cuts significantly into the time available for student athletes to spend on school. While I am unaware of any survey data, anecdotal evidence and common knowledge abounds of athletes who are pushed into easier majors or forced to wait to take necessary classes because of the need to manage both competing and school. In Division 1 basketball programs, teams will typically be on the road once a week for away games, with another game at home during the same week. Basketball programs play about 30 games a season, which makes the typical 12 game schedules of football teams seem small, and pales in comparison to the 50 or so games played a season by baseball and softball teams. My team will have roughly 12-15 competitions total between both seasons, although that is below the average for my sport. Traveling to competitions also means student-athletes have to miss class and make arrangements with their professors to ensure that they do not fall behind, not all of whom are particularly accommodating.
What is the point of these competitions, anyway? At their root, they exist to produce revenue, and the largest sports programs generate huge amounts. Clemson University’s football team, one of the dominant teams in the country, generated $53.9 million in revenue during the 2017-18 school year. Their head coach, Dabo Swinney, was scheduled to make $8.25 million this past year before taking a COVID-19 paycut to “only” $7.56 million. Meanwhile, Clemson’s strength coach made $600,000 in 2019. And yet, because of NIL restrictions, players were not able to earn a portion of the economic windfall directly created by their labor. Instead, they were given an incredibly gaudy facility with the following amenities: a basketball court, a putting green, a putt putt course, a wiffle ball field with artificial turf, a beach volleyball court, a horseshoe ring, two pool tables, two ping pong tables, a bowling alley, an indoor slide and more! Even the worst teams haul in tens of millions of dollars. In 2014, the University of Kansas football team, one of the most futile programs in the country, brought in a still substantial $23.1 million in revenue, despite a season record of 3-9. And yet, despite all the student-athlete generated money flowing into athletic departments, athletes get ruled ineligible if they try to use their status to promote themselves. The most egregious example is of University of Central Florida kicker Donald De La Hoya, who was ruled ineligible for monetizing his YouTube channel in 2017. Given the choice between continuing his YouTube channel and continuing to compete in the NCAA, he chose his channel and forfeited his scholarship. giving up his scholarship in the process.
Each university has a small handful of sports that they make money off of. These sports always include football and men’s basketball, but depending on the university they can also include an assortment of others, especially women’s basketball, baseball and men’s hockey. The labor value of athletes is systematically undervalued. To do some rough math: The estimated cost of attendance for an out of state student at Clemson is $55,872. An NCAA football team has roughly 110 members, 85 of whom receive full athletic scholarships under NCAA rules, otherwise a rarity in many other sports. With quick multiplication we see that the amount spent by Clemson on scholarships for their football team is a little bit under $5 million. This is well under what the valuation of the players’ contribution would actually be in a non-biased environment, even taking into account the value of the aforementioned forms of aid. Just a few weeks ago, Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence was the first overall pick in the NFL draft. His new contract? $36.59 million for four years, plus a $24 million signing bonus. Not every Clemson player is athletically worth that sum, but the gaping discrepancy between Lawrence’s contract and the cost of his athletic scholarship clearly shows the huge discount Clemson received for his labor.
And yet, the same Clemson that has a football facility complete with a wiffle ball field attempted to cut men’s track and field and cross country last year during the COVID-19 pandemic. The official reasons? Lack of funds for the programs, despite the swanky new facility, and Title IX excuses. The same has happened throughout the country over the past year, with universities using revenue shortfalls as a result of COVID-19 to cut sports instead of owning up to previous financial mismanagement. Administrators make mistakes and student athletes pay the price.
In the summer of 2020, the University of Minnesota attempted to cut its men’s track and field programs. The athletic director stated that the athletic department did not have the funding, despite the completion of a new track stadium in 2018. The outdoor track program was reinstated, but indoor track still fell by the wayside. Stanford University cut 11 teams last summer, all of which were Olympic sports, while Brown University also cut a handful of Olympic sports, including the men’s cross country team. Brown eventually reinstated the men’s cross country team as a result of a public protest campaign, setting a precedent that has been emulated a handful of times since then. Clemson recently reinstated their men’s cross country and track and field teams as a result of a two-pronged legal attack on the athletic department by the teams. On the one hand, the men’s program argued that Clemson was violating their rights under Title IX, the federal statute mandating equal educational opportunities per gender. They argued that by cutting their program the university allocated fewer athletic roster spots to men than required by the legislation, which mandates the gender ratio of athletes to be nearly identical to the gender ratio of the student body at large. Meanwhile, the women’s team, which did not get cut, threatened to file suit in conjunction with women’s rowing. They laid out a damning case, showing that Clemson spent only 39 percent of athletic aid on women’s teams despite the 50-50 gender split of the student body, and that only 17 percent of recruiting spending went to women’s teams.
On the one hand, it is true: Football teams and big programs are revenue generators for athletic departments and often help to cover some of the operating costs of other programs. However, college sports are not only about the money. The NCAA declares itself to be a nonprofit governing over amateur athletes who are heirs to a mythologized past of the gentleman athlete. And yet, money is used as an excuse to cut student-athlete opportunities, even though athletes are not at fault for mismanaging the funds of athletic departments.
This leads to a two part undervaluation of student-athletes by administrators and the NCAA. The labor of student-athletes in revenue generating programs is undervalued and only partially remunerated, with the NCAA only focusing upon the value these athletes can produce while ignoring the athletes themselves. While I think that wages would spell the death knell of the NCAA, incoming changes to NIL, which will take effect this summer, will likely allow student-athletes to sign endorsement deals and take greater control of their economic value. They should be able to recoup a large portion of their lost value if they leverage their status and potential value effectively. Meanwhile, athletes in sports such as cross country or swimming are seen as expendable and are always at risk of being cut if an athletic department’s finances take a turn for the worse. Men’s sports are particularly at risk of cancelation, due to the swollen rosters of football teams. Title IX is all too often used to cut men’s athletic opportunities at the college level instead of living up to its intent, the addition of women’s teams. A few years ago, UC Davis chose to add women’s equestrian and beach volleyball, the 24th and 25th sport the university sponsors, in response to gender ratio pressures. If instead they had chosen to cut a men’s program, my team very likely would have been the team to go.
College sports are worthy of protection. American society is so focused on money that it ignores the myriad positive effects of these programs. This is part of a much broader trend across the country since the Great Recession, as arts and music programs are cut in elementary and secondary schools while austerity policies and shrinking public expenditures on education make culturally valuable educational opportunities and programs seem expendable. The impact of these programs on people cannot be reduced to a dollar amount. But college athletics programs are not only positive: negative effects exist too, such as over-focusing on athletics at the expense of classwork and setting oneself up for life after college. We must allow student-athletes to profit from their skills and marketability, an opportunity that is not denied other college students with exceptional and marketable abilities. But we must also ensure that they are not reduced to the amount of revenue that they each contribute to the athletic department’s coffers. It will require a cultural shift within departments and the NCAA, but that cultural shift will be forced onto the NCAA over the course of the next few months. The NCAA is a deeply flawed institution, but the funding of athletic programs is a worthy endeavor. We all enjoy watching March Madness and cheering on our football teams in the fall. But let’s not forget that the people onscreen are real people, with real lives and worries outside of the TV screen. Properly valuing student-athletes, a group long exploited while being criticized for speaking out against that exploitation, may seem like a piddling concern in 2021. But its relative importance doesn’t mean it should be ignored. Instead, it's a small step on the way to a more just society.