I am simple educator. But how will paying players be justified under title 9? How will anyone ‘independently’ decide what an NIL is worth to a two person agreement? How will this just not get sued into full time professional sports and some kind of catastrophic collapse?
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NOT AN ATTORNEY:
Under $600, the NIL deal doesn’t need review. If over $600, it gets reviewed by a clearinghouse to make sure the amount and the value of the player’s work, etc. isn’t inflated.
All P4 schools can distribute up to $20.5 million this year, which escalates annually by 4% for the next ten years. This is different than NIL.
I’ve read on TOS that Congress could pass a limited anti-trust exception to keep the cap legal, as lawsuits are already being ginned up to challenge it.
Ian, this’ll be crazy until Congress acts. And the courts will find against any NIL limits.
The NIL caps seem to be the part that would really trigger an avalanche of lawsuits. A fool and his money can spend whatever he wants for whatever is agreed upon.
The title 9 part will be bigger to watch. There are a handful of women’s programs that make financial sense. A handful. The articles I was reading were thinking 90% will go to men’s football and basketball.
Glad to see I’m not the only one with that question.
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I agree. This “clearinghouse” doesn’t have any more authority to decide whether a deal makes sense than some NCAA official.
Kind of like buying and selling anything - the market is defined by what the parties agree upon.
How will Title IX impact payments to men’s and women’s sports?
Georgia and Texas Tech among other schools, have said they plan to allocate large percentages of the money they pay to athletes to football players and men’s basketball players. Because this money will be coming from the schools, rather than third parties, this seems all but certain at some point to result in a Title IX lawsuit.
BTW…from that article…
This may not turn out to be a class action, but there are some recognizable names making cases that they individually are owed money. Among them:
Men’s basketball players: Kris Jenkins, Frank Mason III, Franz Wagner, Moritz Wagner, Hunter Dickinson, Duncan Robinson, Jamal Shead, Jaime Jaquez.
I am really saddened by how hard it is for understanding market rates. It is not simply what someone is willing to pay. That is not market.
How many here are going to go out and pay $10,000 for an oz of gold tomorrow? Why not?
I expect no one. The rate is determined by numerous transaction to set a going market price. That will go up or down as the market (many many buyers and sellers) shift pricing.
If someone does go out and spend that much for an oz, it will not be enough to change the overall market price. Plus, it likely would get flagged as some sort of illegal activity if it got back to the treasury dept. At least marked as suspicious activity by honest business people.
Also not hard to have players agree to the terms if they accept payment from a school to have it include verification of NIL income. Employers now a days may not prevent me from having a second job in most cases, but there can be non-compete clauses and various other limitations.
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The problem is that with the way the NIL has developed, there’s no enforcement authority. The settlement can designate a clearinghouse or whatever, but unlike professional sports, college athletes aren’t subject to union rules or whatever. The courts have rendered compensation ungovernable such that any attempt to limit it will probably face the same fate as prohibiting it.
Alright, your gold theory. With gold everyone is getting the same product. The same weight, the same value. So, are we going to say that a qb of say, UT, has the same value as the qb at UH? How do we show that value?
They may be the same position, but they are not the same ounce of gold.
Also, if some dumb power drunk UT alumni wants to pay 10000 for an ounce of gold, who will stop them?
So are we thinking that the government will set a rate for all players? Will they say that athletes in college for a tv commercial will make 50k, for a billboard in a medium size city, 5k, and a large city billboard 10k? Will there be a menu of pricing for athletes? Will a woman’s diver get the same as a qb our a point guard?
If the menu is set, is t that then a due process issue? Setting a rate at which they are told they have to make without agreeing collectively? Isn’t this how and why unions are born? @HCNY is this prime for a Union (not pro or anti Union, just sounds like this is about to happen)
Presumably, the new College Sports Commission will be the enforcement arm to regulate NIL. The 4 P4 Commissioners named Bryan Seeley, former MLB executive and Harvard Law Graduate, as new CEO of the College Sports Commission, this past Friday. I am both hopeful and skeptical.
I was trying to keep it simple for people to understand.
