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Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

The NCAA has an interesting choice to make here.

Option 1, they remove the California teams from the NCAA. The Power 5 have been talking about a "division 0" league for a long time. Chances are that would push them all to leave the NCAA and create their own organization.

Option 2, allow California to be the exception. This would be great for California, because if you're a top high school athlete, would you rather play in California where you could potentially make millions, or anywhere else? Presumably a bunch of other states would pass similar laws and demand the same exception, until the NCAA was forced to allow paid players everywhere.

Or Option 3, just change the NCAA rules to match California, and let players get paid.

If sounds like the only winning move here is for the NCAA to allow paying players. I think California just forced their hand.

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>Or Option 3, just change the NCAA rules to match California, and let players get paid.

It needs to be pointed out that this law doesn't allow schools to pay players directly. There probably isn't enough money for that without totally restructuring athletic departments around the country (a football team like USC is wildly profitable, but most of that profit goes to pay for unprofitable teams like swimming, volleyball, etc). Paying players directly also has a number of Title IX repercussions that would likely need to be ironed out in court.

This law instead allows the players a way to make money for themselves based off their participation in sports. That simply frees athletes up in the same way that non-athletes are unrestricted from how they can earn money while in school. No actor is going to be kicked out of their school's theater program because they got $200 for acting in a local car commercial. Now the football player won't either.

Is there a meaningful difference between a school paying players with booster-provided money and a company doing so?

EDIT: To clarify, I mean a "practical" difference whether a booster gives money to a school to pay players or gives it to a company to do so. The payer matters to law, not to the paid nor to the practical result.

One is an employee, the other is basically an influencer?

In terms of title IX repercussions, there very much is.

I was a bit too succinct and therefore unclear. To rephrase, is there any meaningful difference between a booster paying players via the university or a booster taking their money to pay a player and doing it via a company instead? I understand the legal ramifications of who the payer is seen as, I am talking about the practical ramifications and whether a school having a player that is paid by a company rooting for the school (and with monies from same pockets) is meaningfully different. I'd say not.

The practical difference is that title IX means that universities have to provide equal opportunity for male and female students. If a donor wants the university to pay male athletes $1 from his pocket per athlete, he would have to donate $2 per athlete, since there needs to be equal opportunity for males and females. Currently that manifested itself in equal scholarships, but if the law changes, I would assume it would end up mandating equal $$

You will have Title IX problems as soon as the school is directly involved paying players. No school receiving federal funds can provide a benefit to its male football players that it doesn't also provide its female field hockey players.

Personally, I also feel that boosters have too much direct involvement in athletic departments as is. Removing the school from the booster-player relationship and bringing booster payment to players out from under the table could potentially help clean up some of the corruption in college sports.

Of course - think about schools with deep pockets compared to those without much; top talent will flock to these, leaving smaller/less wealthy schools. Today athletes weigh a lot of factors when choosing where to attend - academics, athletic program, campus life, etc. If this becomes the norm I suspect we'll see clusters of high talent in "rich" schools. I don't think that will be good for the long run.

That already happens now. See Ole Miss: https://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2017/2/23/14704892...

How do the military academies get around the "no direct payment" rule? AFAIK, all their students (athletes included) are salaried members of the armed services. For a Navy football players, it's literally part of their job description to go to practice and show up on Saturdays.

How is that different than a scholarship paying room/board/tuition for athletes?

Because in addition to room/board/tuition, those at military academies are also paid a salary. It's above and beyond cost of schooling, and goes directly to the students instead of to defray education costs. I think that's the "direct" part of "no direct pay".

You are not paid a salary while in a military academy, you are given a stipend from which they deduct food, board, and other costs.

jkeuhlen covered it.

Students at the military academies are both on full scholarship (tuition and board paid by the taxpayers) and salaried. After required [non-academic] expenses (uniforms, laundry, etc) the "take home" is tiny. But, that doesn't negate the fact that they are salaried employees of the US government.

And, just to be clear, I'm in no way arguing students at the service academies are over-paid, or shouldn't be paid, or anything like that. I'm just curious if they have an explicit exemption from the NCAA, or if the NCAA isn't following it's own rules.

I know for the Naval Academy, you don't get the salary. Even if you were previous enlisted you are no longer paid your salary, though I believe the 4 years in the academy count towards retirement.

That's not true.[1] After expenses, the "take-home" is minuscule, but they are still salaried members of the armed services.

1 - https://www.usna.edu/Admissions/Student-Life/General-Informa...

It is a stipend, and stipends are allowed by the NCAA. The handbook in your link calls it a stipend. Since there is a hard cap on how much cash you can actually take from your "pay", I would call it a stipend.

Is USC's football program wildly profitable? The Washington Post published a great investigative piece in 2015 showing how most big football programs are in the red: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/sports/wp/2015/11/23/runni...

"Profit" just isn't really the right concept here. They pay their coach $3.2 million every year. In 62% of US states, the highest paid public employee is a football coach. In another 16% it's a basketball coach. Regardless of whether they return some of their windfall to the endowment, they're raking in cash.

Hollywood movies often show a loss after the studio deducts all the expensive things they bought themselves. Everybody with points against net gets nothing, but the studio still does just fine.

