Any lawyers here? Athletes now paid by universities. Title 9 implications analogous to scholarships?
If the schools will be paying $20M to football players, won't the women be demanding $20M for their sports?
How is direct payments to athletes different from athletic scholarships?
Replies to: Any lawyers here? Athletes now paid by universities. Title 9 implications analogous to scholarships?
If they become “employees” under Title VII, I think it is a bigger problem for them than Title IX.
There could be race claims within a team also.
IMHO It will force three things: (1) decision to be a "pro" school, (2) union, and (3) "equal pay".
To your question, there's been some noise in cases where a school (e.g., Oregon) has incurred costs to promote a player for the Heisman, and there hasn't been equal promotion for women's sports players. Provision of remediation is analogous, although there may be some mischief if it is structured as a revenue share as opposed to wage for work. I believe you can differentiate in certain elements of the operation of the sport based on the inherent costs and necessities of the sport (hence the likely need for a union), but technically you are supposed to provide ancillary benefits on a non-discriminatory basis.
So, in reality, I think there will be a union-negotiated base wage for participation, and then stars will be compensated extra outside of the ordinary compensation structure, and revenue sharing may be the X factor if they can get past the Title IX issue.. You can probably make an argument that FBALL and BBALL players should make more relative to say gymnasts on a pure base wage basis (think scholarships for those sports versus others), since there's a professional league and a ready made market for their skills.
Anyway, this all strikes me as kabuki theater. In 10 years, there will be licensed college pro teams. I don't see how these kids can be students and athletes anymore.
Thanks for the legal details. The union idea with here and gone players, how would that work?
Know I'm getting ahead of myself, but it's seems that here today and gone tomorrow
players would be better off as free agent contractors. It's the colleges that want a
union to cap player salaries. Why should the players agree?
From what I've seen, college players moving around doesn't work all that well for the players
But, I think players will trade some degree of flexibility for regulated contractual rights, plus the contract call allow more free agency within the system than the NFL.
You could allow a lower league minimum for players that transfer, as an example. The colleges will eventually want it because it will assist in managing the players. They think they can do it right now, but with the payment rules, there will be too much variability in costs, and they'd prefer a known cost structure.
Will the collectives go away or will they be the X factor going forward
on whether a player goes to Oregon vs Washington
No different than advertising contracts. I think they stay but are somewhat regulated
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Ive heard that at places like Ohio State and Tennessee
the athletes don't attend classes anymore, they've been taking all their classes online even prior to covid
So maybe that gets watered down even more and they are apart of some certificate program so they cal focus on being pros
I have a friend whose son plays at SCUM and he's said same, along with roids being prevalent. It's a
pro sport now. Sure, some kids are still focusing on being a traditional student athlete, but at the gladiator academies, not so much.
Are the schools directly paying them? I thought it was the collectives
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The colleges now are starting direct payments. That's why head coaches are miserable.
They have to play GM with player salaries as well as coach.
Hence the rise of the GM position at colleges
I hate it, but this is the world we live in now.
Bama brought on Kalen DeBoer's 'GM' from Washington and is paying him $800K / year.
ND has a GM
I haven't been impressed thus far.
Interesting I was thinking that the collectives was how they were going to get around Title 9, like
all athletic scholarships would go away and the athletes would pay their own tuition from the money they get from the collectives, that way only the money making sports would get funded by the collectives