It's coming, and it's coming really fast. There are two lawsuits that will make landfall within the next two years that will change the face of collegiate athletics as we know it. The end result will be universities across our country paying student athletes as student-employees.

The $64 million dollar question is will non-revenue sport athletics be paid at least a minimum wage as well. Why is this an important question?
It's one thing for a school to pay 15 women's basketball players and 13 men's basketball players and/or a big football school to also pay their 85 football players. It is another thing to pay 300-700 athletes, especially for any school in Division 2, 3, or even in the lower to mid levels of Division 1.

If this goes down, not only will a lot of schools no longer be able to afford athletics, but many small private schools may have to shut their doors as a healthy percentage of their students are tuition-paying athletes.

I would assume many junior colleges would shutter athletics as they are not core to their mission.


Let's just take an example: https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/...fe/sports/

Northern Arizona has 409 student-athletes. The current minimum wage in Arizona is $13.85 per hour. Even using a conservative estimate of 20 hours per week for payment, each student would get $277 a week for probably 34 weeks or so. That is $9,418 per year per athlete. I think that is very conservative but let's go with that.

That comes out to $3,851,962 if every one is paid minimum wage. Their current budget is a little over $20 million. That is almost a 19% athletic budget increase! NAU may be able to afford that but for any athletic department in Division 2 or 3, a cost increase of $3-5 million could be deadly.

That is why I am hearing and reading that NCAA could reform down to two divisions with Subdivisions.

D1 will get the larger D2 and D3 schools with 1A and 1AA for all sports. D2 would become the new type of D2/D3 hybrid with 2A/2AA. 1AA would be more regional conferences, 2A and 2AA would also be regional conferences to cut down the coast of spending.

1A would be the FBS conferences for schools playing football, and we could see more FCS schools becoming FBS. The 10 conferences do need more schools in D1 that plays football. It would be an ideal if some schools out west to start adding football. Long Beach State, Fullerton State, Northridge State, UC-Irvine and CS-East Bay all were thinking about adding football.

Where do you get $13,85 as the MW?

I think you’ll see the U of Florida model going forward with a lot of schools. Licensing type situation and non-profit for college enrolled athletes playing football and basketball.

Becoming employees would be a big pay cut for the guys in the revenue sports.

I believe that the vast majority of college athletes are on partial scholarships. What I don't know is how schools allocate that benefit to the athletes between tuition, books and fees (TBF) and room, board and FCOA stipend (RBS). The former is completely tax free, while the latter is subject to income taxes, but not payroll taxes (FICA and Worker's Comp).

The latter payments are 100% out of pocket for the school. Tuition, on the other hand, isn't fully a "cost" to the schools because it is offset by payment from the athletics department (usually through booster clubs) to the university. The only actual costs the school incurs is if they have to hire more faculty and staff to educate the athletes. For schools with large enrollments that's a minimal expense, but for very small schools it's more likely that they would need more teachers.

For schools with small athletics budgets, I could see them (if they are required to pay their athletes) pay them a taxable wage in lieu of RBS, and in some cases in lieu of TBF payments. Wealthier schools (mostly P5) might elect to pay all athletes full TBF, and athletes in non-revenue sports a salary in lieu of RBS in an amount large enough to keep them whole financially compared with what they now pay out of their pocket. A lot of those decisions will likely be based on how much that school's tuition is.

At the end of the day, I do suspect that schools that don't depend on their athletic program to attract students may very well eliminate them entirely, using this new employee status as an excuse to do what many of their faculty would want to do already.

(01-13-2023 09:24 AM)ken d Wrote:  I believe that the vast majority of college athletes are on partial scholarships. What I don't know is how schools allocate that benefit to the athletes between tuition, books and fees (TBF) and room, board and FCOA stipend (RBS). The former is completely tax free, while the latter is subject to income taxes, but not payroll taxes (FICA and Worker's Comp).

The latter payments are 100% out of pocket for the school. Tuition, on the other hand, isn't fully a "cost" to the schools because it is offset by payment from the athletics department (usually through booster clubs) to the university. The only actual costs the school incurs is if they have to hire more faculty and staff to educate the athletes. For schools with large enrollments that's a minimal expense, but for very small schools it's more likely that they would need more teachers.

More likely, avoiding staff cutbacks. (Usually but not always through attrition).

