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Kliavkoff and Sankey meeting with US senators on Thursday
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Post: #41
RE: Kliavkoff and Sankey meeting with US senators on Thursday
(05-10-2022 08:53 AM)mpurdy22 Wrote:  Perspective:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/terencemoor...192d393604

"...By last summer, NCAA officials saw the inevitable, which was legal challenges they would lose. They sighed, and then they lifted their ban on what became known as NILs, even though they knew their move would lead to what became known as collectives. They knew those collectives would turn college football and basketball into the wild, wild west (east, north and south), with athletes going to the highest bidder to create a poor man’s NFL and NBA.

Still, NCAA officials pretended they could do something to keep the mid-majors from vanishing due to all of this and the middle-to-lower teams in power conferences from becoming irrelevant.

You may laugh some more."

I disagree with that. I think a lot of ADs and Presidents were blindsided by what happened with NILs. Maybe some foresaw that, but the slowness with which most schools have moved tells me most were surprised. I certainly never heard talk about "collectives." I was surprised just how big the dollars were.

Its funny to hear them quote Saban saying they would not use it to recruit players and then he was the first coach I heard brag about it, how his QB who had never played would get 7 figures in an NIL deal.
05-10-2022 12:02 PM
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RE: Kliavkoff and Sankey meeting with US senators on Thursday
My concern with NILs was drawing the line between "gifts" and legitimate NIL use for advertising. It seems clear finding that line is impossible. You've got totally legitimate NILs like the LSU gymnast who is earning 6 or 7 figures with the social media following she personally developed. But how do you say 50k for all Longhorn linemen to do a few community events is legitimate or not? They do have commitments they have to meet.

I honestly don't see much they can do to regulate it legally.

(note-I suspect the IRS will litigate a lot over the next few decades with donors over what is a legitimate charitable donation or business expense).
(This post was last modified: 05-10-2022 12:09 PM by bullet.)
05-10-2022 12:07 PM
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Post: #43
RE: Kliavkoff and Sankey meeting with US senators on Thursday
(05-10-2022 08:53 AM)mpurdy22 Wrote:  Perspective:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/terencemoor...192d393604

Thank you for sharing 04-cheers
05-10-2022 12:25 PM
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Post: #44
RE: Kliavkoff and Sankey meeting with US senators on Thursday
No break away ... yet ...



But obviously the rumors are starting and people are looking into it. Otherwise they would have to say it's not happening. Personally I think everyone wants to see the lay of the land with the next round of contracts and how the NIL and enforcement plays out. But in a couple years, all bets are off.
05-10-2022 12:32 PM
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Wedge Offline
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Post: #45
RE: Kliavkoff and Sankey meeting with US senators on Thursday
(05-10-2022 12:32 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  No break away ... yet ...



But obviously the rumors are starting and people are looking into it. Otherwise they would have to say it's not happening. Personally I think everyone wants to see the lay of the land with the next round of contracts and how the NIL and enforcement plays out. But in a couple years, all bets are off.

Yeah, Phillips might as well have inserted "at this time" in that sentence.

It's like when someone argues with their spouse constantly but says, "I'm not asking for a divorce." Obviously it means they are not asking for one right now; it's not a promise that they will never want a divorce.
05-10-2022 01:38 PM
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Post: #46
RE: Kliavkoff and Sankey meeting with US senators on Thursday
(05-10-2022 12:02 PM)bullet Wrote:  
(05-10-2022 08:53 AM)mpurdy22 Wrote:  Perspective:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/terencemoor...192d393604

Its funny to hear them quote Saban saying they would not use it to recruit players and then he was the first coach I heard brag about it, how his QB who had never played would get 7 figures in an NIL deal.

Bryce Young got his NIL deal while he was attending Alabama, not as incentive to attend Alabama. Saban does not want NIL deals to be used to recruit players or entice players to transfer. Jordan Addison's possible transfer to USC and a five-star football recruit receiving an $8 million dollar NIL deal with a signing bonus of $350,000 are among the cases that are raising alarms. The five-star recruit is probably quarterback Nico Iamaleava out of Southern California. He committed to Tennessee last month. California law allows high school athletes to collect NIL money.

There are all sorts of rumors about Addison's deal with USC, with one being a deal for $3 million dollars and a house. There are definitely boosters at USC that could easily afford that. Congress can help fix this but that may take a while. The belated NIL guidelines issued yesterday by the NCAA will probably not help much.
05-10-2022 02:45 PM
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Post: #47
RE: Kliavkoff and Sankey meeting with US senators on Thursday
(05-10-2022 02:45 PM)SoCalBobcat78 Wrote:  
(05-10-2022 12:02 PM)bullet Wrote:  
(05-10-2022 08:53 AM)mpurdy22 Wrote:  Perspective:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/terencemoor...192d393604

Its funny to hear them quote Saban saying they would not use it to recruit players and then he was the first coach I heard brag about it, how his QB who had never played would get 7 figures in an NIL deal.

Bryce Young got his NIL deal while he was attending Alabama, not as incentive to attend Alabama. Saban does not want NIL deals to be used to recruit players or entice players to transfer. Jordan Addison's possible transfer to USC and a five-star football recruit receiving an $8 million dollar NIL deal with a signing bonus of $350,000 are among the cases that are raising alarms. The five-star recruit is probably quarterback Nico Iamaleava out of Southern California. He committed to Tennessee last month. California law allows high school athletes to collect NIL money.

There are all sorts of rumors about Addison's deal with USC, with one being a deal for $3 million dollars and a house. There are definitely boosters at USC that could easily afford that. Congress can help fix this but that may take a while. The belated NIL guidelines issued yesterday by the NCAA will probably not help much.

As I recall, Saban was talking about one of his new recruits who got that deal after signing. And he was using that new recruit's deal as an incentive for other recruits. Whether it was an existing player or new recruit, Saban was first out the door using NIL to recruit athletes. Hypocrisy is one of Saban's strongest traits.
05-10-2022 02:58 PM
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Post: #48
RE: Kliavkoff and Sankey meeting with US senators on Thursday
(05-10-2022 08:14 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  
(05-10-2022 06:40 AM)AllTideUp Wrote:  
(05-08-2022 12:02 PM)Wedge Wrote:  Employees don't have to have contracts. Let's say that playing football is a paying job for a student, like working in a bookstore or cafeteria on campus. The students working the cash registers at the bookstore can quit at any time for any reason. They can leave to take a better paying job off campus, they can leave because they are transferring to a different college, they can leave because they think the bookstore's boss is a jerk, or for any other reason.

(05-08-2022 12:31 PM)bullet Wrote:  Indentured servitude is illegal. Employees in the USA are pretty much free to move. In very limited cases you have penalties like with coaches. And you do get some non-compete agreements. But those have to be limited--for example you could prevent them from transferring to one of your conference mates or scheduled opponents for the next couple of years, but not from transferring to any college.

You two are missing my point.

We will end up with contractual employment(which is not indentured servitude or else private companies in this country are going to have a lot of explaining to do) if we enter a world where the athletes are employees. Professional athletes tend to have contracts which is precisely what they will be. I never said contracts are a condition of any form of employment, I said it will end up moving that direction in this hypothetical world we're navigating.

There's no way the schools will employ them and enter a world of shifted dynamics and not require contracts. If the kids can just up and leave at any time then their pay/privileges will be commensurate. Nobody is worried about the kid who quits his job at the library so there's mechanism to motivate him staying. That's also why they get paid very little.

Coaches get paid a crap ton of money and guess what, they've got contracts as a form of guarantee to the payer. The schools/ADs will be the payers in this instance and it's a big business. They're not going to give the athletes the whole ball of wax. With real payment will come real responsibility and real consequences.

Thus if the kids want to take being a pro-athlete seriously then they won't break their contract. If there's any sort of uniform system of competition then the other schools won't sign transferring kids to a new contract if it's outside a established standard of rules for the new employment structure...just like professional leagues. You can just decide to quit one team and join another because you feel like it.

Remember there is no right to be employed by a school if you decide to enroll at a new school. Johnny can quit the library, but that doesn't mean the library at the school down the road is required to hire him for the same role.

It's like I've been trying to tell you people. Students and university employees are not the same thing. You can't truly be both. Johnny working at the library isn't eligible for benefits or a host of other things that genuine employees are eligible for...the fact that he is getting paid for labor is deceptive. His role, both legally and practically, is that of a student. Everything about his experience is filtered through that paradigm.

The librarian is a different matter. That person was hired to aid in the function of the operation of the school itself. Everything about their experience is filtered through that paradigm. This is true despite the fact that employees at colleges tend to have the ability to take courses as one of their benefits. Just because they attend a class and the rules work a little differently for 3 hours a week doesn't mean they're students.

You can't blend the two even if you are able to come up with a superficial way to blur the lines here and there.


Think of this way, students are customers and employees are being paid to meet the needs of the customer. It's a transaction regardless of the nature of academia.

If the athletes become employees then everything changes.

That's actually not true. The fact that the library employee is also a student is completely irrelevant with respect to that employee's legal rights.

For instance, if Johnny is working at the school library for 30 hours or more per week, then the school is required to provide him with health care benefits by law under the ACA. Even if Johnny is working just a few hours per week, minimum wage laws, Title VII, OSHA, ADA, workers compensation, and a whole host of other employment-related regulations apply to that student employee in the EXACT same way as any other employee. The fact that he is a student doesn't magically mean that there are suddenly different employment rules that the schools can avoid versus hiring a non-student employee.

