The Supreme Court ruled Monday unanimously that the NCAA may not prohibit student-athletes from receiving benefits related to their educations, such as laptops or paid internships, on the grounds that such perks would poison the spirit of allegedly amateur college athletics. The decision opens the way for a long-overdue reckoning. The NCAA, a college sports monopoly, and the universities party to it have made enormous amounts of money on the backs of unpaid players. Now the court has properly called the legality of the whole exploitative operation into question. It is past time the athletes get what they deserve.
Writing for the court, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch stressed that the court did not consider whether it is legal for the NCAA to deny other forms of compensation — such as direct pay — to the athletes who sustain the billion-dollar college sports business. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote a concurring opinion “to underscore that the NCAA’s remaining compensation rules also raise serious questions under the antitrust laws.” Pointing out that the NCAA is undoubtedly a monopoly and incontestably holds its athletes’ compensation below market rates, he argued that the organization has no special exemption from antitrust rules. “Law firms cannot conspire to cabin lawyers’ salaries in the name of providing legal services out of a ‘love of the law.’ Hospitals cannot agree to cap nurses’ income in order to create a ‘purer’ form of helping the sick,” he wrote. “The NCAA is not above the law.”
Paying players would make the situation fairer. No longer would coaches take seven-figure salaries while even star players worry about whether their families have enough to live on. No longer would universities and the NCAA rake in billions in endorsement deals, television rights and ticket sales while the talented individuals who provide the show get practically nothing. And no longer would schools do so on the pretense that they are compensating so many of these young people with a valuable education, a pervasive fiction that intense athletics schedules, worthless curriculums designed for athletes and one-and-done seasons so often render impossible.
Yet paying players would only ameliorate the effects of, rather than solve, the underlying problem. Alleged institutions of higher learning would still be involved in a major entertainment business that scandal after scandal has proved to be incompatible with their mission to educate and enlighten. Recruiting malfeasance and other bad behavior would still occur and might find new channels. Many other thorny issues would remain, such as whether student-athletes should really be considered students at all, whether they should have the right to unionize and other questions involving their status as quasi-employees of their schools. Moreover, what would happen to athletes competing in sports that do not raise money? How would compensating student-athletes comply with rules regarding gender equity in higher education? Congress would likely need to get involved to manage the NCAA’s monopoly.
Ideally, universities would leave the semiprofessional athletics business entirely. The National Basketball Association and the National Football League should develop farm systems like the one Major League Baseball has to develop its professional athletes instead of relying on universities’ disgraceful willingness to take young people into their care merely to sustain their side hustle.
Writing for the court, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch stressed that the court did not consider whether it is legal for the NCAA to deny other forms of compensation — such as direct pay — to the athletes who sustain the billion-dollar college sports business. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote a concurring opinion “to underscore that the NCAA’s remaining compensation rules also raise serious questions under the antitrust laws.” Pointing out that the NCAA is undoubtedly a monopoly and incontestably holds its athletes’ compensation below market rates, he argued that the organization has no special exemption from antitrust rules. “Law firms cannot conspire to cabin lawyers’ salaries in the name of providing legal services out of a ‘love of the law.’ Hospitals cannot agree to cap nurses’ income in order to create a ‘purer’ form of helping the sick,” he wrote. “The NCAA is not above the law.”
Paying players would make the situation fairer. No longer would coaches take seven-figure salaries while even star players worry about whether their families have enough to live on. No longer would universities and the NCAA rake in billions in endorsement deals, television rights and ticket sales while the talented individuals who provide the show get practically nothing. And no longer would schools do so on the pretense that they are compensating so many of these young people with a valuable education, a pervasive fiction that intense athletics schedules, worthless curriculums designed for athletes and one-and-done seasons so often render impossible.
Yet paying players would only ameliorate the effects of, rather than solve, the underlying problem. Alleged institutions of higher learning would still be involved in a major entertainment business that scandal after scandal has proved to be incompatible with their mission to educate and enlighten. Recruiting malfeasance and other bad behavior would still occur and might find new channels. Many other thorny issues would remain, such as whether student-athletes should really be considered students at all, whether they should have the right to unionize and other questions involving their status as quasi-employees of their schools. Moreover, what would happen to athletes competing in sports that do not raise money? How would compensating student-athletes comply with rules regarding gender equity in higher education? Congress would likely need to get involved to manage the NCAA’s monopoly.
Ideally, universities would leave the semiprofessional athletics business entirely. The National Basketball Association and the National Football League should develop farm systems like the one Major League Baseball has to develop its professional athletes instead of relying on universities’ disgraceful willingness to take young people into their care merely to sustain their side hustle.