Well, I will say I personally emailed around 10 Universities regarding the NCAA bylaws on how much athletes can be paid for working at camps. The bylaw is incredibly vague and open to manipulation. Only one university emailed me back: Iowa. PSU, Ohio State, Minnesota, Michigan, Okie State, Alabama, Auburn - none of them emailed me back. I even called PSU's compliance department and got the response that they were "in a department meeting, but would call me back" You think I got a call back? Nope.
Here's a direct quote form Michigan's NCAA Compliance Department's website:
"Greetings! It is critical that all of us do our part to learn and abide by NCAA rules that impact Michigan recruits, student-athletes, coaches, and boosters. The goals of the Athletic Department compliance program are to:
• Control and operate the athletics program in accordance with all applicable NCAA, conference, and institutional rules to maintain a culture of compliance.
• Monitor all aspects of the University's athletics programs to ensure compliance; identify and report to the NCAA all instances in which compliance has not been achieved; and affirm that appropriate corrective actions are taken.
• Help all fans and friends of the Michigan athletic program comply with all applicable NCAA, conference, and institutional rules.
Please feel free to contact the Compliance Services Office at (734) 615-7341 with any questions about NCAA rules. Go Blue!"
Well I contacted Michigan, and didn't receive any response back from them.
It's pretty clear that compliance departments either aren't investigating/monitoring athlete camp pay, or they aren't willing to disclose to anyone in the public how they handle it. It's a grey area and I would be shocked if it's not being abused/manipulated by some schools.
Here's Iowa's email response for those who care: (pretty vague, but at least they answered the question and show that the compliance department has some awareness of this situation)
"The Iowa Compliance Office does audit all sport camp activity including student-athlete employment. We collect and audit payroll documentation from all of our institutional camps to verify how much student-athletes, institutional staff and non-institutional staff are being paid to work Iowa camps.
We also work with non-institutional camps and clinics to educate and verify how much they pay student-athletes in the instance a student-athlete is asked to work a non-Iowa camp or clinic during the summer.
There is some variance in wages paid amongst different sports, but nothing too different. Most sport camps pay by the hour, so they set an hourly rate. I assume most D1 Compliance Offices audit sport camps and review student-athlete compensation."
There were several articles published on camp pay as a recruiting tool/scholarship bypass several years ago:
https://www.cbssports.com/college-f...ers-paid-to-work-camps-problem-in-the-making/
https://www.cbssports.com/college-f...ave-summer-camps-exposed-recruiting-loophole/
Like I said, who knows if schools are playing fair or not. Really the responsibility is on the NCAA to update the bylaws and make it very clear. Right now the bylaw is incredibly vague and schools could easily abuse it without technically breaking the rules.
I've also called the NCAA and they informed me that it's each universities own compliance department's responsibility to make sure their programs abide by the bylaws. That seems like a big conflict of interest.