On the flip side, the fact that Johnny is an employee getting paid at the school library also doesn't turn him into a non-student. This ought to be basic stuff, but if someone is taking classes in accordance with academic requirements, then that person is a student regardless of whether they are getting paid as an employee or not. That would be the case whether it's a library worker or an athlete as we're discussing here. There might be an internal distinction between having full-time student status (taking 15 hours per semester) versus part-time student status (taking 3 hours a semester), but how much that person is working is similarly irrelevant to that student status. If the full-time librarian that works 40 hours a week is also taking a full-time class load of 15 hours per semester, then that librarian is every bit of a full-time student as someone that doesn't work at all while attending school.

THAT is what all of the "sky is falling" crowd needs to get through their heads. I see absolutely no incongruence between an athlete getting paid and being able to be a student. LOTS (e.g. MILLIONS) of non-athlete students are in similar situations. These subjective distinctions that many of us build up in our heads (e.g. the student library worker versus the full-time librarian example that you've provided) are completely meaningless. Being a student doesn't magically allow schools to avoid employment laws, including but not limited to providing health benefits where required. At the same time, being a full-time employee similarly doesn't magically mean that you're not a full-time student when you're still taking a full-time class load. Being an employee and being a student are pretty objective definitions and a person can absolutely be both at the same time. We know this because MILLIONS OF PEOPLE are in that situation.

Essentially, all of these breathless threads on this forum along with the NCAA are trying to argue one thing: student-athletes are somehow a different class of people that should be treated different than EVERY other type of student AND employee in America simply because we don't like it when our sports teams can't compete with the ones with more money. At the same time, they worry that all of this is somehow new for athletes and changes all types of status and it now means athletes somehow can't be employees and students at the same time... even though millions of people across the country are both employees and students at the same time without issue.

The myopia of too many sports fans is that they think that paying student-athletes is somehow abnormal when the reality is the fact that they *weren't* being paid is what was abnormal compared to the entire rest of society. The courts and legislators are starting to reflect this and they are rightfully coming down forcefully on breaking down the previously abnormal system.

Frank,

As Doc Brown would say...you're not thinking 4th dimensionally.

Labor laws are designed to protect individuals who need employment in order to provide for themselves. How many college students need to work 30-40 hours a week in order to meet ends meet? A fairly high percentage of them are being supported directly by their parents. Some are receiving financial aid to cover basic expenses. Some are working to have a little spending money when they aren't studying.

The vast majority of college students I have known and have interacted with don't work nearly that much every week for an employer that would be forced to comply with the ACA. The stipulations of the law don't mean anything if they're not met.

Some time ago, before the ACA admittedly, I managed student workers for a department at a major university. I directly supervised dozens of them at any given time over the course of nearly 2 years. Do you know how many of them were working 30 hours a week on even a semi-regular basis? Not one. Why? They were students. And many of the student employees were not affluent by any reasonable measure...don't offer that qualifier.

More to the point, the idea that employees are eligible for certain benefits is an illustration of the point, not the core concept being debated. It doesn't matter what you do with the laws with respect to benefits of one sort or another. I don't care if Congress passes a law that states an employee working 4 hours for any company under the sun is now eligible for a host of 100% subsidized benefits. It's not the point. The point is that an employee/employer relationship is fundamentally different than that of a student/institutional relationship.

For example, the tradition thus far has been that the athletes are given certain exemptions and privileges that allow them to pursue an education while also putting in a lot of time towards their chosen sport. Now, we could maintain a system that limits the amount of time they have to practice or work out. Or we could simply abandon it.

I don't mind the idea of limiting their labor, but employers don't think in those terms. Your first and ultimate priority is to complete the job. You'll be paid for it, but you are on the hook if you don't. Your employer, being a university, may offer you the opportunity to take classes as a benefit, but they honestly don't give a crap if you take advantage of it. That's not why the two parties have a relationship. I mean, how many university employees regularly engage in coursework? I doubt it's a high percentage. Your example of millions of people both working and living as students is completely arbitrary. Sure, plenty of people work full time jobs and go to school. I've taken online classes towards the completion of a degree myself and I did it while working full time. BUT GUESS WHAT...I paid for the classes because I wasn't taking courses FROM MY EMPLOYER. Are you sure that millions of university and college employees from around the country are working full time schedules and simultaneously pursuing degrees? I'm guessing that wasn't your point though which, of course, makes it an irrelevant answer to the issue at hand. I wasn't talking about people pursuing education in their spare time...even if pursuing seriously. I was talking about the dynamics of an employee/employer relationship.

Furthermore, the university doesn't give a crap if Johnny works at the library or not. He may or may not. He might work 10 hours here and there and he might quit a month into it. It affects nothing. They want his tuition money and hopefully his donations down the road.

The nature of the two relationships is fundamentally different even if you can blur the lines in certain circumstances. And for heaven's sake, don't give me this nonsense that I'm trying to treat a subset of the population differently. What I want is for college athletes to be given more opportunity, not less. Outlining the inequities in the current system is irrelevant to prescribing a cure. It's like saying: "Wow, all of these factory workers aren't getting paid nearly enough for the value they're providing to their employer. I've got an idea! Why don't we create a system where the top 10% of workers get all the money and we fire the rest of them? That'll be great! The workers that are left will be making tons of cash and live great lives. Who gives a rip about the ones who lose out? That's their problem."

On the whole, we weren't talking about the ethics of paying athletes or even upending the system. We're talking practical mechanisms here. The philosophical musings are distracting to the discussion.

1. I never said the sky was falling. No, the world will keep spinning no matter what happens. What I said is that the powers that be need to be creative in order to preserve what is meaningful about this game.

2. I have never even once opposed NIL.

3. I'm not a fan of direct employment, but since it's coming, I would prefer it be a reasonable system that respects the point of the game. If I want to watch straight professional athletics then that is what I will do because the best athletes will not be on campus. I watch college sports because the participants are tied to the same school I attended or grew up cheering for. There is intended to be a sense of community and common goals and that is especially true given the reality that a tiny, tiny fraction of these athletes will make serious money in the professional ranks. College sports plays a role in elevating thousands of athletes every single year and it is done with a college education and the related connections of being immersed in the respective collegiate community.

4. I think it's completely disingenuous that the same crowd that has jeered the SEC for paying players under the table because it's "cheating" is the same crowd that now believes a thoroughly professional system is the only one that's just and ethical. Nonsense. They paid the kids/families because 9 times out of 10, they needed the support. No one was hurt by that. I would prefer it all be above board, yes, but that's not the same thing as forcing everyone into a cookie cutter mold. What some of you are proposing will harm some people/athletes/students and it will do so unnecessarily. My initial comment was that Congress has the power to regulate interstate commerce. That is indisputable. College sports will be nothing without the ability to play opponents from other states so yes, Congress will have the ability to regulate how labor is defined in that context. What I propose is a framework for that context that respects the educational endeavor.

5. Frankly, I don't even care if people think the schools/ADs are a bunch of hypocrites who have been hoarding money from the athletes for decades. It's irrelevant to the discussion. Life is about transactions. The athletes provide something the schools want and there should be a mutually beneficial dynamic in place to ensure the athletes have something they want as well. That's really the only philosophical argument that needs to be made. What is relevant is that change is coming so we are probably best served by being thoughtful on how that change is implemented rather than raising our fists at the NCAA and their antics...as deplorable as that organization is.

If you're going to misrepresent me then at least examine what I'm actually talking about and not the general aura of whatever you've heard here and there.
05-11-2022 10:07 PM
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Post: #49
RE: Kliavkoff and Sankey meeting with US senators on Thursday
There's sometimes a mindset that these are all going to be professional athletes. However, its a tiny % that will turn pro (as the NCAA ad says). Most of these athletes have no value as a professional in their sport. Most do the sport because they love the game. There's a difference between tutoring or being a TA and playing a game. And yes, having TAs and tutors helps bring in tuition revenue for the school. Nobody is suggesting we pay the marching band and they are probably more likely to have a job after college doing something with music than athletes are doing something with sports. And for the HBCUs, the marching bands may bring in more revenue than football or basketball!

Even though it does seem to be trending that way, I don't think there is anything clear cut about a college athlete being an employee. Yes, football and basketball bring in a lot of money at a few dozen schools. But what is different between the football and basketball athlete and a softball or tennis athlete whose sport may bring in zero revenue? Revenue is a "red flag" but it is also a red herring.
05-12-2022 09:06 AM
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Post: #50
RE: Kliavkoff and Sankey meeting with US senators on Thursday
(05-12-2022 09:06 AM)bullet Wrote:  There's sometimes a mindset that these are all going to be professional athletes. However, its a tiny % that will turn pro (as the NCAA ad says). Most of these athletes have no value as a professional in their sport. Most do the sport because they love the game. There's a difference between tutoring or being a TA and playing a game. And yes, having TAs and tutors helps bring in tuition revenue for the school. Nobody is suggesting we pay the marching band and they are probably more likely to have a job after college doing something with music than athletes are doing something with sports. And for the HBCUs, the marching bands may bring in more revenue than football or basketball!

Even though it does seem to be trending that way, I don't think there is anything clear cut about a college athlete being an employee. Yes, football and basketball bring in a lot of money at a few dozen schools. But what is different between the football and basketball athlete and a softball or tennis athlete whose sport may bring in zero revenue? Revenue is a "red flag" but it is also a red herring.

Do you think marching bands bring in the value to the university that these athletes do? Is there a marching band without the athletic programs?

