Congratulations to the NCAA and welcome to the 21st Century.
After more than 100 years of exploiting the talents of young men and women, the NCAA Board of Governors announced Wednesday its support in allowing student-athletes to be paid for endorsements deals, which would be implemented by January 2021.
The rules will prohibit schools from paying their players and specifies that student-athletes will be allowed to receive money only from outside businesses.
Was this news an attempt for the NCAA brand to save face after multiple top men’s basketball recruits chose to skip college in favor of $125,000 contracts with the NBA’s G League? Most likely.
But no matter the reason, it’s about time.
According to ESPN, the NCAA topped $1 billion in revenue for the first time in the 2016-17 academic year. Excluding scholarships, student-athletes received none of that money.
In recent years, the debate about paying college athletes has gained momentum in the sports world. It eventually turned from whether they should be paid, which was a resounding yes, to how they should be paid.
It doesn’t take an economics degree to understand why all NCAA athletes shouldn’t just be given a salary. It’s simple: small sports programs, such as golf, don’t rake in the same amount of money as football.
That’s why the NCAA’s conclusion makes sense. Let the market dictate disbursement.
And the market is about to significantly alter the on-field product.
College sports are regional. Travel to a college town in rural America and almost everyone within city limits is repping the
local school.
The businesses in those towns are going to sponsor student-athletes. It might not be much, but they’ll pay.
Numerous five-star high school basketball recruits already choose to skip school for smaller professional leagues in other countries, which shows that having a source of income is still the most important thing to student-athletes and their families.
It’s just another angle coaches get to pitch while recruiting – “X business by campus has a history of paying our quarterbacks Y dollars. Want to be our new quarterback?”
Now, wealthy markets with few professional sports teams will prosper. Schools such as Boise State University and Brigham Young University will be big beneficiaries of these new rules. College towns are crazy about their programs because they don’t have a professional team to support.
It’s schools like San Jose State that are stuck in a gray area. The Bay Area is already saturated with professional teams in all five major sports leagues and the Spartans don’t exactly have a
huge fanbase.
Outside of football, baseball and basketball, the effects will be minimal. Unless you’re an Olympic gold medalist like former-Stanford University swimmer Katie Ledecky, you’re probably not cashing in on endorsements.
It’s OK if not everybody is making money. The positive thing is that the NCAA is no longer taking money out of the hands of its student-athletes, or should I say, employees.
