It sounds like the Supreme Court is about to bust the NCAA’s [b]racket | Opinion
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The worst development for the NCAA isn’t its gender equity flub but that the quietest member of the U.S. Supreme Court spoke loud and clear against the “amateur” organization.
Justice Clarence Thomas makes it a point not to speak during arguments in our nation’s highest court, but he is making multiple exceptions on this matter.
On Wednesday morning, the SCOTUS began to hear arguments in the Alston v. NCAA antitrust lawsuit, the case that could allow student athletes to be paid and essentially blow up the decades’ old model.
“As we have seen, the world has changed in sports and it could change dramatically again,” Thomas said.
He also said, “It strikes me as odd [college] coaches salaries have ballooned” while the players aren’t paid.
This is done.
When the most conservative justices speaks out against the NCAA, it’s panic time.
Between Thomas’ comments and those from fellow center-right justices, including John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh, it’s clear college sports needs to prepare for a world where its athlete students are going to be paid beyond the cost of room, board and tuition.
What the Supreme Court is hinting at is that a college education, which can now cost as much as $80,000 per year, isn’t equitable compensation for schools that generate hundreds of millions of dollars on the accomplishments of a select few.
“It does seem ... that schools are conspiring with competitors to pay no salaries to the workers who are making the schools billions of dollars on the theory that consumers want the schools to pay their workers nothing,” Kavanaugh said.
Nothing.
In theory, a student athlete’s compensation is a scholarship to cover a portion, to all, of the cost of a college education.
For the volleyball player at the University of Texas, who lives on campus, that’s $30,000 a year. The cost of attendance for an out-of-state student at Texas is about $60,000 a year.
Kavanaugh, and so many others, have fallen for the argument that the only student athletes who exist are football and men’s basketball players.
They missed out on the soccer, golf, rowing, track, softball, etc. players who comprise the majority of an athletic department because those players contribute virtually nothing to the school’s coffers.
Ultimately, this decision will have incalculable effects on smaller colleges and universities. Title IX lawyers will sue anyone they can find to ensure all student athletes be paid the same, which will be a disaster for athletic directors.
Nonetheless, all of higher education, and college sports, have earned this judgment day.
Universities and schools, and its accompanying athletic departments, hide behind a benevolent marketing message that they do not practice.
Their entire model is “it’s all about the kids,” when these are really nothing more than just businesses that are all about the cash.
Schools are labeled as bastions of liberalism when they operate more like a Best Buy.
When the leaders of these institutions, from athletic directors to college vice presidents, pay themselves high-six or seven-figure salaries, preaching altruism to protect, and enhance, the future of our children looks fraudulent.
Duke University charges about $78,000 a year for an incoming freshman. They will say it’s because of inflation, but it looks more like extortion.
“My opinion, and more importantly the opinions of the universities, the 1,100 schools that participate in college sports, is that student-athletes need to be students, not employees of the universities,” NCAA president Mark Emmert said Wednesday morning from the women’s Final Four in San Antonio. “The relationship between a university and a college athlete needs to be one of university and student, not employer and employee.”
Ideally, Emmert is correct. And in 1975, it worked, too.
By 1985, however, when college athletics’ marriage with TV was solid, the model began to rapidly age as the money poured in and made all of the leaders look like hypocrites.
It’s 2021, and like any 100-year-old business model, the NCAA’s is outdated. The same can be said for all of higher education.
One Supreme Court justice said compensation in the form of room, books and tuition is basically nothing. Another justice, who is typically silent during arguments, actually politely scolded the NCAA for its model.
The NCAA held on to its amateur status as long as it could, but soon enough it will be forced to turn pro.
