A discussion of the NCAA not wanting athletes to be considered school employees

May 28, 2024, 9:36 PM

From WSJ

Ryan Knutson: Why does the NCAA not want athletes to be considered employees? Why does that word matter?

Jared Diamond: The NCAA will say they don't want athletes being employees for all the reasons they always said they didn't want people to be paid, because college sports are about amateurism and these are student-athletes first, and et cetera, et cetera. That's what they'll say, but the biggest reason is money, right? Your athletes being employees is extraordinarily expensive. Employees are protected by labor laws, right? They'd be entitled not just to salaries, but health insurance, benefits, other things that come with full-time employment. There are a lot of NCAA athletes and the NCAA will always say, "Well if we had to do employees, there'd be no other sports but football and men's basketball, women's basketball because we just couldn't afford to do it for the other sports. All those other sports will disappear." That's their threat. Who knows? No one really knows, but that is why at the end of the day because they don't want to have to pay the incredible cost it will be if all of these athletes are employees, especially when you remember the NCAA's business for all these years, all the money they've made, they've never had to give any of it to the athletes. Right? But if they're going to have to start giving more and more and more, it obviously would totally change the whole financial picture of college sports.

Ryan Knutson: The NCAA says that schools wouldn't be able to afford paying all athletes as employees because most sports don't generate much money. So the NCAA has been lobbying Congress to pass a law that would give it an anti-trust exemption which would allow it to pay athletes, but not classify them as employees.

Jared Diamond: And this is sort of the final frontier. We are moving in the direction of college sports feeling more like professional sports. How far does it move in that direction? Is there going to be a union? Are they going to be employees? Is there going to be some sort of organized collective bargaining unit? It sort of feels that that's the direction we're heading. How is Congress going to step in? All of these questions are going to have to be resolved moving forward here.

Ryan Knutson: So this is a huge moment, but there are still lots of questions.

Jared Diamond: Exactly. The big question that still remains is are we going to end up in a space where athletes are employees of their school. The big E word is employee. That is the big outstanding question. The NCAA is adamantly opposed to the idea of athletes being labeled employees as opposed to student-athletes or whatever phrase you want to use, adamantly opposed, but it doesn't feel impossible now. It feels like something that really could be part of the future because now athletes are being paid. Once you cross that barrier, who knows where this ends up?

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Paying players opens up a wad of problems.

Let's just put it this way...commercialization eventually ruins about everything it touches.

The Olympics used to be amateur athletes. The used to be massive interest in the Olympics because the athletes were genuinely working for something way more inspiring than a paycheck. You would never see amateur sports players going to represent the USA and protesting their own country like we do now. The more the ahtletes have been professionalized the less interest there is in the Olympics. Interest has been falling by about 10% per Olympic cycle. I wager that its because of the money and the politics that eventually follow it.

College sports will be no different. I like college football because the players put it all on the line because they were proud to represent their school and would put it all on the line every game for that reason and for the chance to see the next level. Paying them will make it the last step for the majority of them and you'll see players playing to protect their $120K-$240K per year job. We'll start seeing more and more players protesting their schools or refusing to play because their school won't take a position of some stupid political agenda. It will be exactly like the lackluster play in the NFL for that very reason. I don't want to watch players play just because it's their job and to them it does not even matter who they play for. It only matters who pays them and how much. It wrecks the game, it wrecks the passion for the game.

BTW-ProWrestling is fake.

A discussion of the NCAA not wanting athletes to be considered school employees

Re: A discussion of the NCAA not wanting athletes to be considered school employees

Re: A discussion of the NCAA not wanting athletes to be considered school employees

Re: A discussion of the NCAA not wanting athletes to be considered school employees

Re: A discussion of the NCAA not wanting athletes to be considered school employees

Re: A discussion of the NCAA not wanting athletes to be considered school employees

It's all so dishonest. Sleazy.***

seems like Workers Compensation insurance would be

Re: A discussion of the NCAA not wanting athletes to be considered school employees

That's laughable. No university is going to give up football.

Re: A discussion of the NCAA not wanting athletes to be considered school employees

Re: A discussion of the NCAA not wanting athletes to be considered school employees

Re: A discussion of the NCAA not wanting athletes to be considered school employees

Re: A discussion of the NCAA not wanting athletes to be considered school employees

Re: A discussion of the NCAA not wanting athletes to be considered school employees

The BOT sets the HC salary and bonus structure for every sport.

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