Supreme Court Rules Against NCAA In Case Over Student Athlete Compensation

Just now starting to read through it, but this ruling may also provide the legal argument that the NCAA cannot limit the number of scholarships a school provides..

Wow. The Court has opened up compensation to allow for almost anyhting that can be tied to "education related" by the schools. Most striking to me was the Court's dicta on other limitations.

The Court did not take up limitations on scholarships, but clearly only refused to because the SA's did not appeal the COA's decision not to disturb the trial court's holding. However, they also made it clear that any further legal analysis of such restrictions must be conducted under a "rule of reason" analysis and even went so far as to doubt that such restrictions could hold up under such scrutiny.

I think what you just saw, for baseball, is the end of the 11.7 scholarship limit. Now, how that affects the game is another argument.

This ruling is potentially very, very broad. Being under-reported this morning, IMO. Remarkable to see the unanimity on this given the ideological split of the Court.

The NCAA should be very, very worried. They don't have the juice on the Hill to get much passed right now.

this is going to be really interesting, how will said scholarship values be placed across different schools and sports? I get there is value to a small handful of sports at a few conferences.

Where does value come from for gymnastics, field hockey, track...etc. Are those going to be discontinued? How about mens programs making big money in hoops, example being Villanova, Georgetown, Xavier etc  but the women's has no following?

Does title ix go out the window?

What about the 90 plus percent of sports and schools who have no financial value from sports other then enrolment numbers? Do they even stay D1 or move down?

it is going to be the wild west for a period of time until this gets figured out.

@old_school posted:

this is going to be really interesting, how will said scholarship values be placed across different schools and sports? I get there is value to a small handful of sports at a few conferences.

Where does value come from for gymnastics, field hockey, track...etc. Are those going to be discontinued? How about mens programs making big money in hoops, example being Villanova, Georgetown, Xavier etc  but the women's has no following?

Does title ix go out the window?

What about the 90 plus percent of sports and schools who have no financial value from sports other then enrolment numbers? Do they even stay D1 or move down?

it is going to be the wild west for a period of time until this gets figured out.

100% - watch to see whether institutions/conferences challenge the scholarship limits. The opinion absolutely opens that door - who walks through it?

the crazy thing is part of me thinks the NCAA is the worst organization in he free so screw them...the other side i see massive unintended consequences and that college sports as we know them are dead. is that good or bad?

I believe, fear, that ultimately the student athletes are going to be the losers here. I am actually quite sure of it. I have no doubt the P5 money generators and a few other one off will be better off for it. In the larger view I expect all other athletes to have it worse... men's and women's varsity sports. I hope I am wrong.

This has a lot of ramifications and future issues that will be raised.

For example will athletes be able to "opt out" of scholarship for straight cash?

What will happen to revenue losers?  End of wrestling, tennis etc.?

What about Title IX and women's sports?  Outside of a few basketball programs I think they all lose money.

College Basketball may have an opportunity to rethink the relationship with NBA to allow players to return as 19, 20 and 21 year old's for additional seasons.

Will football at Power 5 finally become separate altogether?  Formal schedule and playoff format across the 60 or so schools?  11 Game schedule at least 8 conference games and only games against other Power 5's?  16 team playoff running from mid December to mid January?

Then there is the real unspoken elephant in the room....liability.  The NCAA may now become liable for injuries sustained like an employer.  That alone may shut down the sports with low revenue.  Can schools sustain liability for injuries for everything from knees and joints to paralysis?  Will they even take the risk?

I think 5 years from now the idea of an athletic scholarship will be a distant memory.  Football playoff will become reality and college sports will openly become the big business it always was hiding behind the skirts of academia.  The money will just be too big to ignore the exploitation of labor which is too often poor and completely unrepresented needs to be corrected.  I think the wording of the ruling clearly drives this point home.

The NCAA probably has one shot to get its house in order before additional legal action does it for them.

At the big-time programs, the only thin connection will be that the athletes have to be students taking classes at the school (presumably).  I don't really care if those students are getting paid or not, as long as they are actually taking classes.  Of course, we know what happens there - but that is something that could still be enforceable by an NCAA-type organization.

Maybe what will happen will be most schools will become like D3 is now, (gasp) playing sports because their students like to play them, and their alumni support them.

Calling all the intricacies and complexities associated with this a "hot mess" would be a ridiculous understatement.  All of this is so super-massive that it makes me wonder if searching for the simplest solution would be best.  What seems to be the biggest issue here?  Schools are making tons of money off the backs of poor student athletes and most feel that isn't okay.  It wasn't always this way, right?  So if the massive amounts of money can somehow be removed from the equation, it stands to reason that the problem would go away.

