Contact The Editor
Articles By This Author
After several delays, a judge finally approved a multi-billion-dollar antitrust settlement between the National Collegiate Athletic Association, its power conferences, and current and former college athletes this month. Under its terms, schools and universities can pay players directly starting July 1, with a salary cap of $20.5 million per institution. It's a major victory in the long struggle to ensure that they are compensated fairly.
If the NCAA and the power conferences have their way, it'll be the last.
Days after the approval, two college sports bills were introduced into Congress. Both fulfill the NCAA's long-standing wish for an antitrust exemption that would allow it to set its own rules for college sports, including regulations related to compensation. If enacted, athletes would lose their ability to challenge those tenets and cut deals such as the recent settlement.
That'd be a mistake. For college sports to thrive in this new era, it can't just be accountable to the NCAA and the conferences.
It's worth reflecting on just how long it's taken the college sports industry to get to this point. Since the NCAA was founded in 1906, athletes have been prohibited from earning income. Athletes who challenged that model with even minor infractions were heavily penalized.
The goal was to protect the NCAA's belief in amateurism and its business model, which relied on free labor.
That stubborn stance gave the industry a monopoly on the billions of dollars that poured into college sports over the last four decades. Over time, the stubbornness motivated college athletes (and their lawyers) to take on difficult, years-long antitrust lawsuits that called out the NCAA for restricting their economic rights.
Despite some athlete-friendly NIL messaging in recent years, the NCAA has been frustrated to see its authority chipped away by athletes and the courts. For the association, its members and conferences, an antitrust exemption has long been viewed as a means of reversing the losing streak. To get one, the NCAA and the power conferences have spent over $15 million lobbying Congress since 2019 for several protections, including an antitrust exemption.
This month's landmark resolution was apparently the prompt that the NCAA's supporters in Congress needed to introduce legislation enacting the association's wish list (a fact that NCAA president Charlie Baker acknowledged last week). On a practical basis, that would mean, for example, that athletes couldn't sue the NCAA for restricting their earning potential via the settlement's salary caps.
The association argues that such steps are necessary for preserving college sports. But does the industry actually need the help? Post-Covid, college sports - especially football - have enjoyed a viewership and media rights surge. Women's sports, including softball, basketball and volleyball, have experienced rapid growth, providing new revenue streams for the association.
You'd think the NCAA would like that. However, all evidence suggests that since athletes are also benefiting, the association prefers the older system, over which it had near total control.
Indeed, in recent years, Baker has gone so far as to refer to the current college sports ecosystem as a "Wild West" that lacks accountability.
As Congress considers this line of thought, it's worth keeping a few key points in mind.
First, whatever chaos currently exists in college sports isn't the fault of the athletes or their lawyers. The NCAA and its members wrote and enforced the rules that the courts repeatedly judged as illegal and anti-competitive. Over the decades, the association had plenty of opportunities to voluntarily change its rules and evolve into a fairer system.
That history isn't deserving of an antitrust exemption. In fact, in light of the NCAA's recent record of fighting for its amateur business model, Congress (and athletes) should be wary of any law that would reduce the organization's accountability.
Second, the NCAA's preferred business model is deeply inequitable. Consider that the association and its conferences want to restrict athletes from earning their market value, even as big brand schools pay uncapped - and growing - seven- and eight-figure salaries to coaches. An antitrust exemption that applies to player compensation would effectively codify this pay gap and ensure that the athletes receive a smaller piece of the college sports pie.
Congress should want no part in preserving that kind of imbalance.
Finally, Congress and other advocates for a college sports antitrust exemption should question what, if any, social benefit would be provided by restricting the rights of athletes to earn their market value. Historically, the government rarely makes exceptions to its rules against monopolies. It is only granted for very important reasons (such as in 1922, when it allowed farmers to form marketing cooperatives to sell their produce).
Does codifying the NCAA's economic authority over athletes meet that standard?
Considering the growth of the college sports business in recent years, it's difficult to make a case. Congress should leave college athlete pay to the market and move on to the more pressing matters currently confronting it.
Minter is a Bloomberg View columnist. He is the author of "Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade."
Previously:
• College football's new playoff is already a loser
• $2,000 college football tickets may be the new norm
• March Madness as we know it faces extinction
• Private equity and college sports can make a good team
• Baseball fans should root for gambling's expansion
• PGA merger with LIV Golf is only the beginning
• Farmers are fighting for our right to repair our iPhones
• This column may, or may not, cause an allergic reaction
• There's one Trump idea even libs should like