I think profit is the right concept. People see the massive spending of these programs, and even if it strikes them as extravagant, they also see the massive revenue of these programs. I think most discussions around this issue take as an assumption that the revenues covers the spending. I think a common way of thinking is "Yeah, it's pretty ludicrous for our university to spend that much money on the football program, but they make it all back, so it's a wash." But it usually doesn't. That's important, and I think would change how people considered the programs if this fact was more widely considered.

I don't think Hollywood movies are a good comparison. The studios will play accounting tricks by setting up shell companies for the purposes of screwing over the people who actually made the movie [1]. That's just pushing paper around, though: if the movies makes more than the studio spent, they turned a profit. Universities aren't doing that; many of their football programs are actual money losers, and they get that money from student tuition or the state if it's a public university.

[1] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121018/01054720744/holly...

The football programs are mostly non-profits, same with the NCAA. So no, profit, at least for the major programs, is not a concern. The programs receive millions from multiple sources that are spent on staff, coaches and other sports that need to be spent (Universities are not supposed to be profit making institutions). While the athletes that are generating the revenue through their performance every Saturday are paid with scholarships and money for room and board (can't be more than $60k or $70k a year - assumption here). Works out great for the coaches and administrators, not so great for the athletes. It is also not in the NCAA, college administrators, boosters or coaches interest to have the current setup change. Why mess with a good thing. No competition for player salaries leaves more in the coffers to pay the coaches.

> The football programs are mostly non-profits, same with the NCAA. So no, profit, at least for the major programs, is not a concern.

Non-profit doesn't mean “doesn’t earn profits” or “doesn’t prioritize profit”, but “doesn’t return profits to investors”.

We can agree that profit is gross revenue minus expenses, correct? Non-profits are focused on maximizing the revenue, but not on the profit for the exact reason you stated, there are no share holders or investors that need to be paid dividends, etc. The non-profit is incentivized to put the net revenue back into the organization. This can be in the form of staff salaries, facilities, other programs in the university. The "profit" portion in a given year means they are just carrying over the revenue for future operations or to stash in a fund. It should not be used in a argument for the "major" universities or top performing programs as to whether or not they should play the players. Revenues are not an issue in those cases. Don't cry to me (universities) that you don't have the money to pay student athletes when your university made over $100+ million dollars in a year and you "barely made a profit" as a non-profit organization.

I can't find the original HBO Real Sports link, but they go into depth about the Non-profit status and the way the funding is spent. It is a real eye opener and made me rethink how the argument that profit/revenue should be considered when dealing with the larger organizations.

Below are references, but not only highlights.

https://www.hbo.com/documentaries/student-athlete

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK5BmWP1y98

> The "profit" portion in a given year means they are just carrying over the revenue for future operations or to stash in a fund. It should not be used in a argument for the "major" universities or top performing programs as to whether or not they should play the players.

Why not? The economic value of work to the entity for which it is performed is a significant factor in the criteria under which the law now requires other formerly unpaid, often student, workers such as many interns to be paid, even when their employer is a nonprofit. Why should athletes be treated worse?

In Mexico, there is a simpler option: universities affiliated with professional teams. Tigres UANL and UNAM Pumas in Liga MX are examples. Leones Negros UdeG in the Ascenso.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigres_UANL

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_Universidad_Nacional

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leones_Negros_UdeG

University teams in the US have a storied history. The University of Alabama isn't going to shutdown Crimson Tide so that they can work with out of state NFL teams.

I'd bet the Crimson Tide is likely even worth a bit more than some low level NFL teams.

According to a recent Forbes article, the least valuable NFL team is worth over $2B.

> The Crimson Tide's football program reported $103.9 million in revenue for 2016 and posted a $47 million profit. That's up 3.6% from last year.

According to a CNN Money article.

The least valuable NFL team had profits of $126M on revenue of over $400m.

So I suspect the answer is a strong "no", but they're at least in the same zipcode if not the same ballpark.

The least valuable NFL team - the Bills - had $86m in operating income.[1] Net profit would be lower.

The Cleveland Browns only had $32m in operating income, coming in as the 5th least valuable team. The Oakland Raiders were the 12th most valuable, with $28m in operating income (of course their value is high due to other factors).

Seems plausible that Alabama's program is worth over a billion dollars solidly. The value boost of being in the NFL is obviously what really separates the situations, regardless of comparable incomes.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/teams/buffalo-bills/?list=nfl-valuati...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikeozanian/2019/09/04/the-nfls...

Does that include sales of things like generic UofA apparel and stickers? There's a great deal of UofA 'stuff' that isn't labeled football.

For reference, and take all these numbers with a grain of salt (plus, I have no real idea how to value a business), the University of Alabama's athletics department revenue was $175M in 2015-16 [0]; the Buffalo Bills (per Forbes the least valuable NFL team) have a revenue of $386M [1], so more than double Bama.

[0] https://www.al.com/alabamafootball/2018/01/alabama_athletics... [1] https://www.forbes.com/nfl-valuations/list/#tab:overall

If most teams allow players to be paid, and Alabama doesn't want to play those teams, their position in the market will plummet. If you don't think that can happen, review the Nebraska Cornhuskers' history.

In futbol teams make money via transfer fees when players under contract move on to bigger clubs. Currently, when a player at Alabama goes to the NFL, Alabama does not recover any of its costs associated with the player's recruitment, development, and maintenance. Part of the reason the NFL is so profitable is that youth development is subsidized by parents, then (often public) middle and high schools, and finally (often public) colleges and universities.