Is there a recruiting industry dedicated to essentially ranking the value for TAs and marching band, and fans that follow?

These athletes are very valuable to the universities. That’s why we care about them transferring or being bought away mire than other scholarship students. Employment and contracts is required to treat the players differently than other students because of their value
05-12-2022 09:27 AM
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Post: #51
RE: Kliavkoff and Sankey meeting with US senators on Thursday
(05-12-2022 09:27 AM)Big 12 fan too Wrote:  
(05-12-2022 09:06 AM)bullet Wrote:  There's sometimes a mindset that these are all going to be professional athletes. However, its a tiny % that will turn pro (as the NCAA ad says). Most of these athletes have no value as a professional in their sport. Most do the sport because they love the game. There's a difference between tutoring or being a TA and playing a game. And yes, having TAs and tutors helps bring in tuition revenue for the school. Nobody is suggesting we pay the marching band and they are probably more likely to have a job after college doing something with music than athletes are doing something with sports. And for the HBCUs, the marching bands may bring in more revenue than football or basketball!

Even though it does seem to be trending that way, I don't think there is anything clear cut about a college athlete being an employee. Yes, football and basketball bring in a lot of money at a few dozen schools. But what is different between the football and basketball athlete and a softball or tennis athlete whose sport may bring in zero revenue? Revenue is a "red flag" but it is also a red herring.

Do you think marching bands bring in the value to the university that these athletes do? Is there a marching band without the athletic programs?

Is there a recruiting industry dedicated to essentially ranking the value for TAs and marching band, and fans that follow?

These athletes are very valuable to the universities. That’s why we care about them transferring or being bought away mire than other scholarship students. Employment and contracts is required to treat the players differently than other students because of their value

Right - I don't believe whether an athlete would become pro in a particular sport has any relevance as to whether they should be paid in college. What matters is whether that athlete is providing services that are high value while they're attending that college.

We can dance around this all day, but the way that schools treat athletics *show* how much value them. All of us can try to claim that athletics aren't essential to the educational mission and totally discretionary... yet as the old saying goes, "Money talks and BS walks." The highest-paid public employee in virtually every state is a college football or basketball coach and even non-revenue sport coaches get paid more than the typical tenured professor.

As I've stated elsewhere, there's also no single greater hook to gain admission to any university (whether Ivy League, Big Ten or Division III) than being a recruited athlete. It matters more than every single other factor, including but not limited to being a valedictorian, legacy applicant, the child of a huge donor, underrepresented minority status, or winner of national awards in STEM, music, debate or any other non-athletic activity.

So, the onus isn't on the athletes to show why they're valuable to a university. Instead, the onus is on the colleges to show why they somehow believe that those athletes *aren't* valuable to a university when the money that they're spending on athletics and the direct admissions treatment that they provide to top athletes (and not just in football and basketball) show that they put athletics on as high of a pedestal as anything at those schools. The schools *show* how valuable athletics are with how they're treated regardless of how they talk about them as being supposedly non-essential.

Also, for those that are trying to put athletes and other time consuming extracurricular activities (e.g. marching band, cheerleading) into the same bucket, Division I student-athletes (at least in today's environment) have a lot more employment-like restrictions that other students simply don't have. It's not just a matter of time spent. Marching band and cheerleading members may spend a lot of time on their activity, but they don't sign a National Letter of Intent (an employment-like agreement) in order to participate that activity, they're not subject to restrictions if they want to transfer to play in a marching band or be in cheerleading at another school, and they're not at risk of losing a scholarship if they no longer want to participate in that activity. All of those employment-like factors (an agreement that they need to sign with the school in order to participate in an activity, restrictions on their ability to participate in that activity at other schools, and negative repercussions if they stop that activity) are why there's so much legal risk for colleges of having Division I athletes being deemed to be employees. Those factors don't apply to any other student in any other type of extracurricular activity. (Division III athletes don't have those employment-like factors, which is why there's a lot less risk for Division III schools.)
(This post was last modified: 05-12-2022 10:06 AM by Frank the Tank.)
05-12-2022 10:04 AM
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Frank the Tank Online
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Post: #52
RE: Kliavkoff and Sankey meeting with US senators on Thursday
(05-11-2022 10:07 PM)AllTideUp Wrote:  
(05-10-2022 08:14 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  
(05-10-2022 06:40 AM)AllTideUp Wrote:  
(05-08-2022 12:02 PM)Wedge Wrote:  Employees don't have to have contracts. Let's say that playing football is a paying job for a student, like working in a bookstore or cafeteria on campus. The students working the cash registers at the bookstore can quit at any time for any reason. They can leave to take a better paying job off campus, they can leave because they are transferring to a different college, they can leave because they think the bookstore's boss is a jerk, or for any other reason.

(05-08-2022 12:31 PM)bullet Wrote:  Indentured servitude is illegal. Employees in the USA are pretty much free to move. In very limited cases you have penalties like with coaches. And you do get some non-compete agreements. But those have to be limited--for example you could prevent them from transferring to one of your conference mates or scheduled opponents for the next couple of years, but not from transferring to any college.

You two are missing my point.

We will end up with contractual employment(which is not indentured servitude or else private companies in this country are going to have a lot of explaining to do) if we enter a world where the athletes are employees. Professional athletes tend to have contracts which is precisely what they will be. I never said contracts are a condition of any form of employment, I said it will end up moving that direction in this hypothetical world we're navigating.

There's no way the schools will employ them and enter a world of shifted dynamics and not require contracts. If the kids can just up and leave at any time then their pay/privileges will be commensurate. Nobody is worried about the kid who quits his job at the library so there's mechanism to motivate him staying. That's also why they get paid very little.

Coaches get paid a crap ton of money and guess what, they've got contracts as a form of guarantee to the payer. The schools/ADs will be the payers in this instance and it's a big business. They're not going to give the athletes the whole ball of wax. With real payment will come real responsibility and real consequences.

Thus if the kids want to take being a pro-athlete seriously then they won't break their contract. If there's any sort of uniform system of competition then the other schools won't sign transferring kids to a new contract if it's outside a established standard of rules for the new employment structure...just like professional leagues. You can just decide to quit one team and join another because you feel like it.

Remember there is no right to be employed by a school if you decide to enroll at a new school. Johnny can quit the library, but that doesn't mean the library at the school down the road is required to hire him for the same role.

It's like I've been trying to tell you people. Students and university employees are not the same thing. You can't truly be both. Johnny working at the library isn't eligible for benefits or a host of other things that genuine employees are eligible for...the fact that he is getting paid for labor is deceptive. His role, both legally and practically, is that of a student. Everything about his experience is filtered through that paradigm.

The librarian is a different matter. That person was hired to aid in the function of the operation of the school itself. Everything about their experience is filtered through that paradigm. This is true despite the fact that employees at colleges tend to have the ability to take courses as one of their benefits. Just because they attend a class and the rules work a little differently for 3 hours a week doesn't mean they're students.

You can't blend the two even if you are able to come up with a superficial way to blur the lines here and there.


Think of this way, students are customers and employees are being paid to meet the needs of the customer. It's a transaction regardless of the nature of academia.

If the athletes become employees then everything changes.

That's actually not true. The fact that the library employee is also a student is completely irrelevant with respect to that employee's legal rights.

For instance, if Johnny is working at the school library for 30 hours or more per week, then the school is required to provide him with health care benefits by law under the ACA. Even if Johnny is working just a few hours per week, minimum wage laws, Title VII, OSHA, ADA, workers compensation, and a whole host of other employment-related regulations apply to that student employee in the EXACT same way as any other employee. The fact that he is a student doesn't magically mean that there are suddenly different employment rules that the schools can avoid versus hiring a non-student employee.

On the flip side, the fact that Johnny is an employee getting paid at the school library also doesn't turn him into a non-student. This ought to be basic stuff, but if someone is taking classes in accordance with academic requirements, then that person is a student regardless of whether they are getting paid as an employee or not. That would be the case whether it's a library worker or an athlete as we're discussing here. There might be an internal distinction between having full-time student status (taking 15 hours per semester) versus part-time student status (taking 3 hours a semester), but how much that person is working is similarly irrelevant to that student status. If the full-time librarian that works 40 hours a week is also taking a full-time class load of 15 hours per semester, then that librarian is every bit of a full-time student as someone that doesn't work at all while attending school.

THAT is what all of the "sky is falling" crowd needs to get through their heads. I see absolutely no incongruence between an athlete getting paid and being able to be a student. LOTS (e.g. MILLIONS) of non-athlete students are in similar situations. These subjective distinctions that many of us build up in our heads (e.g. the student library worker versus the full-time librarian example that you've provided) are completely meaningless. Being a student doesn't magically allow schools to avoid employment laws, including but not limited to providing health benefits where required. At the same time, being a full-time employee similarly doesn't magically mean that you're not a full-time student when you're still taking a full-time class load. Being an employee and being a student are pretty objective definitions and a person can absolutely be both at the same time. We know this because MILLIONS OF PEOPLE are in that situation.

Essentially, all of these breathless threads on this forum along with the NCAA are trying to argue one thing: student-athletes are somehow a different class of people that should be treated different than EVERY other type of student AND employee in America simply because we don't like it when our sports teams can't compete with the ones with more money. At the same time, they worry that all of this is somehow new for athletes and changes all types of status and it now means athletes somehow can't be employees and students at the same time... even though millions of people across the country are both employees and students at the same time without issue.

