(09-12-2019 07:46 AM)Gamecock Wrote: (06-01-2019 05:40 PM)Wolfman Wrote: This doesn't address the issue that caused the rule. An athlete could receive $50k for 100 autographed pics if they sign with school X, have a good game, etc. Schools would have no way to police that.
Athletes could still sign an agreement that they will abide by NCAA amateurism rules.
The NCAA should just allow it but with a cap. That seems like the most reasonable compromise. Otherwise you are correct, we will see a situation where like 5 schools are signing all of the 5 stars every season for 250k dollar "endorsement deals"
I can’t see how a cap would be enforceable under the law - that would be a very clear antitrust violation as an association that is artificially capping compensation. The only way that the NCAA could do that is if they agree to negotiate that with the students that collectively bargain under a labor union, which is probably something the NCAA considers to be an even worse scenario.
I simply have *zero* sympathy for the NCAA on this matter. They have spent years and years just thinking that the player compensation issue would go away due to the blind nostalgia of old school fans.
The reality is that this is one of the few issues in society where you can actually see a bipartisan consensus and the NCAA needs to adjust or they’re going to get steamrolled. This isn’t a trend from “crazy Californians” - as others have noted, Tennessee is considering similar legislation and the federal bill is being brought up by a Southern Republican.
The left gets to argue that they’re protecting student rights and the beneficiaries of these measures are disproportionately lower income minority football and basketball players. The right gets to argue that they’re protecting a basic liberty interest (a person’s own likeness) and removing artificial restrictions on the free market... with the emotional bonus of sticking it to the college administrators in academia that they loathe.
Who the heck in the political world is actually going to side with academia on this issue? This is a fish in the barrel issue for politicians on both sides of the aisle. Even in California, it takes a pretty clear ironclad unarguable bulletproof political issue (e.g. “Let’s not let murderers drive school buses full of kids!”) for there to be a *unanimous* vote in the legislature.
This looks like a tipping point - the only people arguing against this are college administrators and a relative handful of old school nostalgic fans. The rest of the world is looking at the California bill and saying, “Well duh! Doesn’t everyone already have a right to capitalize on their own likeness?” By the time that this California law goes into effect, we’ll probably see every state and the federal government have a similar law in place.
The fact that it might be difficult for colleges on compliance issues when this is widespread might very well be true, but the onus is on the NCAA and its members to figure that out. Usurping basic liberty rights and free market principles so that NCAA compliance officers can have an easier job isn’t an argument that is going to work under the law. I have no patience for the NCAA and its members for acting like this is a sudden crisis when they have had decades to address this on their own and chose to stick their head in the sand instead. When they refused find a solution themselves by just ignoring it for so many years, they’re now going to get a solution forced on them.
TLDR: it’s instructive that the only thing that Democrats and Republicans can agree on is that the NCAA sucks. The NCAA is going to lose here legally and politically.