Quote:For schools with small athletics budgets, I could see them (if they are required to pay their athletes) pay them a taxable wage in lieu of RBS,

I think that schools with small budgets will be much more able to avoid classsifying their athletes as employees.

Speculating: As employee status comes closer, you see a coalition of schools and conferences in the bottom half of Division I band together and make common rules that legitimize the amateurism of their student-athletes.

The P5 is going to be moving in the direction of more more more athlete compensation, and I don't think it's too long before the threat of losing the NCAA tournament revenue is less frightening than staying in the athlete-compensation arms race.

Quote:At the end of the day, I do suspect that schools that don't depend on their athletic program to attract students may very well eliminate them entirely, using this new employee status as an excuse to do what many of their faculty would want to do already.

I think maybe we underestimate how big a role NCAA athletics plays a role in enrollments. Even if it's a red-queens-race, where Southern State U with 2000 students can't drop FCS football because they'd see 25 athletes a year enroll ago to Northern State U instead, and Northern State U is in the same position.

(01-13-2023 09:24 AM)ken d Wrote:  I believe that the vast majority of college athletes are on partial scholarships. What I don't know is how schools allocate that benefit to the athletes between tuition, books and fees (TBF) and room, board and FCOA stipend (RBS). The former is completely tax free, while the latter is subject to income taxes, but not payroll taxes (FICA and Worker's Comp).

The latter payments are 100% out of pocket for the school. Tuition, on the other hand, isn't fully a "cost" to the schools because it is offset by payment from the athletics department (usually through booster clubs) to the university. The only actual costs the school incurs is if they have to hire more faculty and staff to educate the athletes. For schools with large enrollments that's a minimal expense, but for very small schools it's more likely that they would need more teachers.

For schools with small athletics budgets, I could see them (if they are required to pay their athletes) pay them a taxable wage in lieu of RBS, and in some cases in lieu of TBF payments. Wealthier schools (mostly P5) might elect to pay all athletes full TBF, and athletes in non-revenue sports a salary in lieu of RBS in an amount large enough to keep them whole financially compared with what they now pay out of their pocket. A lot of those decisions will likely be based on how much that school's tuition is.

At the end of the day, I do suspect that schools that don't depend on their athletic program to attract students may very well eliminate them entirely, using this new employee status as an excuse to do what many of their faculty would want to do already.

I could see some Division 1 schools take away room and board and food and replace it with a salary, but Division 3 schools have to spend more. They already receive tuition instead of having to eat it.

(01-13-2023 09:53 AM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(01-13-2023 09:24 AM)ken d Wrote:  I believe that the vast majority of college athletes are on partial scholarships. What I don't know is how schools allocate that benefit to the athletes between tuition, books and fees (TBF) and room, board and FCOA stipend (RBS). The former is completely tax free, while the latter is subject to income taxes, but not payroll taxes (FICA and Worker's Comp).

The latter payments are 100% out of pocket for the school. Tuition, on the other hand, isn't fully a "cost" to the schools because it is offset by payment from the athletics department (usually through booster clubs) to the university. The only actual costs the school incurs is if they have to hire more faculty and staff to educate the athletes. For schools with large enrollments that's a minimal expense, but for very small schools it's more likely that they would need more teachers.

More likely, avoiding staff cutbacks. (Usually but not always through attrition).

Quote:For schools with small athletics budgets, I could see them (if they are required to pay their athletes) pay them a taxable wage in lieu of RBS,

I think that schools with small budgets will be much more able to avoid classsifying their athletes as employees.

Speculating: As employee status comes closer, you see a coalition of schools and conferences in the bottom half of Division I band together and make common rules that legitimize the amateurism of their student-athletes.

The P5 is going to be moving in the direction of more more more athlete compensation, and I don't think it's too long before the threat of losing the NCAA tournament revenue is less frightening than staying in the athlete-compensation arms race.

Quote:At the end of the day, I do suspect that schools that don't depend on their athletic program to attract students may very well eliminate them entirely, using this new employee status as an excuse to do what many of their faculty would want to do already.

I think maybe we underestimate how big a role NCAA athletics plays a role in enrollments. Even if it's a red-queens-race, where Southern State U with 2000 students can't drop FCS football because they'd see 25 athletes a year enroll ago to Northern State U instead, and Northern State U is in the same position.

