Wedge
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RE: Associated Press: NCAA’s Emmert: It is time to decentralize college sports
(07-17-2021 01:38 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote: (07-17-2021 01:05 PM)ken d Wrote: (07-17-2021 08:23 AM)quo vadis Wrote: (07-17-2021 07:38 AM)ken d Wrote: We tend to think of intercollegiate sports as if it is a market unto itself, and subject to compliance with anti-monopoly statutes within its own niche. But, to the extent that some sports (what we call revenue sports) are essentially part of the entertainment industry, they are competing with professional enterprises as well as other schools.
With respect to the "labor force" for these sports, limits placed on earning power should also consider opportunities reasonably available to athletes outside the intercollegiate market niche. If a baseball player is eligible for the MLB draft (or NHL draft), playing for a minor league or even major league team is a viable choice. Opting instead to play collegiately, without compensation above cost of attendance, is a market driven free choice players make, and there clearly is no reason why Congress or courts should put their thumb on the scales by imposing further requirements for cash compensation.
It is only when there are significant barriers to entry to professional leagues based on factors other than ability that the government should have an interest and a role in regulating opportunities. Football, it seems to me, is an area where the government has a legitimate say, since players are not eligible to be drafted or signed until they have been out of high school for three years, and there are no minor or developmental league options.
We have to recognize that even in a world where the United States is unique with respect to incorporating athletics within its colleges and universities, football is fundamentally different from all other sports. That it holds a prominent place in American culture is undeniable. It should be recognized and treated as such by our government.
That being said, Congress and the courts have already inserted themselves into college sports through Title IX, and I don't believe they will abandon that. So, render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's. Title IX is between the government and individual schools. So the NCAA should leave policing that to government, and need not concern themselves with whether their members are in compliance. And IMO the government should not lump football with other sports in determining whether schools are in compliance.
Some interesting ideas here, my responses:
1) Does the NCAA have Title IX sanctions? That's a federal law so is enforced by the courts. But does the NCAA have its own sanctions, like probation, if a school is found guilty of Title IX violations? If so, then it should not have them. As you say, that's between the feds and the school.
2) IMO there is zero chance that the courts or congress will ever carve out any kind of Title IX or antitrust exception for football. If anything, Title IX continues to be more and more stringently enforced and that trend is not changing. I think anyone who tries to propose that will immediately get ridiculed on social media and the next day they will be issuing one of those corporate press release type apologies reaffirming their commitment to "gender equity" and all that and groveling for forgiveness. And FWIW, I believe the way Title IX has been applied to athletics is absurd, it shouldn't involve scholarship athletics at all, market demand should determine scholarships and the like. But that's just the way it is.
3) Regarding anti-trust, I agree that courts should view college athletics more holistically, as part of a broader sports and entertainment market. But I think all the signs say that's not happening either. The courts have for decades bought the idea that the NCAA is a monopoly and has dealt with it harshly. Nor do I think it likely that they will look at individual sports differently based on pro opportunities and the like.
Again, I don't necessarily agree but I don't see it changing. As some have said around here, while democrats and republicans are at each other's throats on almost all issues, the way the courts have been clobbering the NCAA has met with almost universal approval.
So I don't think Emmert or the NCAA have any reason to think the Feds will carve out exceptions for them or football.
I wasn't so much thinking that Congress could give schools any slack when it comes to football. What I was thinking is that they could deem football, as opposed to all other sports, to be a business activity unrelated to schools' tax exempt purpose of education. In this case, this isn't an anti-trust issue at all, and needs no exemption.
By ruling that football is a for-profit business subject to being taxed on its profits, they could justify treating it differently than other sports for Title IX purposes. Because it's still mostly just the P5 schools that are actually making a profit, that wouldn't hurt the vast majority of NCAA schools. And it would incentivize the profitable schools to pay their players more to reduce the tax bite. It's football players more than almost any other athletes who are seen as being exploited by the current system.
Such a decision could also have as an unintended consequence the early termination of media contracts, including GoRs, if schools could elect to be in different conferences for football than they are for other sports. North Carolina, for example, could choose to play football by SEC rules regarding athlete compensation and continue to play basketball in the ACC. That could facilitate a reorganization in which the two behemoths of college football separate themselves from schools with lesser resources or stronger opposition to professionalism.
I doubt that would fly if the schools still want to be tied to those for-profit football teams. This seems to be an attempt at “form over substance” - try to change the form of an entity to get around the substance of the rule. Even if this could conceivably be done under the current law, I’d see that loophole closed very quickly. At that point, colleges would have lost their tax exempt status for their football programs in the process and still have the same Title IX compliance issues.
Ultimately, I don’t think most colleges are really that bothered by Title IX per se. These are institutions that (at least superficially) are on the front of gender equity issues compared to most of the rest of society. They’d get very heavy pushback within academia if any school tried to get around Title IX in the manner that you’ve noted (or any other manner, for that matter).
Instead, these schools are just reflexively bothered that they’re going to have to deal with compensation issues with players (whether directly or indirectly via third party NIL endorsements) that were super profitable for many decades. Title IX compliance is often just a bogeyman for a lot of people that don’t agree with the premise of Title IX in the first place. Trying to exclude football from Title IX compliance calculations in any manner pretty much defeats the whole purpose of Title IX as applied to college athletics.
The schools could do it, but they'd have to give up complete control of their football programs. A school (University of Tennessee, in this example) could license, to a private corporation, the right to use the University of Tennessee name, Tennessee Volunteers team name, the logos and colors of the university and its football team, give the corporation a lease to use Neyland Stadium, and let the corporation operate a football team under the university's name. The university and athletic department would have no say over the operation of the football team, other than what any landlord would have over a tenant operating a business in the landlord's building.
Would a university administration do this? Probably not. Would the team's boosters and the school's alumni hate the idea? Probably they would. Given that, they can all just live with the laws and regulations that go with the football program being a part of the university.
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