Alabama had 56 players on NFL rosters at the start of the season. https://www.al.com/sports/2019/09/alabama-leads-colleges-in-...

U of A can simply spin out Crimson Tide as a professional team. Or license the name to someone who wants to run a professional team.

the worst argument I've heard from skeptics associated with the NCAA is "THE COLLEGE PLAYERS ARE ALREADY PAID!". As if forcing young student athletes who are often from very low income families to resort to illegal bribes is a better solution than regulated endorsements for something they're absolutely entitled to.

They're paid with a free education. That doesn't balance out the inequity of profits made off their labor but it isn't nothing.

Yes and no. Some, not all, are given full or partial scholarships. And of those that are given full scholarships, many have a very difficult time balancing their studies and their athletics. Athletes are generally limited in which majors they can choose due to study time requirements and class, practice time conflicts.

I once inadvertently enrolled in a "business calculus" class that was apparently hand selected by the football coaches. Almost the entire class was the football team. We barely got through the first 5 chapters of the book and that was the easiest A I ever got.

So while the free education and room and board have some value, they don't have nearly as much as people think. I have known student athletes that quit playing and got a full time job just so they could afford to pay their own way and have time for classes.

The average cost of 1 year of University is approx. 35k a year for private colleges according to collegedata.com. The average salary of 1 first year NBA player is 3 million. The lowest paid NBA player makes approx 500k. That doesn't sound like a "free" education to me. Players would be better off going straight to the NBA and going to college later, if they were still inclined.

Or forgoing college and play professionally in another country.

a tiny tiny sliver of college athletes will play professionally,

a good way to think about it, is that college athletics is sort of communist society in action where the future professionals athletes subsidize benefits for the athletes that won't be future professionals.

Relative to most minor league athletes or aspiring Olympians,

35K isn't a bad salary.

The NBA tries to educate college players or prospects to focus on their education as much as possible. I think the numbers are that even if you're a Div 1 college player, you only have a 6% chance of being drafted to the NBA.

yeah, so why wouldn't you try joining the NBA first, then go to college to actually study when you don't get in?

In theory they get a free education, but in reality the huge majority of a student-athlete's focus is on sports (at least football and basketball). Just look at the majors for athletes on the teams - almost never anything too difficult.

There are also plenty of examples of "classes" that athletes have taken in the news, i.e. University of North Carolina, and more

If they aren't interested in academics they don't belong in college.

but if college ball is the path to the pros... look at Basketball and Football vs. Hockey. Hockey has a well established Junior/Major Junior feeder system. NBA/NFL benefit from an unpaid sorting mechanism via the NCAA.

It isn't college's responsibility to serve as a farm league for professional sports. Particularly those with money to fund their own.

This is backwards. The system is set up to make it impossible for players to both be successful students and successful athletes -- they're expected to spend most of their time on sport. That that's the case is absurd, but placing the onus on the students to rectify the situation bizarre; they have the least power of anyone involved. The onus should be on the schools.

Universities' principal missions should be pedagogy and research. If college sports as they now exist require hampering students' ability to learn (or, I suppose, do research), having those sports teams and operating them the way they do is in conflict with what should be their mission, and they should stop having sports teams.

The NCAA is a cartel. The absurdity is that Congress won't do anything about it. Of course that would irreparably damage football and the extra four years professional wannabes need to bulk up on HGH and whatever steroids they can sneak past the test regime.

We have an interesting societal conundrum here. Student athletes are below college material for specific sports (college football being a great example). If we do not allow the footballers in, then they would not be at the college, however, by allowing these sub par students into the college based on a need from the college, they are effectively subsidizing their educational capabilities to maintain NCAA eligibility (athletes at colleges have a different support system than us “normies.” With dedicated staff for tutoring, transportation, food, and housing). There can be a case made for the NCAA paying out more than living wages to these athletes while they are there.

What will be fun is to figure out how California is going to implement this wild hared idea if the sport is not profitable: looking at you water polo. The athletes are playing and doing similar workout regimens as the football, yet no pay... what do you do with this. What about Title IX discrimination when the men’s football gets monies while the ladies do not.

> What will be fun is to figure out how California is going to implement this wild hared idea if the sport is not profitable

The law does not require the sport to pay anything more, this removes the "you may not use your own likeness" rule as being bad for the players.

The new change does not apply to anything they do on-field and it only starts in 2023, so it will definitely change decisions for college admissions.

This does not add any significant burden to the sport organizers, except they lost their captive monopoly on the athletes appearing in a commercial.

Right to negotiate for yourself is a big one.

NCAA college athletes are paid in completely allowable ways. They just aren't paid based on the value they generate for the school.

When I was in school all the scholarship athletes had food, clothing, and housing stipends that were considerably more than they needed for any of those three things. Not to mention that the free education they receive.

I understand that the "education" most top tier football players receive isn't quite the same as the other students (football is a full time job). I just don't know how you can start paying players without causing some really sweeping side-effects that change the reason that so many people love college football.

With the proper regulation, I suppose you could probably give the players money that they deserve, while still keeping some of that amateur sports magic. Hopefully it doesn't evolve into the pre-NFL where only schools with money have football teams.

