Fixing the 'mess' that is college sports compensation | Opinion
Now that the college basketball season has ended with its March Madness extending into early April this year, for both men and women, the largest revenue-raising college sports are over for the year and the less lucrative and watched spring sports are in progress, including baseball, which has a strong foothold here in Florida. As the major seasons come to an end, college teams are throwing open transfer portals for basketball and football to welcome new players and watch as the flow of money goes to college athletes (and their agents) under the rubric of Name, Image & Likeness (NIL) and other related forms of compensation. President Trump, who has quite a bit on his plate these days, was spot-on in identifying the situation in college sports as a "mess" at a conclave he summoned to the White House last month of athletic movers and shakers, politicians, and other insiders and then pledged to come up with a "very encompassing" Executive Order that he declared would "solve all of the problems" attendant to what the new cliche refers to as the changed "landscape" of college sports.
He took a starting stride in that direction by forming five committees comprised of these high echelon personnel, including a few politicians, too, although regrettably devoid of any Democrats, and without any representation from athletes or their advocate, whom the President said he would add later. Their mission is to come up with proposed reforms to the untidy situation now, a monumental task while legislation percolates in Congress under the stewardship of Texas Senator Ted Cruz but whose chances of enactment are somewhere between slim and none, with heavy odds on the latter. Many culprits are responsible for creating this "mess," but the main blame lies with the U.
S. Supreme Court whose decision in June, 2021 in the case entitled Alston v. NCAA removed all restrictions that the college establishment had placed on student-athletes receiving outside compensation, a prohibition often honored more in the breach than in the observance with under-the-table payments and other surreptitious arrangements.
That unanimous ruling, joined into by members of both the conservative and liberal wings of the tribunal, heralded the beginning of NIL, which bred a subsequent settlement last year by the regulatory college authorities in a class action lawsuit brought by former players, known as House v. NCAA, which established a $2. 8 billion fund to pour into college coffers to pay athletes directly over a 10-year a period.
Combining the NIL money from outside sources paid directly to the athletes with the House money going to the institutions themselves to dole out to their athletes, these arrangements make it easier for players to cash in on multiple occasions as the prior restrictions sacrificing one year of eligibility when transferring between schools has been stripped, creating the portals through which players can willy-nilly change schools on an annual basis, negotiating for a larger NIL and House payments at each way station. This has created a veritable arms race within college sports, especially high-profile football and basketball. But the Alston decision that precipitated the "mess" of which the president spoke had fundamental flaws.
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