Agreed. We are generally focused on the P5 schools and top academic schools that largely don't have any enrollment issues (and if anything are turning away record numbers of applicants annually in many cases). However, once you get past that level, enrollment issues are a huge problem for universities across the country and that's going to be exacerbated even more with the upcoming generation being smaller. Athletics are a way to mitigate that issue.

At the same time, even with respect to the higher-ranked schools that don't have enrollment issues, people shouldn't forget about the Supreme Court cases involving Harvard and UNC that will be decided this year where we are very likely to see a rollback of Affirmative Action for college admissions at a minimum, if not an outright prohibition of considering race.

I can tell you that the leadership at every major university, including everyone in the P5, (a) wants Affirmative Action to continue in college admissions and have fought against the plaintiffs in the Harvard and UNC cases at every turn and in every amicus brief for the past several years and (b) are coming to grips with the reality that Affirmative Action in college admissions may no longer be allowed by the Supreme Court and, as a result, are all actively looking for ways to find race-blind ways to still viably admit underrepresented minority students. This is UNIVERSAL among administrators at major universities whether it's the Ivy League, P5, NESCAC, or any other halfway decent academic school. I can't emphasize this enough.

You can put two and two together here and see that athletics are one of the clearest ways to use race-blind merit criteria to admit students that often has the outcome of raising the number of underrepresented minority students. For that reason alone, any school with halfway decent academics - and *especially* the top elite schools like the Ivy League, Stanford, Northwestern, Duke, University of Chicago, MIT, etc. that are more focused on this issue compared to everyone else - are going to heavily rely on athletics going forward to address their DEI goals and won't cut back.

Simple solution. Student-athletes can receive pay in lieu of cost-of-attendance and a fraction of their scholarship money. It’s called work-study and was a major feature of financial aid packages back in the day. I worked 20 hours a week in the dining halls for four years and used the income to cover my personal expenses and books.

(01-13-2023 10:27 AM)HawaiiMongoose Wrote:  Simple solution. Student-athletes can receive pay in lieu of cost-of-attendance and scholarship money. It’s called work-study and was a major feature of financial aid packages back in the day. I worked 20 hours a week in the dining halls for four years and used the income to cover my personal expenses and books.

That’s great for Division 1, but what about Division 3?

(01-13-2023 10:27 AM)HawaiiMongoose Wrote:  Simple solution. Student-athletes can receive pay in lieu of cost-of-attendance and a fraction of their scholarship money. It’s called work-study and was a major feature of financial aid packages back in the day. I worked 20 hours a week in the dining halls for four years and used the income to cover my personal expenses and books.

Simple, but it's both too much and too little. 20 hours of work-study money doesn't mean squat to the kids like the kid who just de-committed from Florida because his $13M "NIL" deal fell apart.

On the other hand, 20 hours a week for 14 weeks at $10/hour is $2800, times say 200 athletes at Northern Arizona is about $500,000 that they don't have.

(01-13-2023 10:27 AM)HawaiiMongoose Wrote:  Simple solution. Student-athletes can receive pay in lieu of cost-of-attendance and a fraction of their scholarship money. It’s called work-study and was a major feature of financial aid packages back in the day. I worked 20 hours a week in the dining halls for four years and used the income to cover my personal expenses and books.

I don't think it's an either-or situation necessarily.

There are a lot of benefits to both the student and university in awarding scholarships (particularly in terms of taxes for the student and the funds that can be used by the university).

I'm going to go against what seems to be the grain in this thread: I think universities are ultimately going to "suck it up" and pay the scholarships and full cost of attendance as they do now AND the additional compensation on top of it. I also think that the tolerance for rising costs in athletics is MUCH higher for universities than what a lot of people here believe - while the universities might not LIKE such higher costs, they just believe that being at a certain level in athletics (e.g. simply being in Division I) is so critical for their institutional profile that they will pay what it takes. The universities are out to compete for the best talent just like any other industry and that's the cost of doing business.

(01-13-2023 09:53 AM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(01-13-2023 09:24 AM)ken d Wrote:  I believe that the vast majority of college athletes are on partial scholarships. What I don't know is how schools allocate that benefit to the athletes between tuition, books and fees (TBF) and room, board and FCOA stipend (RBS). The former is completely tax free, while the latter is subject to income taxes, but not payroll taxes (FICA and Worker's Comp).

