By: Samantha Weideman & Jay Bridgeman
The National Collegiate Athletic Association board of directors voted unanimously Oct. 29 to allow student athletes to profit from the use of their names and likenesses.
The NCAA has been at this juncture before, in 2015.
That year, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken ruled in favor of Ed O’Bannon and 19 others in a lawsuit against the NCAA that players should be compensated for their likenesses, adding that it ‘violated antitrust laws’ to block them from receiving said compensation.
Earlier this year, Wilken ruled that the NCAA could not place a ceiling on compensation for education in Division I men’s or women’s basketball or Bowl Subdivision football, but that the association could “continue… to limit compensation and benefits that are unrelated to education.”
After the NCAA and a number of schools filed an appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit of Appeals, the ruling was overturned, and the NCAA took no action.
NCAA: Lacking judgement?
NCAA officials say they want to keep a balance between compensating their athletes and avoiding the effects of corruption, but a lack of oversight in the last two decades has indicated that the NCAA lacks judgement on what’s best for its players.
Most recently, in 2015, two former football players for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill sued the NCAA and the university, alleging the association deprived them and other players of a “meaningful education,” guiding student athletes from 1989-2011 to take “paper classes,” which lacked educational value, and put their futures at risk. The suit claimed the NCAA knew of the academic fraud and turned the other way.
To look the other way for decades when student athletes–who typically attend college to further their educations–are not being adequately prepared to start their own careers is grossly negligent and points only to the NCAA’s prioritization of making money.
A money-making factory for those in charge
The stark contrast between compensation of commissioners and coaches versus college athletes indicates that NCAA officials make money their top priority.
Currently, scholarship student-athletes are given anywhere between $2,000 and $5,000 stipends, or up to $10,000 a school year. For those that commit 40 hours per week—the equivalent of working a full-time job– to their sports, this breaks down to $7.50 an hour, or around the federal minimum wage.
Compare that with commissioners, who get paid an average of $1.5 million per year.
NBC Sports reported in May that Jim Delany, The Big Ten’s commissioner, got paid $5.5 million in the 2017-18 tax year.
Coaches are paid around the same amount.
Currently, Scott Frost is the highest-paid coach in the history of Nebraska football with a seven-year, $35 million contract. That breaks down to $5 million per year.
Even the lowest-paid coaches in college football are making six figures. This year, Nick Rolovich at Hawaii and Tony Sanchez at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas were paid $600k.
Only time will tell if the NCAA will adequately compensate student athletes for their images and likenesses.