The myopia of too many sports fans is that they think that paying student-athletes is somehow abnormal when the reality is the fact that they *weren't* being paid is what was abnormal compared to the entire rest of society. The courts and legislators are starting to reflect this and they are rightfully coming down forcefully on breaking down the previously abnormal system.

Frank,

As Doc Brown would say...you're not thinking 4th dimensionally.

Labor laws are designed to protect individuals who need employment in order to provide for themselves. How many college students need to work 30-40 hours a week in order to meet ends meet? A fairly high percentage of them are being supported directly by their parents. Some are receiving financial aid to cover basic expenses. Some are working to have a little spending money when they aren't studying.

The vast majority of college students I have known and have interacted with don't work nearly that much every week for an employer that would be forced to comply with the ACA. The stipulations of the law don't mean anything if they're not met.

Some time ago, before the ACA admittedly, I managed student workers for a department at a major university. I directly supervised dozens of them at any given time over the course of nearly 2 years. Do you know how many of them were working 30 hours a week on even a semi-regular basis? Not one. Why? They were students. And many of the student employees were not affluent by any reasonable measure...don't offer that qualifier.

More to the point, the idea that employees are eligible for certain benefits is an illustration of the point, not the core concept being debated. It doesn't matter what you do with the laws with respect to benefits of one sort or another. I don't care if Congress passes a law that states an employee working 4 hours for any company under the sun is now eligible for a host of 100% subsidized benefits. It's not the point. The point is that an employee/employer relationship is fundamentally different than that of a student/institutional relationship.

For example, the tradition thus far has been that the athletes are given certain exemptions and privileges that allow them to pursue an education while also putting in a lot of time towards their chosen sport. Now, we could maintain a system that limits the amount of time they have to practice or work out. Or we could simply abandon it.

I don't mind the idea of limiting their labor, but employers don't think in those terms. Your first and ultimate priority is to complete the job. You'll be paid for it, but you are on the hook if you don't. Your employer, being a university, may offer you the opportunity to take classes as a benefit, but they honestly don't give a crap if you take advantage of it. That's not why the two parties have a relationship. I mean, how many university employees regularly engage in coursework? I doubt it's a high percentage. Your example of millions of people both working and living as students is completely arbitrary. Sure, plenty of people work full time jobs and go to school. I've taken online classes towards the completion of a degree myself and I did it while working full time. BUT GUESS WHAT...I paid for the classes because I wasn't taking courses FROM MY EMPLOYER. Are you sure that millions of university and college employees from around the country are working full time schedules and simultaneously pursuing degrees? I'm guessing that wasn't your point though which, of course, makes it an irrelevant answer to the issue at hand. I wasn't talking about people pursuing education in their spare time...even if pursuing seriously. I was talking about the dynamics of an employee/employer relationship.

Furthermore, the university doesn't give a crap if Johnny works at the library or not. He may or may not. He might work 10 hours here and there and he might quit a month into it. It affects nothing. They want his tuition money and hopefully his donations down the road.

The nature of the two relationships is fundamentally different even if you can blur the lines in certain circumstances. And for heaven's sake, don't give me this nonsense that I'm trying to treat a subset of the population differently. What I want is for college athletes to be given more opportunity, not less. Outlining the inequities in the current system is irrelevant to prescribing a cure. It's like saying: "Wow, all of these factory workers aren't getting paid nearly enough for the value they're providing to their employer. I've got an idea! Why don't we create a system where the top 10% of workers get all the money and we fire the rest of them? That'll be great! The workers that are left will be making tons of cash and live great lives. Who gives a rip about the ones who lose out? That's their problem."

On the whole, we weren't talking about the ethics of paying athletes or even upending the system. We're talking practical mechanisms here. The philosophical musings are distracting to the discussion.

1. I never said the sky was falling. No, the world will keep spinning no matter what happens. What I said is that the powers that be need to be creative in order to preserve what is meaningful about this game.

2. I have never even once opposed NIL.

3. I'm not a fan of direct employment, but since it's coming, I would prefer it be a reasonable system that respects the point of the game. If I want to watch straight professional athletics then that is what I will do because the best athletes will not be on campus. I watch college sports because the participants are tied to the same school I attended or grew up cheering for. There is intended to be a sense of community and common goals and that is especially true given the reality that a tiny, tiny fraction of these athletes will make serious money in the professional ranks. College sports plays a role in elevating thousands of athletes every single year and it is done with a college education and the related connections of being immersed in the respective collegiate community.

4. I think it's completely disingenuous that the same crowd that has jeered the SEC for paying players under the table because it's "cheating" is the same crowd that now believes a thoroughly professional system is the only one that's just and ethical. Nonsense. They paid the kids/families because 9 times out of 10, they needed the support. No one was hurt by that. I would prefer it all be above board, yes, but that's not the same thing as forcing everyone into a cookie cutter mold. What some of you are proposing will harm some people/athletes/students and it will do so unnecessarily. My initial comment was that Congress has the power to regulate interstate commerce. That is indisputable. College sports will be nothing without the ability to play opponents from other states so yes, Congress will have the ability to regulate how labor is defined in that context. What I propose is a framework for that context that respects the educational endeavor.

5. Frankly, I don't even care if people think the schools/ADs are a bunch of hypocrites who have been hoarding money from the athletes for decades. It's irrelevant to the discussion. Life is about transactions. The athletes provide something the schools want and there should be a mutually beneficial dynamic in place to ensure the athletes have something they want as well. That's really the only philosophical argument that needs to be made. What is relevant is that change is coming so we are probably best served by being thoughtful on how that change is implemented rather than raising our fists at the NCAA and their antics...as deplorable as that organization is.

If you're going to misrepresent me then at least examine what I'm actually talking about and not the general aura of whatever you've heard here and there.

To be honest, I think we probably agree more than we disagree at least on the 5 points that you've listed. For instance, I never really cared if players were getting paid under the table. I thought that was a byproduct of the market imbalance of an antiquated compensation system (or lack thereof) that's now being corrected.

However, as I noted in my post just before this one, student-athletes are already being treated like employees. Unlike other students, they have to sign a National Letter of Intent (an employment-like agreement) to participate in their activity, are subject to restrictions on their ability to transfer to other schools in order to participate in their activity, and suffer directly negative repercussions (e.g. lose their scholarships) if they choose to leave that activity.

To me, there aren't these silos of "student" and "employee" or any other category. One can be both a student and employee at the same time and it isn't a subjective determination at all. It doesn't matter if the primary intent of a full-time student is to be a student with a side job at the library on the side or the primary intent of a full-time librarian is to be a librarian while taking classes on the side. Both of those people are both students and employees at the same time. Now, they might be at different levels within those respective categories - it's understood that a full-time student with a part-time job has a different profile than a full-time employee that's a part-time student. However, those different profiles doesn't change the fact that both of those people still have both an employment and student relationship with the applicable university. All of the stuff about what a person is primarily there for is a subjective issue.

In any event, all I'm saying that is a university paying an athlete is NOT some type of bright line change that needs to suddenly alter everything that we know about college sports. Student-athletes are already being subject to employment-like agreements and restrictions. Lots of other students have part-time jobs on campus and manage to be both students and employees at the same time without any issue. For as much as I believe the NCAA and colleges need to change their approach, I also believe that the ultimate outcome will end up being a lot less change to the *structure* of college sports (unlike many others here that foresee Armageddon-level changes). I think that schools will largely keep their conferences and everything else with just a new line item to pay athletes because schools (from Stanford to Alabama) keep showing that they really care about maintaining their place at the top level of athletics.
(This post was last modified: 05-12-2022 10:34 AM by Frank the Tank.)
05-12-2022 10:33 AM
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Post: #53
RE: Kliavkoff and Sankey meeting with US senators on Thursday
(05-12-2022 09:27 AM)Big 12 fan too Wrote:  
(05-12-2022 09:06 AM)bullet Wrote:  There's sometimes a mindset that these are all going to be professional athletes. However, its a tiny % that will turn pro (as the NCAA ad says). Most of these athletes have no value as a professional in their sport. Most do the sport because they love the game. There's a difference between tutoring or being a TA and playing a game. And yes, having TAs and tutors helps bring in tuition revenue for the school. Nobody is suggesting we pay the marching band and they are probably more likely to have a job after college doing something with music than athletes are doing something with sports. And for the HBCUs, the marching bands may bring in more revenue than football or basketball!

Even though it does seem to be trending that way, I don't think there is anything clear cut about a college athlete being an employee. Yes, football and basketball bring in a lot of money at a few dozen schools. But what is different between the football and basketball athlete and a softball or tennis athlete whose sport may bring in zero revenue? Revenue is a "red flag" but it is also a red herring.

Do you think marching bands bring in the value to the university that these athletes do? Is there a marching band without the athletic programs?

Is there a recruiting industry dedicated to essentially ranking the value for TAs and marching band, and fans that follow?

These athletes are very valuable to the universities. That’s why we care about them transferring or being bought away mire than other scholarship students. Employment and contracts is required to treat the players differently than other students because of their value

I seem to recall some school having a marching band without a football team.
And yes, the marching bands at HBCUs are attractions themselves. They've done halftime shows without their team being involved. They are what drive a large part of attendance. They "carry" the football team sometimes. HBCUs are of course an exception, but the bands are a huge attraction. In Indiana, the state HS marching band contest can draw 20-25k. Like sports, its a form of entertainment. There's a ranking system for just about everything. I'm sure you could find some list ranking marching bands, just as you have lists ranking party schools.04-cheers
05-12-2022 11:05 AM
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RE: Kliavkoff and Sankey meeting with US senators on Thursday
(05-12-2022 10:33 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  
(05-11-2022 10:07 PM)AllTideUp Wrote:  
(05-10-2022 08:14 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  
(05-10-2022 06:40 AM)AllTideUp Wrote:  
(05-08-2022 12:02 PM)Wedge Wrote:  Employees don't have to have contracts. Let's say that playing football is a paying job for a student, like working in a bookstore or cafeteria on campus. The students working the cash registers at the bookstore can quit at any time for any reason. They can leave to take a better paying job off campus, they can leave because they are transferring to a different college, they can leave because they think the bookstore's boss is a jerk, or for any other reason.