I am just thinking out loud here so this is all half-baked - at best.  But when you start thinking about title IX, all the small sports vs football & basketball, scholarship limits, divisional status, private vs public institutions, how non-NCAA orgs and institutions play in to this, students taking "real" classes vs fake classes, liabilities, sponsors & agents preying on players and their families, the lobbies associated with alcohol, food and other sponsors and partners and about a billion other very real and significant pieces to this puzzle, does it even make good sense to TRY to navigate through all the complexities?  I am not sure anyone can even comprehend at this point exactly how deep this rabbit hole will go.  Or that fact that there are likely thousands of rabbit holes.  Think about the massive machine this all is.  The inertia of it all.  Then consider all the inevitable legal challenges that will handcuff the "fix" for decades and I'm not sure there's a solid argument that this can all be solved in our life time.  The show must and will go on, so that means everything has to be "fixed" WHILE it all continues to barrel down the interstate going 100 mph.  Blowing it all up and starting from scratch isn't an option.  Not without shutting all college athletics down for decades or more until all the bugs are ironed out.

I'm really just spouting off out of frustration, but the really big money has brought the fundamental problem on.  I have no clue how the big money (not all of it because you'll need some) could be removed, but most of the issues being brought up could be mitigated if there wasn't this massive pile of money that everyone feels entitled to get a piece of.  So maybe look into how we can remove the big money.  I don't know.  Maybe donate it to charity?  I'm reminded of my mother taking an entire privilege away from us kids when we couldn't find a way to make it work for everyone.  "You kids can't find a way to share?  Then I'll just take it away from all of you."  I am longing for some "mom" to come in and slap some sense into us like that.  I am not a fan of the NCAA at all, but the problems associated with all of this can't be fixed by blowing up the NCAA.  It's infinitely more complex than just the NCAA. Kill the NCAA and what is guaranteed to happen?  Something else will swoop in and fill that void immediately.  It'd be awfully presumptuous to assume that new entity will execute things in good faith and be virtuous to everyone involved.  And it'd be wise for everyone to understand that before we take one step forward.  I think it's human nature to want pin the blame on as few people as possible because that makes us feel like we can fix things quicker.

@old_school posted:

the crazy thing is part of me thinks the NCAA is the worst organization in he free so screw them...the other side i see massive unintended consequences and that college sports as we know them are dead. is that good or bad?

I believe, fear, that ultimately the student athletes are going to be the losers here. I am actually quite sure of it. I have no doubt the P5 money generators and a few other one off will be better off for it. In the larger view I expect all other athletes to have it worse... men's and women's varsity sports. I hope I am wrong.

I think you are right.  As bad as the NCAA is, at least all the schools and players got screwed more or less equally by a uniform set of rules, so there is a fair basis of competition across a lot of schools.  If this uniformity breaks down, and it seems inevitable that it will, then competitive sports are done... or perhaps pushed into a small number of schools that create quasi super-leagues for the top of the elite athletes.  I don't expect college sports as we know it to be around for my grandkids to enjoy.

When everyone (and I've now read a lot of editorials) is predicting "the end of college sports," that's when I start feeling optimistic.  After all, there were college sports long before ESPN, and people even cared about them, they were local, especially in places that didn't have professional teams.

Are kids participating in high-school sports only to get college scholarships?  Or for all the other reasons - being part of a team, fitness, personal growth, their parents did it, and because it's fun?

This is aimed at the elite athletes whose programs use their name, image and likeness and profit from it. Coaches in big time sports programs, especially in football, are getting rich off of the athletes. Nick Saban, 9.1m, Ed Oregon 8.7m, Dabo 9.3m, Jimbo 7.5m as examples.

I remember this being a discussion when Khalil Greene's image was consistantly used in magazines for sports gear.  People wanted to know if Clemson was paid for his likeness.

I agree it is aimed at the elite…but we can certainly agree it will effect everyone in some fashion. It is kind of like making a salad with a chainsaw!

It's money like it always is.  There are three primary sources, football and basketball gates and TV dollars attached to them.

I think the Power 5 will ultimately look to cut their own deals and form their own "league" for basketball and football and NCAA will run the rest of it.  March madness will be the hurdle there.  The Mid-majors actually make that whole thing interesting.

The Power 5 may continue to support the non revenue sports because of their own conference TV deals.  They need the content.  The rest will move toward the D3 model.