The latter payments are 100% out of pocket for the school. Tuition, on the other hand, isn't fully a "cost" to the schools because it is offset by payment from the athletics department (usually through booster clubs) to the university. The only actual costs the school incurs is if they have to hire more faculty and staff to educate the athletes. For schools with large enrollments that's a minimal expense, but for very small schools it's more likely that they would need more teachers.

More likely, avoiding staff cutbacks. (Usually but not always through attrition).

Quote:For schools with small athletics budgets, I could see them (if they are required to pay their athletes) pay them a taxable wage in lieu of RBS,

I think that schools with small budgets will be much more able to avoid classsifying their athletes as employees.

Speculating: As employee status comes closer, you see a coalition of schools and conferences in the bottom half of Division I band together and make common rules that legitimize the amateurism of their student-athletes.

The P5 is going to be moving in the direction of more more more athlete compensation, and I don't think it's too long before the threat of losing the NCAA tournament revenue is less frightening than staying in the athlete-compensation arms race.

Quote:At the end of the day, I do suspect that schools that don't depend on their athletic program to attract students may very well eliminate them entirely, using this new employee status as an excuse to do what many of their faculty would want to do already.

I think maybe we underestimate how big a role NCAA athletics plays a role in enrollments. Even if it's a red-queens-race, where Southern State U with 2000 students can't drop FCS football because they'd see 25 athletes a year enroll ago to Northern State U instead, and Northern State U is in the same position.

Whether you are not for profit or for profit doesn't make a difference in the definition of an employee. There is no pick and choose. Either all athletes are employees or none are. You can't say just because some sports generate revenues that they are employees.

Many of the people who want football and men's basketball players to be paid don't understand how big an impact this will have on all sports.

(01-13-2023 10:20 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(01-13-2023 09:53 AM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(01-13-2023 09:24 AM)ken d Wrote:  I believe that the vast majority of college athletes are on partial scholarships. What I don't know is how schools allocate that benefit to the athletes between tuition, books and fees (TBF) and room, board and FCOA stipend (RBS). The former is completely tax free, while the latter is subject to income taxes, but not payroll taxes (FICA and Worker's Comp).

The latter payments are 100% out of pocket for the school. Tuition, on the other hand, isn't fully a "cost" to the schools because it is offset by payment from the athletics department (usually through booster clubs) to the university. The only actual costs the school incurs is if they have to hire more faculty and staff to educate the athletes. For schools with large enrollments that's a minimal expense, but for very small schools it's more likely that they would need more teachers.

More likely, avoiding staff cutbacks. (Usually but not always through attrition).

Quote:For schools with small athletics budgets, I could see them (if they are required to pay their athletes) pay them a taxable wage in lieu of RBS,

I think that schools with small budgets will be much more able to avoid classsifying their athletes as employees.

Speculating: As employee status comes closer, you see a coalition of schools and conferences in the bottom half of Division I band together and make common rules that legitimize the amateurism of their student-athletes.

The P5 is going to be moving in the direction of more more more athlete compensation, and I don't think it's too long before the threat of losing the NCAA tournament revenue is less frightening than staying in the athlete-compensation arms race.

Quote:At the end of the day, I do suspect that schools that don't depend on their athletic program to attract students may very well eliminate them entirely, using this new employee status as an excuse to do what many of their faculty would want to do already.

I think maybe we underestimate how big a role NCAA athletics plays a role in enrollments. Even if it's a red-queens-race, where Southern State U with 2000 students can't drop FCS football because they'd see 25 athletes a year enroll ago to Northern State U instead, and Northern State U is in the same position.

Agreed. We are generally focused on the P5 schools and top academic schools that largely don't have any enrollment issues (and if anything are turning away record numbers of applicants annually in many cases). However, once you get past that level, enrollment issues are a huge problem for universities across the country and that's going to be exacerbated even more with the upcoming generation being smaller. Athletics are a way to mitigate that issue.

At the same time, even with respect to the higher-ranked schools that don't have enrollment issues, people shouldn't forget about the Supreme Court cases involving Harvard and UNC that will be decided this year where we are very likely to see a rollback of Affirmative Action for college admissions at a minimum, if not an outright prohibition of considering race.