I'm also a little interested what could happen with Title IX. As far as I know, all athletes in a school have to get the same benefits and if you start paying college football players (the only ones that typically make any money for the school) what do you do about the girls on the gymnastics team or the guys on the lacrosse team?

I knew some athletes at OSU. They get lots of free stuff, like backpacks, ipads, etc.

If players are getting paid they should also be disqualified from receiving scholarships and ALL the other "free" benefits student athletes receive, while still maintaining academic progress. No more free "tutors," athlete-only[0] meal-plans and dining halls, and even access to trainers, PT's, etc.

Are top performing student-athletes being exploited? Maybe, but people seriously underestimate the value of benefits they receive on campus beyond scholarship amount. And there need to be substantial consequences for both students and universities if athletes fail to graduate.

[0] These dining halls might technically be open to all students, but non-athletes have to pay steakhouse prices for slightly better cafeteria food, while athletes eat for free. These are the ways universities get around NCAA rules today.

The amount of benefits is miniscule relative to the value they are generating and their true market value. Further, the biggest benefit, free college, effectively doesn't count because no one in a competitive program has the time to major in anything that would plausibly provide a good job right after graduation. It is a big story whenever a football player graduates with a STEM degree given how hard it is from a time management perspective (or at least this used to be very rare iirc). Also if we are being real, a lot of these players don't belong in college academically. They would not be accepted on grades alone and would not survive without the hilariously enormous support system in place solely designed to keep them in compliance with the rules.

Most college students in STEM won't even work unpaid internships and yet these guys are expected to generate orders of magnitude more value while being unpaid or hilariously under compensated.

You're right, it's unrealistic. But the benefit value to the player is only miniscule if you ignore the biggest benefit, which almost no one includes:

The biggest benefit is the free 4-5 year top-of-the-line professional training camp.

(I didn't mention it above because I don't think this dollar amount should be counted against scholarships, if you could even calculate it.)

They're getting (upto) 5 years of intense training in their field, by teams of professional-grade coaches. All of their required equipment is paid for, facilities are free, they're being marketed to the pro scouts, traveling across the country, and they're getting all of this with free room and board.

It's really hard to put a true dollar amount on that, but the closest comparison in the professional world is a college degree. Which they should be getting, and at no cost to them.

When this is included, I think it balances out enough to be fair.

Or to put it another way... How many of these players could go pro without the benefit of college training. I'd argue very few. And by definition, fewer than the number who declare early for the draft, which is already a small number.

And I don't feel any more sympathies for them than I do any other startup millionaire that probably could have skipped college but didn't.

Tangent: I've also argued that being an athlete should/could be a degree in and of itself, given a properly designed program. It should include classes in kinesiology, dieting, health, financial management, speaking to the media, marketing yourself, etc. I think that would also solve many of these issues.

Very fair point. I had never considered this before.

I'm unclear why these players are students at all. if your playing well enough to make millions for the university, surely you're good enough to make millions for a professional team?

The NFL has a rule for draft eligibility. You have to wait for four seasons if yo do not attend college. There are ways to get an exception, but it is rare. Makes it very hard to go from High School straight to the NFL.

https://www.nflregionalcombines.com/Docs/Eligibility%20Rules...

While this is true, if players weren't benefiting from college, more would declare early for the draft, after 3 college seasons. I don't know what the percentages are, but there are more players getting drafted after 4 years of college than those drafted after 3.

Which implies that players not only seem to value the training and experience of college athletics, but that they value all 4 years of it. Arguably red-shirting extends this to 5 years.

Tell that to any injured student... or those students not actually given enough time to study for classes that aren't excessively easy to pass.

IMHO, if you're accepted on a Sports scholarship, you should be allowed to complete at least 5 years of schooling regardless of injury or ability to continue playing, and if you fail to meet scholastic eligibility, you should be released for a year to "catch up" while continuing coursework.

That would more closely resemble a fair exchange. As it stands a significant number of student athletes don't get a real education and/or are dropped before able to complete because of injury.

> if you're accepted on a Sports scholarship, you should be allowed to complete at least 5 years of schooling regardless of injury or ability to continue playing,

This is significantly the argument between Bobby Dodd and Bear Bryant leading to Georgia Tech leaving the SEC.

> regardless of injury or ability to continue playing

And short term disability insurance, and long term disability insurance - along with the school paying for health insurance (currently students are required to have health insurance, but the school isn't required to pay.

I think an illuminating question is what do you consider more important, fair compensation to the workers, or maintaining the sports magic? Or, even, do you care about the tension of the two at all? For example, I don't care about the sports magic, which makes the solution simple to me - pay the athletes, and whatever happens as a result is a better result, because we're not longer exploiting them.

It's a tricky question, because they're not workers. They're players.

How are they not workers? They have to show up to work (practice) and play in games. If they get hurt, they loose their scholarship (just like an hourly contract employee).

Training for and playing the game is their labor, which generates enormous revenue for the institution they belong to. In any other setting - including professional sports - we would call them workers. And it's brutal, punishing work that they will live with for the rest of their lives.

Shutdown unprofitable teams. That's what will happen.

> forcing young student athletes who are often from very low income families to resort to illegal bribes

No one is forced to do anything here, as if children from low income families somehow have less agency than others.