(05-08-2022 12:31 PM)bullet Wrote:  Indentured servitude is illegal. Employees in the USA are pretty much free to move. In very limited cases you have penalties like with coaches. And you do get some non-compete agreements. But those have to be limited--for example you could prevent them from transferring to one of your conference mates or scheduled opponents for the next couple of years, but not from transferring to any college.

You two are missing my point.

We will end up with contractual employment(which is not indentured servitude or else private companies in this country are going to have a lot of explaining to do) if we enter a world where the athletes are employees. Professional athletes tend to have contracts which is precisely what they will be. I never said contracts are a condition of any form of employment, I said it will end up moving that direction in this hypothetical world we're navigating.

There's no way the schools will employ them and enter a world of shifted dynamics and not require contracts. If the kids can just up and leave at any time then their pay/privileges will be commensurate. Nobody is worried about the kid who quits his job at the library so there's mechanism to motivate him staying. That's also why they get paid very little.

Coaches get paid a crap ton of money and guess what, they've got contracts as a form of guarantee to the payer. The schools/ADs will be the payers in this instance and it's a big business. They're not going to give the athletes the whole ball of wax. With real payment will come real responsibility and real consequences.

Thus if the kids want to take being a pro-athlete seriously then they won't break their contract. If there's any sort of uniform system of competition then the other schools won't sign transferring kids to a new contract if it's outside a established standard of rules for the new employment structure...just like professional leagues. You can just decide to quit one team and join another because you feel like it.

Remember there is no right to be employed by a school if you decide to enroll at a new school. Johnny can quit the library, but that doesn't mean the library at the school down the road is required to hire him for the same role.

It's like I've been trying to tell you people. Students and university employees are not the same thing. You can't truly be both. Johnny working at the library isn't eligible for benefits or a host of other things that genuine employees are eligible for...the fact that he is getting paid for labor is deceptive. His role, both legally and practically, is that of a student. Everything about his experience is filtered through that paradigm.

The librarian is a different matter. That person was hired to aid in the function of the operation of the school itself. Everything about their experience is filtered through that paradigm. This is true despite the fact that employees at colleges tend to have the ability to take courses as one of their benefits. Just because they attend a class and the rules work a little differently for 3 hours a week doesn't mean they're students.

You can't blend the two even if you are able to come up with a superficial way to blur the lines here and there.


Think of this way, students are customers and employees are being paid to meet the needs of the customer. It's a transaction regardless of the nature of academia.

If the athletes become employees then everything changes.

That's actually not true. The fact that the library employee is also a student is completely irrelevant with respect to that employee's legal rights.

For instance, if Johnny is working at the school library for 30 hours or more per week, then the school is required to provide him with health care benefits by law under the ACA. Even if Johnny is working just a few hours per week, minimum wage laws, Title VII, OSHA, ADA, workers compensation, and a whole host of other employment-related regulations apply to that student employee in the EXACT same way as any other employee. The fact that he is a student doesn't magically mean that there are suddenly different employment rules that the schools can avoid versus hiring a non-student employee.

On the flip side, the fact that Johnny is an employee getting paid at the school library also doesn't turn him into a non-student. This ought to be basic stuff, but if someone is taking classes in accordance with academic requirements, then that person is a student regardless of whether they are getting paid as an employee or not. That would be the case whether it's a library worker or an athlete as we're discussing here. There might be an internal distinction between having full-time student status (taking 15 hours per semester) versus part-time student status (taking 3 hours a semester), but how much that person is working is similarly irrelevant to that student status. If the full-time librarian that works 40 hours a week is also taking a full-time class load of 15 hours per semester, then that librarian is every bit of a full-time student as someone that doesn't work at all while attending school.

THAT is what all of the "sky is falling" crowd needs to get through their heads. I see absolutely no incongruence between an athlete getting paid and being able to be a student. LOTS (e.g. MILLIONS) of non-athlete students are in similar situations. These subjective distinctions that many of us build up in our heads (e.g. the student library worker versus the full-time librarian example that you've provided) are completely meaningless. Being a student doesn't magically allow schools to avoid employment laws, including but not limited to providing health benefits where required. At the same time, being a full-time employee similarly doesn't magically mean that you're not a full-time student when you're still taking a full-time class load. Being an employee and being a student are pretty objective definitions and a person can absolutely be both at the same time. We know this because MILLIONS OF PEOPLE are in that situation.

Essentially, all of these breathless threads on this forum along with the NCAA are trying to argue one thing: student-athletes are somehow a different class of people that should be treated different than EVERY other type of student AND employee in America simply because we don't like it when our sports teams can't compete with the ones with more money. At the same time, they worry that all of this is somehow new for athletes and changes all types of status and it now means athletes somehow can't be employees and students at the same time... even though millions of people across the country are both employees and students at the same time without issue.

The myopia of too many sports fans is that they think that paying student-athletes is somehow abnormal when the reality is the fact that they *weren't* being paid is what was abnormal compared to the entire rest of society. The courts and legislators are starting to reflect this and they are rightfully coming down forcefully on breaking down the previously abnormal system.

Frank,

As Doc Brown would say...you're not thinking 4th dimensionally.

Labor laws are designed to protect individuals who need employment in order to provide for themselves. How many college students need to work 30-40 hours a week in order to meet ends meet? A fairly high percentage of them are being supported directly by their parents. Some are receiving financial aid to cover basic expenses. Some are working to have a little spending money when they aren't studying.

The vast majority of college students I have known and have interacted with don't work nearly that much every week for an employer that would be forced to comply with the ACA. The stipulations of the law don't mean anything if they're not met.

Some time ago, before the ACA admittedly, I managed student workers for a department at a major university. I directly supervised dozens of them at any given time over the course of nearly 2 years. Do you know how many of them were working 30 hours a week on even a semi-regular basis? Not one. Why? They were students. And many of the student employees were not affluent by any reasonable measure...don't offer that qualifier.

More to the point, the idea that employees are eligible for certain benefits is an illustration of the point, not the core concept being debated. It doesn't matter what you do with the laws with respect to benefits of one sort or another. I don't care if Congress passes a law that states an employee working 4 hours for any company under the sun is now eligible for a host of 100% subsidized benefits. It's not the point. The point is that an employee/employer relationship is fundamentally different than that of a student/institutional relationship.

For example, the tradition thus far has been that the athletes are given certain exemptions and privileges that allow them to pursue an education while also putting in a lot of time towards their chosen sport. Now, we could maintain a system that limits the amount of time they have to practice or work out. Or we could simply abandon it.

I don't mind the idea of limiting their labor, but employers don't think in those terms. Your first and ultimate priority is to complete the job. You'll be paid for it, but you are on the hook if you don't. Your employer, being a university, may offer you the opportunity to take classes as a benefit, but they honestly don't give a crap if you take advantage of it. That's not why the two parties have a relationship. I mean, how many university employees regularly engage in coursework? I doubt it's a high percentage. Your example of millions of people both working and living as students is completely arbitrary. Sure, plenty of people work full time jobs and go to school. I've taken online classes towards the completion of a degree myself and I did it while working full time. BUT GUESS WHAT...I paid for the classes because I wasn't taking courses FROM MY EMPLOYER. Are you sure that millions of university and college employees from around the country are working full time schedules and simultaneously pursuing degrees? I'm guessing that wasn't your point though which, of course, makes it an irrelevant answer to the issue at hand. I wasn't talking about people pursuing education in their spare time...even if pursuing seriously. I was talking about the dynamics of an employee/employer relationship.

Furthermore, the university doesn't give a crap if Johnny works at the library or not. He may or may not. He might work 10 hours here and there and he might quit a month into it. It affects nothing. They want his tuition money and hopefully his donations down the road.

The nature of the two relationships is fundamentally different even if you can blur the lines in certain circumstances. And for heaven's sake, don't give me this nonsense that I'm trying to treat a subset of the population differently. What I want is for college athletes to be given more opportunity, not less. Outlining the inequities in the current system is irrelevant to prescribing a cure. It's like saying: "Wow, all of these factory workers aren't getting paid nearly enough for the value they're providing to their employer. I've got an idea! Why don't we create a system where the top 10% of workers get all the money and we fire the rest of them? That'll be great! The workers that are left will be making tons of cash and live great lives. Who gives a rip about the ones who lose out? That's their problem."

On the whole, we weren't talking about the ethics of paying athletes or even upending the system. We're talking practical mechanisms here. The philosophical musings are distracting to the discussion.

1. I never said the sky was falling. No, the world will keep spinning no matter what happens. What I said is that the powers that be need to be creative in order to preserve what is meaningful about this game.