There are going rates for artists, photographers, designers, and other people that produce unique work (athletes fit in this unique product category) of many different skill levels Also there are going rates for your work being used in different media such as local magazine ad, national magazine ad all based on size duration and reach. Same applies to video media rates and usage. You can go buy a book with much of this value published to show Market Rates. (This is an example of one used in design and marketing: Graphic Artists Guild Handbook, 16th Edition: Pricing & Ethical Guidelines)
They have appraisers that can also set market values for athletic collectables to, and those are often very limited quantity. Watch a few episodes of Pawn Stars - it shows a good back and forth of understanding a market value for a unique item.
They know how much professional athletes get paid for various types of work based upon recognition value and experience. The same data will be built up for college athletes over the next few years. I expect ranges will be fairly broad. But there is a defined market value. It will not be a single number but a range based upon recognition of athlete and purpose of NIL hiring.
Also why not agreeing to the 4-4-2-2 is important. Players for the SEC and B1G can use that to command higher NIL values as being part of a “more well know or important conference” over the Big 12 or ACC (and especially any G conference players).
To some questions:
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If a UT fan pays $10,000 for 1 oz gold some one will take his money, but that does not make it market value. He will still likely sell it at a loss in the next 4-5 years. If it was checked by an accounting firm, it would likely get flagged as suspicious activity. Likely followed up with someone checking if there was illegal drugs or money laundering going on.
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Govt does not set market rates: They will be a range, not a single number, built from many other transactions. Thus other athletes and people hiring will set values which when combined become market values. You are correct in giving different values based on usage.
In my heart, this is a perfect union situation.
My brain, however, tells us otherwise.
For argument sake, let’s call all of these players employees.
We have a mixed group of employees. Although they all have a community of interest, which is important for labor lawyers, they are working (for lack of a better word) for mixed employers.
Most of these universities are public, but some are private.
Under the current law, private employers are covered by federal labor law. State employers are covered by state labor law.
If you look at the map, most states with strong football programs are in so called right to work states. In some of those states it gets even worse where public employees are forbidden to collectively bargain.
The way around this is that the collective bargaining agreement is with an employer entity. Not the NCAA or the conferences. I will make up a name for this post.
The league of collegiate athletic employers
So the agreement is between the union and the members of the employers league.
I can see in my mind‘s eye different leagues for different sports. I can see in my mind‘s eye for professional sports leagues, trying to become the collective bargaining organization for their related sports.
Who knows more about representing football athletes than the football players union
Same for basketball and maybe others as well
I would love to do it myself, but I am not in the final stretch in my career, but I would like to be out within five years. This is gonna be a long project.
And the universities are going to have fancy labor lawyers, like Jackson Lewis, or a similar situated firm.
Yeah, it sounds great until it fails in court because there’s nothing that binds the athletes to its authority.
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It would be in the interest of the large player unions to adopt the college players.
Then you get into all the other sports. Maybe they become some kind of ncaa players union or the universities just drop them.
I can get you an ounce of gold a lot cheaper than $10k lol.
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The better question is why does Title IX exist? Its existence was based on the premise that we needed more women in college and that therefore universities must be forced to equalize spending on al programs, including sports programs, between men and women. However at this point can anyone argue with the data that shows women excelling in and exceed men? If anyone needs a leg up it’s men.
Get rid of Title IX.
That was my point paying that for gold is not market value. Stupid to pay that much for no return other than saying you paid a lot.
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Another factor that should describe market rates is opportunity cost. I could pay this quarterback for one extra win, or pay that quarterback and be able to afford three wide receivers and get two extra wins. But the first quarterback will sell more merch and cars and air conditioners. But the second quarterback will… Etc.
Even in the pros with unions and salary caps, this isn’t the whole calculation or even most of it. Even there, but more so in college, players (and coaches) are treated as positional goods. They aren’t just articles of conspicuous consumption, they are objects of jealousy induction- I got this quarterback so that you can’t get him.
This isn’t a market force, and it ignores the information collected in price (as @EndlessPurple described) as well as opportunity cost. It’s bad for programs, bad for schools, bad for the sports, bad for the women’s programs who won’t be dealt with this way, and bad for the players who will be. What is setting the players’ idea of their worth is pro salaries, but those guys are paid largely due to this influence, and the artificial scarcity it creates.