You can complain about a system where children from low income families make a rational calculation to skirt the rules to better their position.

No one is talking about regulating endorsements. The law simply says you can’t keep a player off a team for being paid.

The 4th option is to disallow teams who are in states that violate the bylaws from joining post season play at NCAA events (basketball), and to lobby CFP committee to do the same.

I believe the NCAA will go with option 4, then once more states pass the same laws, eventually go to option 3.*

D0 is not really on the table because it is dilutive to 'P5' school earnings vs today's system of pretending to include G5 while excluding them from the big payouts.

*The reason they will go with option 4 is that the only conference impacted by the law will be the Pac 12. While Larry Scott (Pac 12 commissioner) is probably not happy, he can't really move the needle for the NCAA like Big10/SEC could. If this law get enacted in Florida, that would be the tipping point to go to option 3. Going with option 4 today really only leaves the Rose Bowl as the only loose end.

What are these numbers, D0, P5, G5?

D0 == Division 0. Right now all the top teams play in Division 1 athletics, with a bunch of other teams that generally don't get nearly as much money or notoriety but give the top teams some other teams to "beat up on" so to speak (although they do sometimes lose). Division 0 is this idea that the Power 5 (see below) would form their own division.

Right now there are three divisions, and they are based on school size, which is why all the big schools are division 1 but there is a big difference in quality. The idea here is to take the top teams and split off regardless of school size.

P5 == Power 5. These are the five conferences that have almost all the top teams. Big ten, Big 12, the ACC, the Pac-12, and the SEC.

G5 == Group of 5. These are there conferences with the lesser know teams. American, Conference USA, Mid-American, Mountain West, and Sun Belt

Where can I read about this? Are conferences what divisions are subdivided into?

Just google college athletic divisions.

The g5 and p5 are media constructs (not official) designations to help with ratings and assign teams to various invitational competitions like the college football playoffs.

Division 0 (instead of DI, DII(2), or DIII(3) divisions on collegiate sports.

P5 = Power 5 conference, ie ACC, SEC, Pac12, Big12, Big10

G5 = No idea.

Texas is the other state with enough teams in the NCAA that enacting a similar law would tip things to option 3.

Question is if both states, under regulatory capture, will allow any similar law to pass. I dare say that NCAA sports are bigger business in Texas and Florida by percent when compared to California, which has other very profitable industries. Thus the college boards have a far deeper connection to the legislature. So in a prisoners dilemma, either both of them can choose not to pass similar legislation, keeping the money out of the hands of athletes, or either state will pass similar legislation in order to complete with California for athletes. The other state would have to follow to compete for athletes, forcing the NCAA's hand to go with option 3.

Texas is unlikely to lead the way on such legislation and will have to be a reluctant follower if this is to play out nationwide. In general they don't like to mess with the autonomy of their institutions, do not require the incentive to keep players in state, and acknowledge in top-heavy big-12 country that the status quo is still a very healthy situation for most (i.e. all people that aren't top-level players). That often goes with all Texas legislation on national concerns, they tend to wait for things to play out.

I could see this scenario, but the NCAA would have to worry about losing their sanctioned monopoly status if they started punishing teams for following their state's laws.

>D0 is not really on the table because it is dilutive to 'P5' school earnings vs today's system of pretending to include G5 while excluding them from the big payouts.

Actually, currently, P5 schools lose money on the other schools in college football. The D0, in my mind, is not so much about California, as it is about evening out the chances of all the P5 schools. Right now you have to pay to play all these low level schools, which for a lot of P5 schools really does eat into profits. Additionally, in the current structure, the SEC for instance might play FCS teams and then fewer conference foes. This makes an uneven playing field for the BIG 12 or PAC 12 or what have you. So if you want a more even shot at one of the big 4 slots, you have to either pay out more money to play an extra low level school, or get the SEC to play an extra conference game. It's a bit more complex than that, because for instance OSU has plenty of money, but the conference won't let them play an additional cupcake. But you get the idea.

Now I'd bet a lot of the AD's would never actually admit it, but D0 is probably an attempt to tilt the scales in their direction by eliminating these, and other, structural impediments to their own success.

D0 is a made up concept by fans. No P5 AD wants to lose the money on home games or eyeballs for their games by moving to a 'smaller' division.

Currently P5 programs choose to play FCS opponents because they make so much revenue on home games that it is worth paying an FCS team a few million. The reason the math works is that the TV deals are already set, and the only incremental money they can make is through ticket sales to 100k fans.

NCAA should be counting on the fact that more states will adopt California's stance on this issue.

Yes. This decision will most definitely cause a land-grab rush, unless the NCAA overwhelmingly punishes CA, other states will just do the same thing.

It's a pretty big change - my guess is CA's stance will win, because the alternative is massive disruption of the NCAA.

Yes, if auto emissions, minimum wage, contractor laws, and many other progressive policies are any example: blue states often pile on to each others' policies to spread them widely. NCAA shouldn't count on NY, IL, WA, MA, or other big blue states not doing this.

Right, but this CA change is (probably) an unalloyed good for CA, which gives other states even larger incentive to copy it -- whereas the incentives to copy minimum wage or auto emissions or other 'progressive' policies may be non-obvious or nonexistent.

I find it mind-boggling that of all the millions of dollars that middle-men in this industry make, the players - the whole point of the industry - were the only ones not getting paid.