2. I have never even once opposed NIL.

3. I'm not a fan of direct employment, but since it's coming, I would prefer it be a reasonable system that respects the point of the game. If I want to watch straight professional athletics then that is what I will do because the best athletes will not be on campus. I watch college sports because the participants are tied to the same school I attended or grew up cheering for. There is intended to be a sense of community and common goals and that is especially true given the reality that a tiny, tiny fraction of these athletes will make serious money in the professional ranks. College sports plays a role in elevating thousands of athletes every single year and it is done with a college education and the related connections of being immersed in the respective collegiate community.

4. I think it's completely disingenuous that the same crowd that has jeered the SEC for paying players under the table because it's "cheating" is the same crowd that now believes a thoroughly professional system is the only one that's just and ethical. Nonsense. They paid the kids/families because 9 times out of 10, they needed the support. No one was hurt by that. I would prefer it all be above board, yes, but that's not the same thing as forcing everyone into a cookie cutter mold. What some of you are proposing will harm some people/athletes/students and it will do so unnecessarily. My initial comment was that Congress has the power to regulate interstate commerce. That is indisputable. College sports will be nothing without the ability to play opponents from other states so yes, Congress will have the ability to regulate how labor is defined in that context. What I propose is a framework for that context that respects the educational endeavor.

5. Frankly, I don't even care if people think the schools/ADs are a bunch of hypocrites who have been hoarding money from the athletes for decades. It's irrelevant to the discussion. Life is about transactions. The athletes provide something the schools want and there should be a mutually beneficial dynamic in place to ensure the athletes have something they want as well. That's really the only philosophical argument that needs to be made. What is relevant is that change is coming so we are probably best served by being thoughtful on how that change is implemented rather than raising our fists at the NCAA and their antics...as deplorable as that organization is.

If you're going to misrepresent me then at least examine what I'm actually talking about and not the general aura of whatever you've heard here and there.

To be honest, I think we probably agree more than we disagree at least on the 5 points that you've listed. For instance, I never really cared if players were getting paid under the table. I thought that was a byproduct of the market imbalance of an antiquated compensation system (or lack thereof) that's now being corrected.

However, as I noted in my post just before this one, student-athletes are already being treated like employees. Unlike other students, they have to sign a National Letter of Intent (an employment-like agreement) to participate in their activity, are subject to restrictions on their ability to transfer to other schools in order to participate in their activity, and suffer directly negative repercussions (e.g. lose their scholarships) if they choose to leave that activity.

To me, there aren't these silos of "student" and "employee" or any other category. One can be both a student and employee at the same time and it isn't a subjective determination at all. It doesn't matter if the primary intent of a full-time student is to be a student with a side job at the library on the side or the primary intent of a full-time librarian is to be a librarian while taking classes on the side. Both of those people are both students and employees at the same time. Now, they might be at different levels within those respective categories - it's understood that a full-time student with a part-time job has a different profile than a full-time employee that's a part-time student. However, those different profiles doesn't change the fact that both of those people still have both an employment and student relationship with the applicable university. All of the stuff about what a person is primarily there for is a subjective issue.

In any event, all I'm saying that is a university paying an athlete is NOT some type of bright line change that needs to suddenly alter everything that we know about college sports. Student-athletes are already being subject to employment-like agreements and restrictions. Lots of other students have part-time jobs on campus and manage to be both students and employees at the same time without any issue. For as much as I believe the NCAA and colleges need to change their approach, I also believe that the ultimate outcome will end up being a lot less change to the *structure* of college sports (unlike many others here that foresee Armageddon-level changes). I think that schools will largely keep their conferences and everything else with just a new line item to pay athletes because schools (from Stanford to Alabama) keep showing that they really care about maintaining their place at the top level of athletics.

As I've noted, the ways colleges treat athletes different than other students are problematic. The transfer rules are a particular problem. The rules on outside employment are an issue as well.

Students do commit to certain schools by a certain date. Of course, they can freely change their mind with only financial penalties. Athletes can and do break their LOI. UT signed 3 top Florida recruits one year as part of a high ranking class. One never showed up and the other left after being on campus a week. Now that then gets back to the transfer rules. They have to sit out.

As for scholarships, there are some scholarships linked to particular majors. I wouldn't be surprised if some music scholarships require participation in certain concert activities.
05-12-2022 11:12 AM
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Post: #55
RE: Kliavkoff and Sankey meeting with US senators on Thursday
(05-12-2022 11:12 AM)bullet Wrote:  
(05-12-2022 10:33 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  
(05-11-2022 10:07 PM)AllTideUp Wrote:  
(05-10-2022 08:14 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  
(05-10-2022 06:40 AM)AllTideUp Wrote:  You two are missing my point.

We will end up with contractual employment(which is not indentured servitude or else private companies in this country are going to have a lot of explaining to do) if we enter a world where the athletes are employees. Professional athletes tend to have contracts which is precisely what they will be. I never said contracts are a condition of any form of employment, I said it will end up moving that direction in this hypothetical world we're navigating.

There's no way the schools will employ them and enter a world of shifted dynamics and not require contracts. If the kids can just up and leave at any time then their pay/privileges will be commensurate. Nobody is worried about the kid who quits his job at the library so there's mechanism to motivate him staying. That's also why they get paid very little.

Coaches get paid a crap ton of money and guess what, they've got contracts as a form of guarantee to the payer. The schools/ADs will be the payers in this instance and it's a big business. They're not going to give the athletes the whole ball of wax. With real payment will come real responsibility and real consequences.

Thus if the kids want to take being a pro-athlete seriously then they won't break their contract. If there's any sort of uniform system of competition then the other schools won't sign transferring kids to a new contract if it's outside a established standard of rules for the new employment structure...just like professional leagues. You can just decide to quit one team and join another because you feel like it.

Remember there is no right to be employed by a school if you decide to enroll at a new school. Johnny can quit the library, but that doesn't mean the library at the school down the road is required to hire him for the same role.

It's like I've been trying to tell you people. Students and university employees are not the same thing. You can't truly be both. Johnny working at the library isn't eligible for benefits or a host of other things that genuine employees are eligible for...the fact that he is getting paid for labor is deceptive. His role, both legally and practically, is that of a student. Everything about his experience is filtered through that paradigm.

The librarian is a different matter. That person was hired to aid in the function of the operation of the school itself. Everything about their experience is filtered through that paradigm. This is true despite the fact that employees at colleges tend to have the ability to take courses as one of their benefits. Just because they attend a class and the rules work a little differently for 3 hours a week doesn't mean they're students.

You can't blend the two even if you are able to come up with a superficial way to blur the lines here and there.


Think of this way, students are customers and employees are being paid to meet the needs of the customer. It's a transaction regardless of the nature of academia.

If the athletes become employees then everything changes.

That's actually not true. The fact that the library employee is also a student is completely irrelevant with respect to that employee's legal rights.

For instance, if Johnny is working at the school library for 30 hours or more per week, then the school is required to provide him with health care benefits by law under the ACA. Even if Johnny is working just a few hours per week, minimum wage laws, Title VII, OSHA, ADA, workers compensation, and a whole host of other employment-related regulations apply to that student employee in the EXACT same way as any other employee. The fact that he is a student doesn't magically mean that there are suddenly different employment rules that the schools can avoid versus hiring a non-student employee.

On the flip side, the fact that Johnny is an employee getting paid at the school library also doesn't turn him into a non-student. This ought to be basic stuff, but if someone is taking classes in accordance with academic requirements, then that person is a student regardless of whether they are getting paid as an employee or not. That would be the case whether it's a library worker or an athlete as we're discussing here. There might be an internal distinction between having full-time student status (taking 15 hours per semester) versus part-time student status (taking 3 hours a semester), but how much that person is working is similarly irrelevant to that student status. If the full-time librarian that works 40 hours a week is also taking a full-time class load of 15 hours per semester, then that librarian is every bit of a full-time student as someone that doesn't work at all while attending school.

THAT is what all of the "sky is falling" crowd needs to get through their heads. I see absolutely no incongruence between an athlete getting paid and being able to be a student. LOTS (e.g. MILLIONS) of non-athlete students are in similar situations. These subjective distinctions that many of us build up in our heads (e.g. the student library worker versus the full-time librarian example that you've provided) are completely meaningless. Being a student doesn't magically allow schools to avoid employment laws, including but not limited to providing health benefits where required. At the same time, being a full-time employee similarly doesn't magically mean that you're not a full-time student when you're still taking a full-time class load. Being an employee and being a student are pretty objective definitions and a person can absolutely be both at the same time. We know this because MILLIONS OF PEOPLE are in that situation.

Essentially, all of these breathless threads on this forum along with the NCAA are trying to argue one thing: student-athletes are somehow a different class of people that should be treated different than EVERY other type of student AND employee in America simply because we don't like it when our sports teams can't compete with the ones with more money. At the same time, they worry that all of this is somehow new for athletes and changes all types of status and it now means athletes somehow can't be employees and students at the same time... even though millions of people across the country are both employees and students at the same time without issue.

The myopia of too many sports fans is that they think that paying student-athletes is somehow abnormal when the reality is the fact that they *weren't* being paid is what was abnormal compared to the entire rest of society. The courts and legislators are starting to reflect this and they are rightfully coming down forcefully on breaking down the previously abnormal system.

Frank,

As Doc Brown would say...you're not thinking 4th dimensionally.

Labor laws are designed to protect individuals who need employment in order to provide for themselves. How many college students need to work 30-40 hours a week in order to meet ends meet? A fairly high percentage of them are being supported directly by their parents. Some are receiving financial aid to cover basic expenses. Some are working to have a little spending money when they aren't studying.

The vast majority of college students I have known and have interacted with don't work nearly that much every week for an employer that would be forced to comply with the ACA. The stipulations of the law don't mean anything if they're not met.

