Pearl River The powerhouse NCAA signed an eight-year TV deal for $115 million per year, just short of a billion dollars over term, with ESPN to broadcast forty Division 1 championships in men’s and women’s sports. At the same time, the College Football Playoffs, another NCAA operation, signed a deal with ESPN for six-years for $7.8 billion. It’s impossible not to see that as big bucks.
Many of us might think that this kind of huge haul would make this outfit somewhat generous to the athletes on whose backs and dreams they have built this cash machine. Of course, you would be wrong, if you thought that. Having settled a class action suit recently, they agreed to put up $20 million that they would pass on to Division 1 schools to share with their players in some kind of way. Having lost another suit in recent years, triggered by a former UCLA basketball player, they were no longer able to block players from benefiting from their own name, likeness, and image. If you read the sports pages, you know that this has been huge and allowed some players, including women gymnasts, to make millions while still protecting their eligibility to participate in college athletics. None of us need to worry about Caitlin Clark starving to death, but these huge changes in sports economics were behind the speculation that Clark would lose money by turning pro compared to what she was making on the side as a star in Iowa. Needless to say, despite her relatively paltry paycheck as a rookie pro, she’s still making bank on endorsements and the like.
In short, the NCAA continues to lose every battle as it hides behind the fiction in big time athletics with gazillion dollar media deals that the players they’re exploiting are really and truly student-athletes. The latest outrage for all of us and setback for them has come from the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Philadelphia, which was hearing a class action suit brought by a Villanova football player and a dozen others. They argued that since they were required to practice twenty-hours per week and that practices took precedence over their classes and choices of a major, they should be compensated and at least be paid minimum wage under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. The court essentially said, “that sounds right to us.” In a coup de gras the three-judge panel rejected the NCAA arguments saying, “Like ‘band-aid’ or ‘laundromat,’ ‘student-athlete’ is essentially a brand name that has become synonymous with its product. As scholars have noted, the term is an NCAA marketing invention.” Bam, drop the mic, that one has to hurt!
In their continued recalcitrance, they whine that they are concerned about the little sports in Division 1. What are they saying, they can’t pay minimum wage to some golfers or volleyball players? We’re not even talking about paying them what they are worth or compensating them when, and if, they sustain lifetime injuries and afflictions playing for the university. We’re talking about the minimum wage and simple benefits that all workers should expect.
The NCAA ought to be ashamed, but they aren’t. They are fighting a rearguard action that they can’t win, only because ESPN is paying them so much money that they can afford the lawyers. The players need to think about some other tactics and strategy rather than letting this drag out in the courts for more years.