It's rather simple, the assumption that the industry is for the players is incorrect.

The industry will loudly tell you it's about the athletes. That's bullshit.

Sorry, I need to correct your post to use correct NCAA-approved groupspeak.

"The industry will loudly tell you it's about the student-athletes."

The economics surrounding most minor league sports suggest that the level of skill demonstrated by the players is not, in fact, the economic driver behind the revenues generated in college athletics.

If you want to see athletic accomplishments done at a high level...

Your typical D League basketball game, Arena League football game, or triple A baseball game features higher skilled athletic performance.

To me, this suggests that it's the tribal/communal aspect of college athletics which drive the interest and revenues.

Option 4: ban college sports. School should be about education, not sports.

> Option 4: ban college sports. School should be about education, not sports.

Are you okay with paying higher tuition that would have otherwise been offset with TV, merchandising, ticket revenue and alumni donations?

Overall, sports drain money from the universities; they don't provide it.

About half of D1 football and men's basketball programs do make money, but even at those schools, the athletics program as a whole is still a money loser.

Carol Quigley points out in "Evolution of Civilizations" that institutions over time tend to do the opposite of their initial stated purpose with football being one example:

A game called football was invented about 1870 to provide healthful physical exercise for the undergraduates on bright autumn afternoons. Seventy years later the undergraduates who needed exercise most were seated in the stands of a city baseball park on Friday night, with their flasks and their coeds, while on the grass (or mud) below, the undergraduates who needed exercise least pushed each other about under the floodlights.

Option 4: Litigation. Bring suit to have the California law declared unconstitutional and request an injunction on the law taking effect until a decision is made. I’m willing to bet the NCAA will spend millions on this, not for the benefit of student athletes, but to allow the NCAA to continue to exploit student athletes.

I doubt this would work all that well. Of course the NCAA can bring suit on whatever topic it pleases, but I don't see a court granting an injunction for something like this. It's a pretty common practice to enshrine into law rights that you aren't allowed to waive in contracts, and I don't see a judge believing this particular thing to be weird at all, let alone enough to grant an injunction.

There might be an interstate-commerce-clause justification here on the side of the NCAA, but it seems pretty thin. IANAL, of course, so what do I know.

I was thinking a dormant commerce clause[1] argument. And after a bit of duck ducking (duck duck going?) it seems they've won at least one case in the past using the theory.[2] I only skimmed the opinion but that case overturned a Nevada statute that set out due process requirements for those accused of NCAA violations. From the decision:

> Essentially, the Statute requires any national collegiate athletic association to provide a Nevada institution, employee, student-athlete, or booster who is accused of a rules infraction with certain procedural due process protections during an enforcement proceeding in which sanctions may be imposed. Many of the procedures required by the Statute are not included in the NCAA enforcement program. For example, the NCAA does not provide the accused with the right to confront all witnesses, the right to have all written statements signed under oath and notarized, the right to have an official record kept of all proceedings, or the right to judicial review of a Committee decision.

I'm not sure I really agree with the court's reasoning that it's a per se violation of the commerce clause but the rational is in Section B @ 638 if you're interesting.

Here's hoping this precedent gets overturned but I'm not terribly optimistic.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dormant_Commerce_Clause

[2] https://casetext.com/case/national-collegiate-athletic-assn-...

Option 3 is definitely the path of least resistance in terms of long term consequences.

That said, I fully expect the NCAA to aggressively threaten Option 1, then back down when it becomes clear that they'll just lose out on all the revenue of that new league/competing governing body, which would have no trouble growing as schools that don't make a ton via the NCAA system looking for a recruiting edge race to join (a funny subplot for anyone who follows this sort of thing: how fast would SMU race to join a governing body that lets players sell their endorsement?). Then, they'll settle on Option 2, which allows them to do nothing and blame others for the fallout, despite it being the worst of the 3 options for all non-NCAA bureaucracy stakeholders.

Can you explain who the Power 5 are, and what Division 0 would mean? And would Division 0 be inside or outside the NCAA? I don't get the implication of them all leaving the NCAA to create their own organization is, because I don't know the players in this 'game'.

EDIT: Answered in a jedberg reply elsewhere in this thread.

I always thought the NCAA was a voluntary organization. Seems they can just take option 4 and ban teams that don’t comply with their rules.

This move would have been more successful if had passed during a period when CA had competitive teams.

Evidently that’s what California is for.

> If sounds like the only winning move here is for the NCAA to allow paying players.

That is the end of the NCAA. If California can dictate the fundamental nature of a voluntary organization, there's really little sense for the organization to exist.

Thank goodness, NCAA has been a blight on collegiate education for decades. The end of NCAA would be good for students, good for athletes, good for athletics, and good for colleges and universities. If most of what an organization does is harm, then absolutely that organization shouldn't exist.

I’m curious how ending the NCAA would be good for all those stakeholders.

The NCAA's monetary and administrative requirements distract from the educational mission of colleges. Ending that distraction would be good for students and colleges. NCAA's conservative tendencies and commercial interests hurt athletes directly as documented extensively on this page, and as often attested by the athletes themselves.

Option 4: you're a member of a voluntary organization, and your state can't change our bylaws.

Which is what's probably gonna happen.

That's the same as Option 1.