Football will continue at smaller schools since it will still draw decent crowds but Power 5 will start to fully resemble NFL and will become more divorced from school as time goes by and it will be a genuine minor league committed to developing NFL labor.  I believe the development of coaching will happen and you will see tighter relationships between NFL teams and college programs.  It could go as far as baseball where affiliations are created where each NFL team has two college programs associated with them like minor league teams.  That opens up issues on recruiting i.e. draft of HS players but that is down the line.

Basketball needs to become a place where iffy NBA players stay for 2nd and 3rd seasons.  Game will be improved and they may actually fully mature and improve before moving on.  I think the key there will be granting service time for players that stay in school.  That will require CBA work in NBA but may stem the rush of ill prepared players to pros.

One last thought.  I suspect the schools will continue to attempt to lowball compensation of players and this will be an ongoing battle until some sort of player representation is established.  This is 1973 MLB landscape for college sports and free agency is about to become reality. 

Kids already cashing in.  Saw Miami QB picked up $20k for hawking t-shirts and a set of pretty blonde twin hoopsters from Fresno St are pitching supplements among others already grabbing deals.

Wait until some Heisman candidate picks up $1mm from Nike or Addidas.  Genie is out of the bottle I think.

So, I remember having a very similar discussion about some of these issues 10 years ago on this website.  Everybody was concerned that if they take away the revenue sports that the schools will cut athletics altogether.  We've seen some of that at the lower levels, we've also seen schools cut football out entirely because  football was unprofitable, and the risk of brain injuries to young men.   It amazes me that it has taken 10 years for one of the branches of gov't to step in and turn over the NCAAs apple cart.   I'm just shocked it was the Supreme Court.   

The NCAA is/was basically a money making monopoly protected by a staff of 500 lawyers.   Not so much anymore given those lawyers didn't make their case to the Supreme Court.  They are exposed and will become a shell of the policy wonks they used to be, but it is going to take time.   They just took a few body blows by the US Supreme Court.   Are they finished?  No, but it is going to be a slow and agonizing end for the NCAA as more conferences, schools, players and media giants find ways to make the money flow directly through them and not the NCAA.   The NCAA needs to find a different way to add value like everybody else in this world.  Their static system of doing things in a dynamic world doesn't work any more.   "Adapt or perish"...H.G. Wells.

I hope I live long enough to see it.

As always, JMO.

Fenway - agree the power 5 will separate from NCAA no later than the expiration of current deals on March madness and Football playoff.

I also think the power 5 will shrink to some combo of SEC, Big 10 and Pac 12 with ACC and Big 12 getting folded in and some schools dropped.  Conference TV deals will drive this.  The sunny side of that is the need for content may save some sports at those schools.

The rest will revert to 125 years ago except those that are competitive in basketball and football and the NCAA might survive to coordinate the DII and DIII championships and TV deals.

So what happens when a Heisman candidate at say a Nike school decides to sign a deal with Adidas? Those school sponsorships seem like they’d lose a ton of value if they can’t control what the players wear

@TerribleBPthrower posted:

So what happens when a Heisman candidate at say a Nike school decides to sign a deal with Adidas? Those school sponsorships seem like they’d lose a ton of value if they can’t control what the players wear

And that's a problem because . . . ???

@anotherparent posted:

And that's a problem because . . . ???

No problem at all. Just curious what will happen to them.

It would be great it if gets shoe companies out of college sports.

I agree. I’d also like to get rid of ESPN or at least fix the way they’ve monetized the sport over the past 20 years. I guess it was only a matter of time before execs figured out how to cash in on such a popular sport.

My guess on the shoe deals is the money might stop going to coaches and schools and start going to players....imagine that!  Uniform deals will probably continue since that is in control of the school.

Sonny Vaccaro clones will be pairing kids with schools on top of sneakers.

The NCAA is utterly and completely unprepared to deal with this. Gotta love it.

"Local MMA team makes landmark $540,000 total NIL commitment to Miami football players"

https://www.miamiherald.com/sp...rticle252592583.html

it is going get crazy, bunches of 18-22 year olds running around campus with tons of extra cash...oh i wonder what could go wrong. I guess the good news is they will have plenty of cash for defense attorneys.

let the claims of racism, sexism, abuse so forth start in 3,2,1....it is gonna be quite a show.

@MidAtlanticDad posted:

The NCAA is utterly and completely unprepared to deal with this. Gotta love it.

"Local MMA team makes landmark $540,000 total NIL commitment to Miami football players"

https://www.miamiherald.com/sp...rticle252592583.html

This place is 2 traffic lights away from where I live.  Hole in the wall but it's #1 is Conor McGregor.

I am wondering how far this is going to go before programs put a stop to it. These kids will have company reps all over them. Hopefully they will have fair representation from advisors and attorneys.