I've been meaning to post about this for awhile. In a nutshell, this lawsuit is about whether the standard NCAA scholarship which permanently assigns a player's likeness to the NCAA violates anti-trust laws. Here, here, and here are some links about it.
These past two weeks have involved a lot of driving for me, so I have racked up a lot of sports talk radio hours. For obvious reasons (namely protect their networks valuable relationships with the NCAA) the talk show hosts are being openly hostile and dismissive of any claims to pay NCAA atheletes. This post is going to briefly summarize the common lay-person objections with my response.
1. Players are paid fairly with a scholarship and associated benefits - This is missing the point. The point is the players can't negotiate. If I am Johnny Manziel, maybe I desire additional compensation beyond my athletic scholarship. However, the NCAA says I can't. Further, Johnny Football's likeness is quite a valuable asset - and forever assigning its use to the NCAA is just highway robbery (without an arms-length negotiation that is)
2. Law Students, Medical Students etc... others don't get paid while at school - That is sort of true. However, there is nothing precluding professional students from obtaining employment during school or during breaks at any compensation. And, there is no real setting limits on scholarship terms for potential law students - I imagine a law school could make a pretty sweet compensation offer to a potential student who had Supreme Court written on them, to reap the later benefits of having an alumnus on SCOTUS.
3. Without Football or March Madness Money there'd be no resources for other sports - This is really the last refuge of the damned i.e. claiming some higher purpose for something of questionable legality. The reality is that Nick Saban isn't going to assign his likeness to fund Alabama's Woman's Golf team, nor should any of his players have the profits from their likenesses be unilaterally misappropriated as well.
Whatever funding necessary for the "non-revenue" sports should come from somewhere else. It might sound callous, but that is really the only fair answer.
I like College Football a lot and have since I was a very young kid. However, I can't support a system that exploits its labor like this. The players have no right to organize, no ability to negotiate, and when they graduate (i.e. no longer obstenible amatuers) no ability to get compensated for others profiting off their likeness. So this year, I'm going to try to pay less attention, even though I probably will fail.