The state can change the bylaws. Or at least make the bylaws unenforceable within state boundaries, which has the same effect. I believe that is what California has done here.

For another example, suppose there were some chemical company organization that had a bylaw like, "You cannot print information about carcinogenic ingredients in your products." But then California passes prop 65. The bylaws are now moot -- if you have to choose whether to comply with bylaws or state law, you either have to take your ball and go home, or the bylaws have to change.

Wouldn't this make it illegal to prevent players from profiting from endorsements ? Voluntary organizations can't break the law.

I think the state can change the bylaws of a voluntary organization, or at least make them illegal.

From the official digest of the bill at https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm... :

The bill also would prohibit an athletic association, conference, or other group or organization with authority over intercollegiate athletics from preventing a postsecondary educational institution other than a community college from participating in intercollegiate athletics as a result of the compensation of a student athlete for the use of the student’s name, image, or likeness.

AFAICT this law would make the current NCAA bylaws illegal in California. Any California player who accepted an endorsement and was subsequently prevented from playing would be able to sue.

That only applies to the NCAA if the NCAA continues to operate in California. If they decide that their current rules are more important than the participation of California schools, they can leave the state and prevent their member schools from playing in California or with teams from California and avoid California's legal jurisdiction.

Correct, which is option 1 from the parent post. MisterBastahrd seems to believe that the NCAA can just say "you have to follow these rules if you join us even if you're from CA", which is not true because the bill outlaws those rules.

The 4th option that they're suggesting only serves to open them up to lawsuits should they ever try to enforce the rule for CA players.

This is why the bill is unconstitutional.

From Miller vs. NCAA, P 28:

'Under Brown-Forman, 476 U.S. at 579, 106 S.Ct. at 2084, when a state law directly regulates interstate commerce, it can generally be struck down without further inquiry. The Statute directly regulates interstate commerce and runs afoul of the Commerce Clause both because it regulates a product in interstate commerce beyond Nevada's state boundaries, and because it puts the NCAA, and whatever other national collegiate athletic associations may exist, in jeopardy of being subjected to inconsistent legislation arising from the injection of Nevada's regulatory scheme into the jurisdiction of other states. Because the Statute violates the Commerce Clause per se, we need not balance the burden on interstate commerce against the local benefit derived from the Statute.'

Replace Nevada with California and you've got the same issue. A state is not allowed to unilaterally make special statutory carve-out demands on a national organization.

They can say "hey universities, your student-athletes must be allowed to profit from their own likenesses." Totally within the state's power.

They can't say "hey, NCAA, screw your rules, we decided to make up our own for you and you have to deal with it."

Then the bill violates the Commerce Clause of the Constitution and is illegal.

https://openjurist.org/10/f3d/633/national-collegiate-athlet...

Not by the arguments put forth in that decision. The key bit on the Nevada law is stated in paragraph 21:

> By its terms, it regulates only interstate organizations, i.e., national collegiate athletic associations which have member institutions in 40 or more states.

Nevada made the mistake of specifically targeting interstate associations. California does not, so based on the reasoning in that decision the California law does not violate the Commerce Clause per se as the Nevada law did.

You either didn't fully read or don't comprehend what you read.

The NCAA engages in interstate commerce. California's bill requires that any organization that does business in California allow players in California to be paid. It is requiring the NCAA to provide a carve-out for California.

This is the exact same scenario, legally.

This is Option 1. They can't litigate a state to change the law.

And given that the only choice is to remove the largest state from you organization. With that cali makes their own league and now the NCAA has a huge competition for the top talent. Why would you go to school anywhere else than Cali.

They don't have to litigate a state to change a law.

They can simply say "your student-athlete is ineligible to participate."

Can California create their own league?

Sure.

Will doing so decimate their schools' athletic budgets? Probably. There's not going to be much national demand for a state-only organization, and it's going to get particularly ugly when the feds discover schools colluding with rich boosters talent in order to attract them there because of Title IX.

> There's not going to be much national demand for a state-only organization

Uh, this would be true of many states but not of states like CA/TX/FL.

There would absolutely be demand for a CA-only athletic organization.

There's a reason California did this and not, say, Alaska (no offense to Alaska of course).

There's not one example of a regional sports league that has had any sort of success in recent memory.

One of the foundational reasons that the WWF / WWE became the dominant power in the wrestling market is that they were the first to ignore regional barriers.

Rinse, repeat.

Every collegiate conference is regional. [0] Long flights are expensive and inconvenient. You could maybe justify a national conference for men's basketball, but that would eliminate all the minor sports and also would probably violate Title IX.

[0] admittedly, minor confused conferences like Conference USA and Big 12 stretch the definition a little bit, but they're still essentially regional.

> There's not one example of a regional sports league that has had any sort of success in recent memory.

Er, we're talking about them right now. College sports are extremely regional but still have significant national appeal. Many, many people tune into SEC conference games who have no connection to the SEC.

If you think people wouldn't watch an SEC-only league (I'm using the SEC here because it's the most obvious example), then I think that betrays your knowledge of college sports.

I think that the SEC has the drawing power it does because of how it competes on a national level. The SEC in and of itself is a bunch of mediocre to good teams and a few powerhouses that bear the load for its reputation. Every P5 conference in existence would be irreparably harmed if they engaged in purely regional competition / contracts.