Some time ago, before the ACA admittedly, I managed student workers for a department at a major university. I directly supervised dozens of them at any given time over the course of nearly 2 years. Do you know how many of them were working 30 hours a week on even a semi-regular basis? Not one. Why? They were students. And many of the student employees were not affluent by any reasonable measure...don't offer that qualifier.

More to the point, the idea that employees are eligible for certain benefits is an illustration of the point, not the core concept being debated. It doesn't matter what you do with the laws with respect to benefits of one sort or another. I don't care if Congress passes a law that states an employee working 4 hours for any company under the sun is now eligible for a host of 100% subsidized benefits. It's not the point. The point is that an employee/employer relationship is fundamentally different than that of a student/institutional relationship.

For example, the tradition thus far has been that the athletes are given certain exemptions and privileges that allow them to pursue an education while also putting in a lot of time towards their chosen sport. Now, we could maintain a system that limits the amount of time they have to practice or work out. Or we could simply abandon it.

I don't mind the idea of limiting their labor, but employers don't think in those terms. Your first and ultimate priority is to complete the job. You'll be paid for it, but you are on the hook if you don't. Your employer, being a university, may offer you the opportunity to take classes as a benefit, but they honestly don't give a crap if you take advantage of it. That's not why the two parties have a relationship. I mean, how many university employees regularly engage in coursework? I doubt it's a high percentage. Your example of millions of people both working and living as students is completely arbitrary. Sure, plenty of people work full time jobs and go to school. I've taken online classes towards the completion of a degree myself and I did it while working full time. BUT GUESS WHAT...I paid for the classes because I wasn't taking courses FROM MY EMPLOYER. Are you sure that millions of university and college employees from around the country are working full time schedules and simultaneously pursuing degrees? I'm guessing that wasn't your point though which, of course, makes it an irrelevant answer to the issue at hand. I wasn't talking about people pursuing education in their spare time...even if pursuing seriously. I was talking about the dynamics of an employee/employer relationship.

Furthermore, the university doesn't give a crap if Johnny works at the library or not. He may or may not. He might work 10 hours here and there and he might quit a month into it. It affects nothing. They want his tuition money and hopefully his donations down the road.

The nature of the two relationships is fundamentally different even if you can blur the lines in certain circumstances. And for heaven's sake, don't give me this nonsense that I'm trying to treat a subset of the population differently. What I want is for college athletes to be given more opportunity, not less. Outlining the inequities in the current system is irrelevant to prescribing a cure. It's like saying: "Wow, all of these factory workers aren't getting paid nearly enough for the value they're providing to their employer. I've got an idea! Why don't we create a system where the top 10% of workers get all the money and we fire the rest of them? That'll be great! The workers that are left will be making tons of cash and live great lives. Who gives a rip about the ones who lose out? That's their problem."

On the whole, we weren't talking about the ethics of paying athletes or even upending the system. We're talking practical mechanisms here. The philosophical musings are distracting to the discussion.

1. I never said the sky was falling. No, the world will keep spinning no matter what happens. What I said is that the powers that be need to be creative in order to preserve what is meaningful about this game.

2. I have never even once opposed NIL.

3. I'm not a fan of direct employment, but since it's coming, I would prefer it be a reasonable system that respects the point of the game. If I want to watch straight professional athletics then that is what I will do because the best athletes will not be on campus. I watch college sports because the participants are tied to the same school I attended or grew up cheering for. There is intended to be a sense of community and common goals and that is especially true given the reality that a tiny, tiny fraction of these athletes will make serious money in the professional ranks. College sports plays a role in elevating thousands of athletes every single year and it is done with a college education and the related connections of being immersed in the respective collegiate community.

4. I think it's completely disingenuous that the same crowd that has jeered the SEC for paying players under the table because it's "cheating" is the same crowd that now believes a thoroughly professional system is the only one that's just and ethical. Nonsense. They paid the kids/families because 9 times out of 10, they needed the support. No one was hurt by that. I would prefer it all be above board, yes, but that's not the same thing as forcing everyone into a cookie cutter mold. What some of you are proposing will harm some people/athletes/students and it will do so unnecessarily. My initial comment was that Congress has the power to regulate interstate commerce. That is indisputable. College sports will be nothing without the ability to play opponents from other states so yes, Congress will have the ability to regulate how labor is defined in that context. What I propose is a framework for that context that respects the educational endeavor.

5. Frankly, I don't even care if people think the schools/ADs are a bunch of hypocrites who have been hoarding money from the athletes for decades. It's irrelevant to the discussion. Life is about transactions. The athletes provide something the schools want and there should be a mutually beneficial dynamic in place to ensure the athletes have something they want as well. That's really the only philosophical argument that needs to be made. What is relevant is that change is coming so we are probably best served by being thoughtful on how that change is implemented rather than raising our fists at the NCAA and their antics...as deplorable as that organization is.

If you're going to misrepresent me then at least examine what I'm actually talking about and not the general aura of whatever you've heard here and there.

To be honest, I think we probably agree more than we disagree at least on the 5 points that you've listed. For instance, I never really cared if players were getting paid under the table. I thought that was a byproduct of the market imbalance of an antiquated compensation system (or lack thereof) that's now being corrected.

However, as I noted in my post just before this one, student-athletes are already being treated like employees. Unlike other students, they have to sign a National Letter of Intent (an employment-like agreement) to participate in their activity, are subject to restrictions on their ability to transfer to other schools in order to participate in their activity, and suffer directly negative repercussions (e.g. lose their scholarships) if they choose to leave that activity.

To me, there aren't these silos of "student" and "employee" or any other category. One can be both a student and employee at the same time and it isn't a subjective determination at all. It doesn't matter if the primary intent of a full-time student is to be a student with a side job at the library on the side or the primary intent of a full-time librarian is to be a librarian while taking classes on the side. Both of those people are both students and employees at the same time. Now, they might be at different levels within those respective categories - it's understood that a full-time student with a part-time job has a different profile than a full-time employee that's a part-time student. However, those different profiles doesn't change the fact that both of those people still have both an employment and student relationship with the applicable university. All of the stuff about what a person is primarily there for is a subjective issue.

In any event, all I'm saying that is a university paying an athlete is NOT some type of bright line change that needs to suddenly alter everything that we know about college sports. Student-athletes are already being subject to employment-like agreements and restrictions. Lots of other students have part-time jobs on campus and manage to be both students and employees at the same time without any issue. For as much as I believe the NCAA and colleges need to change their approach, I also believe that the ultimate outcome will end up being a lot less change to the *structure* of college sports (unlike many others here that foresee Armageddon-level changes). I think that schools will largely keep their conferences and everything else with just a new line item to pay athletes because schools (from Stanford to Alabama) keep showing that they really care about maintaining their place at the top level of athletics.

As I've noted, the ways colleges treat athletes different than other students are problematic. The transfer rules are a particular problem. The rules on outside employment are an issue as well.

Students do commit to certain schools by a certain date. Of course, they can freely change their mind with only financial penalties. Athletes can and do break their LOI. UT signed 3 top Florida recruits one year as part of a high ranking class. One never showed up and the other left after being on campus a week. Now that then gets back to the transfer rules. They have to sit out.

As for scholarships, there are some scholarships linked to particular majors. I wouldn't be surprised if some music scholarships require participation in certain concert activities.

Sure - it all comes back to what schools want to prioritize.

If they don't care about athletes transferring and remove restrictions while not requiring athletes to sign a National Letter of Intent, then they have a better argument that there isn't a de facto employment relationship. They could go to a Division III model if that's what the schools *truly* care about here.

However, I think this whole discussion comes down to what these schools truly care about at the end. If schools care about athlete transfer restrictions (and it seems that they want to continue to do so considering that the latest proposal is to reduce the transfer portal window), then they bear the risk of being looked at like an employer.

Similarly, do schools still want to get paid top dollar to have games shown on ESPN/FOX/NBC/etc.? Do they still want to sell tens of thousands of tickets for each football game and charge for luxury suites? Do they still want the benefits of playing in the NCAA Tournament (or whatever is the future top level basketball event)?

All of these fuzzy platitudes about what the student-athlete model is supposed to be are all well and good. However, ultimately, what do the schools *really* want? At least to me, if they really want all of the aforementioned benefits, then there might be additional costs of doing business going forward (including but not limited to student-athletes needing to be considered to be employees). It's easy for all of these schools to complain about the additional costs of doing business since they haven't been doing them before. However, you're not seeing these schools talking about what it would mean to give up all of the benefits of being at the top level of athletics - they're trying to paint a fantasy that a school like Notre Dame can engage in whatever they define to be a "reasonable model" that's more discrete or honorable than outright pay-for-play and still sell 80,000-plus tickets each week and continue to have their games on national TV... but they're in denial that all of that may very well go away if they separate themselves from that top level. When *that* is impacted and put at risk, then that's when you'll really see the true colors of where each particular school actually stands on this issue.
05-12-2022 11:25 AM
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Wedge Offline
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Post: #56
RE: Kliavkoff and Sankey meeting with US senators on Thursday
(05-12-2022 11:25 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  All of these fuzzy platitudes about what the student-athlete model is supposed to be are all well and good. However, ultimately, what do the schools *really* want? At least to me, if they really want all of the aforementioned benefits, then there might be additional costs of doing business going forward (including but not limited to student-athletes needing to be considered to be employees).