I think there a lot of conclusion jumping. The NCAA only make $1 billion in revenue with 900 million in expenses.

A state-only organization the size of California can easily compete especially when any player in any sport with financial planning would move to California.

Why would anyone watch the NCAA in football, basketball or anything else when we'd know all the best player are in the California League.

Also, the point is that rich boosters colluding wouldn't be illegal. This wouldn't have anything to do Title IX. I do agree those rich donors will pull all the best talent to California though.

> This is Option 1. They can't litigate a state to change the law.

Sure, they can (well, that is, litigate against a state to neutralize the law), usually by claiming it violates federal law (including the Constitution). That's tough here, but I suppose you could throw a hail mary at either a contracts clause or a dormant commerce clause action.

I think there is a strong argument to be made for violation of the constitutional right to contract.

If a college/university contracts to be included in a athletics association, there is nothing wrong with requiring the schools to comply with NCAA rules/regulations.

If a student athlete contracts with a college/university to play a sport for them, there is nothing wrong with the college/university requiring them to comply with both the college and NCAA rules/regulations.

Without the benefit of looking at all the various agreements and the actual CA Bill, it sounds like their approach to cure the issue may amount to an unconstitutional restriction on the athletes' Constitutional right to contract.

The NCAA doesn't really have to choose anything here, just enforce rules on the books and nothing changes. It seems as if the law only removes the restriction that student athletes can't be paid, not that it requires payment. Whichever teams decide to pay their athletes will be excluded from the NCAA.

Absent legislation with more teeth or a broad coalition of states and schools from across the country, I highly doubt California schools will drop out to create their own league. In fact, the money they're looking to give to athletes will soon dry up, absent the lucrative contracts the NCAA holds. Who would watch an independent league with so few teams in it and basically no national tournament circuit?

Far from forcing the NCAA's hand, I think Newsom just passed feel-good legislation which doesn't really change anything. Perhaps other states will jump on board, but there doesn't seem to be any sight of that at the moment.

Your arguments are very much tail wagging the dog. NCAA has lucrative deals because of the schools, not vice versa.

A division with UCLA, Berkeley, USC, Stanford, UCSD, UC-Davis + plenty I'm forgetting would be instantly watchable in football and basketball. Really the only thing they'd be missing out on would be March Madness (a big deal) and the college football championship (a minor deal). There would be a very swift Rose bowl replacement, and I'm sure the invited BIG10 would be happy to attend, and if not for whatever reason a top 2 from that division would be a fun championship game too.

Really I see the only blocker here being participation in March Madness- but that feels like a short term roadblock and 'lets figure out when to pull the trigger' situation rather than an impossible hindrance.

The smaller sports will certainly suffer in the short term- but California is a massive market and having a California only college league is totally plausible.

Another option: CA universities become the least desirable place for the very best high school athletes.

The objective of the very best players is not to merely pay for college, but maximize their chance to join professional teams. Those odds are maximized by access to world class facilities, equipment, trainers, coaches, medical care, and more. Winning helps too.

If some schools have less money because sponsorships are going to specific players instead of the school/league, they will be able to provide fewer top-tier resources to players. Consequently, those schools will be less attractive in the areas of essential importance to the very best players.

If the very best athletes gravitate toward non-player-sponsorship schools, it will create a self-reinforcing cycle to get other top athletes, because they want the best teams to maximize their chances of winning.

The overwhelming majority of top college players have negligible chances of playing in the NFL. The potential rewards for a high school player getting paid ASP generally dwarfs any long term career prospects.

Ask any 18 year-old 3-star high school senior football recruit whether he's going to play in the NFL. Let me know how many of them tell you "maybe, but I'm not sure I'll get there."

Then ask the 4- and 5-stars.

The players who have a good change of playing in the NFL likely heavily overlaps the players who will be offered endorsements. 99% of college athletes simply aren't good enough for either and will probably be unaffected by this.

At the very least it means being able to do things like offer coaching or training services or even just run a lawnmowing business under their own name, which is prohibited by NCAA rules.

I disagree. You are thinking of endorsements as if Nike and Underarmor are the only players here. But in every college town in America, Jim's Chevrolet or Thomson's Car Wash or whatever, would love to be able to have some of the local players on their tv or radio ads.

I'll bet car dealerships will be the first place in CA that you will start seeing college athletes on the billboards.

And it won't just be the top guys in the state. It will be the top guys on the local team. Even for smaller schools.

>Another option: CA universities become the least desirable place for the very best high school athletes.

That's laughable.

The best high school basketball players are only gonna be in college one or two years in any case. It's legal formality currently that makes them go there.

The idea that draft picks and their families are going to forego free money in California for the purposes of supporting the NCAA is, again, just a bit fanciful. These guys are gonna get drafted no matter where they go. So I can pretty much guarantee you that their agents will swing them to Cali.

I had to squint really hard to understand the point here. I think I get it, but it seems fairly obvious to me that, to the extent that player sponsorship money is reallocated from schools, it'll be reallocated from schools' athletic programs overall, not specifically from the institution for which the sponsored players play.

That is to say if $shoeco wants to sponsor $bigplayer but does not want to increase their overall athletics funding beyond its present $100M level, they will not take away $1M from $bigplayer's school, they'll take it away in very small amounts from all schools they sponsor.

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