Right, athletes being classified as employees is not their only issue, IMO not even their biggest issue. The biggest issue is schools agreeing, through the NCAA or otherwise, to rules that restrict athlete movement and/or compensation. Suppose colleges give in on athletes-as-employees, but then want to restrict movement by signing them to a one-year or even a four-year contract. They can't lawfully standardize that among all D-I or FBS schools.

To use a real-world employee example, if Apple tells an engineer he has to sign a one-year contract and can't work for a competitor during that time, he can sign it, or he can go work someplace where they don't ask for a contract. But if every large tech company has agreed amongst themselves that engineers can only work there if they sign a contract of at least one year, that agreement is probably illegal. The same problem will exist for any group of colleges that agrees to require athletes to sign a contract limiting their ability to move to a team at another college.
(This post was last modified: 05-12-2022 12:04 PM by Wedge.)
05-12-2022 12:00 PM
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Post: #57
RE: Kliavkoff and Sankey meeting with US senators on Thursday
(05-12-2022 12:00 PM)Wedge Wrote:  
(05-12-2022 11:25 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  All of these fuzzy platitudes about what the student-athlete model is supposed to be are all well and good. However, ultimately, what do the schools *really* want? At least to me, if they really want all of the aforementioned benefits, then there might be additional costs of doing business going forward (including but not limited to student-athletes needing to be considered to be employees).

Right, athletes being classified as employees is not their only issue, IMO not even their biggest issue. The biggest issue is schools agreeing, through the NCAA or otherwise, to rules that restrict athlete movement and/or compensation. Suppose colleges give in on athletes-as-employees, but then want to restrict movement by signing them to a one-year or even a four-year contract. They can't lawfully standardize that among all D-I or FBS schools.

To use a real-world employee example, if Apple tells an engineer he has to sign a one-year contract and can't work for a competitor during that time, he can sign it, or he can go work someplace where they don't ask for a contract. But if every large tech company has agreed amongst themselves that engineers can only work there if they sign a contract of at at least one year, that agreement is probably illegal. The same problem will exist for any group of colleges that agrees to require athletes to sign a contract limiting their ability to move to a team at another college.
In my industry nearly all companies require non-competes. If I leave, I’m sitting out. Whether I get paid to do that depends on whether I had the leverage to negotiate that into my contract.

CBAs will occur for the P2 at least

Conferences have long been able to implement conference rules on things like admission requirements and transfers to in-conference schools. The P2 will have their own min/max contract standards, negotiated via CBA if needed

And the “best of rest” conference will serve as the antitrust. Players will be free to take Baylor’s offer, and if Baylor can make a better one while getting $50-$70 million less per year, good for them. If they do that enough they may earn a P2 invite. In basketball the P2 will likely need to stick closer to market value in their offers. True antitrust. In football they’ll have more market power, but not enough to risk antitrust imo
(This post was last modified: 05-12-2022 12:14 PM by Big 12 fan too.)
05-12-2022 12:13 PM
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Post: #58
RE: Kliavkoff and Sankey meeting with US senators on Thursday
(05-12-2022 12:00 PM)Wedge Wrote:  
(05-12-2022 11:25 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  All of these fuzzy platitudes about what the student-athlete model is supposed to be are all well and good. However, ultimately, what do the schools *really* want? At least to me, if they really want all of the aforementioned benefits, then there might be additional costs of doing business going forward (including but not limited to student-athletes needing to be considered to be employees).

Right, athletes being classified as employees is not their only issue, IMO not even their biggest issue. The biggest issue is schools agreeing, through the NCAA or otherwise, to rules that restrict athlete movement and/or compensation. Suppose colleges give in on athletes-as-employees, but then want to restrict movement by signing them to a one-year or even a four-year contract. They can't lawfully standardize that among all D-I or FBS schools.

To use a real-world employee example, if Apple tells an engineer he has to sign a one-year contract and can't work for a competitor during that time, he can sign it, or he can go work someplace where they don't ask for a contract. But if every large tech company has agreed amongst themselves that engineers can only work there if they sign a contract of at least one year, that agreement is probably illegal. The same problem will exist for any group of colleges that agrees to require athletes to sign a contract limiting their ability to move to a team at another college.

I agree the idea that this will happen with 4 year contracts is not realistic.
05-12-2022 02:23 PM
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Post: #59
RE: Kliavkoff and Sankey meeting with US senators on Thursday
(05-12-2022 12:13 PM)Big 12 fan too Wrote:  
(05-12-2022 12:00 PM)Wedge Wrote:  
(05-12-2022 11:25 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  All of these fuzzy platitudes about what the student-athlete model is supposed to be are all well and good. However, ultimately, what do the schools *really* want? At least to me, if they really want all of the aforementioned benefits, then there might be additional costs of doing business going forward (including but not limited to student-athletes needing to be considered to be employees).

Right, athletes being classified as employees is not their only issue, IMO not even their biggest issue. The biggest issue is schools agreeing, through the NCAA or otherwise, to rules that restrict athlete movement and/or compensation. Suppose colleges give in on athletes-as-employees, but then want to restrict movement by signing them to a one-year or even a four-year contract. They can't lawfully standardize that among all D-I or FBS schools.

To use a real-world employee example, if Apple tells an engineer he has to sign a one-year contract and can't work for a competitor during that time, he can sign it, or he can go work someplace where they don't ask for a contract. But if every large tech company has agreed amongst themselves that engineers can only work there if they sign a contract of at at least one year, that agreement is probably illegal. The same problem will exist for any group of colleges that agrees to require athletes to sign a contract limiting their ability to move to a team at another college.
In my industry nearly all companies require non-competes. If I leave, I’m sitting out. Whether I get paid to do that depends on whether I had the leverage to negotiate that into my contract.

CBAs will occur for the P2 at least

Conferences have long been able to implement conference rules on things like admission requirements and transfers to in-conference schools. The P2 will have their own min/max contract standards, negotiated via CBA if needed

And the “best of rest” conference will serve as the antitrust. Players will be free to take Baylor’s offer, and if Baylor can make a better one while getting $50-$70 million less per year, good for them. If they do that enough they may earn a P2 invite. In basketball the P2 will likely need to stick closer to market value in their offers. True antitrust. In football they’ll have more market power, but not enough to risk antitrust imo

Non-competes get thrown out by courts all the time. Its just that everybody doesn't contest them. They have to be reasonable in terms of distance and time. To use an extreme example, if they said you couldn't work in the field in the US for 2 years, there's no way it holds up if contested.

If college athletes are employees and not under a union contract, maybe you could restrict them from transferring to conference mates and future opponents, but you could not restrict them from playing for any other school.
05-12-2022 02:27 PM
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Post: #60
RE: Kliavkoff and Sankey meeting with US senators on Thursday
(05-12-2022 02:27 PM)bullet Wrote:  
(05-12-2022 12:13 PM)Big 12 fan too Wrote:  
(05-12-2022 12:00 PM)Wedge Wrote:  
(05-12-2022 11:25 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  All of these fuzzy platitudes about what the student-athlete model is supposed to be are all well and good. However, ultimately, what do the schools *really* want? At least to me, if they really want all of the aforementioned benefits, then there might be additional costs of doing business going forward (including but not limited to student-athletes needing to be considered to be employees).

Right, athletes being classified as employees is not their only issue, IMO not even their biggest issue. The biggest issue is schools agreeing, through the NCAA or otherwise, to rules that restrict athlete movement and/or compensation. Suppose colleges give in on athletes-as-employees, but then want to restrict movement by signing them to a one-year or even a four-year contract. They can't lawfully standardize that among all D-I or FBS schools.

To use a real-world employee example, if Apple tells an engineer he has to sign a one-year contract and can't work for a competitor during that time, he can sign it, or he can go work someplace where they don't ask for a contract. But if every large tech company has agreed amongst themselves that engineers can only work there if they sign a contract of at at least one year, that agreement is probably illegal. The same problem will exist for any group of colleges that agrees to require athletes to sign a contract limiting their ability to move to a team at another college.
In my industry nearly all companies require non-competes. If I leave, I’m sitting out. Whether I get paid to do that depends on whether I had the leverage to negotiate that into my contract.

CBAs will occur for the P2 at least

Conferences have long been able to implement conference rules on things like admission requirements and transfers to in-conference schools. The P2 will have their own min/max contract standards, negotiated via CBA if needed

And the “best of rest” conference will serve as the antitrust. Players will be free to take Baylor’s offer, and if Baylor can make a better one while getting $50-$70 million less per year, good for them. If they do that enough they may earn a P2 invite. In basketball the P2 will likely need to stick closer to market value in their offers. True antitrust. In football they’ll have more market power, but not enough to risk antitrust imo

Non-competes get thrown out by courts all the time. Its just that everybody doesn't contest them. They have to be reasonable in terms of distance and time. To use an extreme example, if they said you couldn't work in the field in the US for 2 years, there's no way it holds up if contested.

If college athletes are employees and not under a union contract, maybe you could restrict them from transferring to conference mates and future opponents, but you could not restrict them from playing for any other school.

Conferences have long been able to implement conference rules on things like admission requirements and transfers to in-conference schools. The P2 will have their own min/max contract standards, negotiated via CBA if needed

And the “best of rest” conference will serve as the antitrust. Players will be free to take Baylor’s offer, and if Baylor can make a better one while getting $50-$70 million less per year, good for them. If they do that enough they may earn a P2 invite. In basketball the P2 will likely need to stick closer to market value in their offers. True antitrust. In football they’ll have more market power, but not enough to risk antitrust imo
05-12-2022 03:19 PM
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