I can tell you that the leadership at every major university, including everyone in the P5, (a) wants Affirmative Action to continue in college admissions and have fought against the plaintiffs in the Harvard and UNC cases at every turn and in every amicus brief for the past several years and (b) are coming to grips with the reality that Affirmative Action in college admissions may no longer be allowed by the Supreme Court and, as a result, are all actively looking for ways to find race-blind ways to still viably admit underrepresented minority students. This is UNIVERSAL among administrators at major universities whether it's the Ivy League, P5, NESCAC, or any other halfway decent academic school. I can't emphasize this enough.

You can put two and two together here and see that athletics are one of the clearest ways to use race-blind merit criteria to admit students that often has the outcome of raising the number of underrepresented minority students. For that reason alone, any school with halfway decent academics - and *especially* the top elite schools like the Ivy League, Stanford, Northwestern, Duke, University of Chicago, MIT, etc. that are more focused on this issue compared to everyone else - are going to heavily rely on athletics going forward to address their DEI goals and won't cut back.

Its real simple. You use economic need as a factor. That will significantly benefit minorities. The problem is that the presidents don't want poor minorities. They want the sons of doctors.

(01-13-2023 10:20 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(01-13-2023 09:53 AM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(01-13-2023 09:24 AM)ken d Wrote:  I believe that the vast majority of college athletes are on partial scholarships. What I don't know is how schools allocate that benefit to the athletes between tuition, books and fees (TBF) and room, board and FCOA stipend (RBS). The former is completely tax free, while the latter is subject to income taxes, but not payroll taxes (FICA and Worker's Comp).

The latter payments are 100% out of pocket for the school. Tuition, on the other hand, isn't fully a "cost" to the schools because it is offset by payment from the athletics department (usually through booster clubs) to the university. The only actual costs the school incurs is if they have to hire more faculty and staff to educate the athletes. For schools with large enrollments that's a minimal expense, but for very small schools it's more likely that they would need more teachers.

More likely, avoiding staff cutbacks. (Usually but not always through attrition).

Quote:For schools with small athletics budgets, I could see them (if they are required to pay their athletes) pay them a taxable wage in lieu of RBS,

I think that schools with small budgets will be much more able to avoid classsifying their athletes as employees.

Speculating: As employee status comes closer, you see a coalition of schools and conferences in the bottom half of Division I band together and make common rules that legitimize the amateurism of their student-athletes.

The P5 is going to be moving in the direction of more more more athlete compensation, and I don't think it's too long before the threat of losing the NCAA tournament revenue is less frightening than staying in the athlete-compensation arms race.

Quote:At the end of the day, I do suspect that schools that don't depend on their athletic program to attract students may very well eliminate them entirely, using this new employee status as an excuse to do what many of their faculty would want to do already.

I think maybe we underestimate how big a role NCAA athletics plays a role in enrollments. Even if it's a red-queens-race, where Southern State U with 2000 students can't drop FCS football because they'd see 25 athletes a year enroll ago to Northern State U instead, and Northern State U is in the same position.

Agreed. We are generally focused on the P5 schools and top academic schools that largely don't have any enrollment issues (and if anything are turning away record numbers of applicants annually in many cases). However, once you get past that level, enrollment issues are a huge problem for universities across the country and that's going to be exacerbated even more with the upcoming generation being smaller. Athletics are a way to mitigate that issue.

At the same time, even with respect to the higher-ranked schools that don't have enrollment issues, people shouldn't forget about the Supreme Court cases involving Harvard and UNC that will be decided this year where we are very likely to see a rollback of Affirmative Action for college admissions at a minimum, if not an outright prohibition of considering race.

I can tell you that the leadership at every major university, including everyone in the P5, (a) wants Affirmative Action to continue in college admissions and have fought against the plaintiffs in the Harvard and UNC cases at every turn and in every amicus brief for the past several years and (b) are coming to grips with the reality that Affirmative Action in college admissions may no longer be allowed by the Supreme Court and, as a result, are all actively looking for ways to find race-blind ways to still viably admit underrepresented minority students. This is UNIVERSAL among administrators at major universities whether it's the Ivy League, P5, NESCAC, or any other halfway decent academic school. I can't emphasize this enough.

Is this being spearheaded by the NEA (National Education Association)?? The NEA is a very powerful teachers and collegiate administration union. They tend to be social justice warriors and huge supporters of Affirmative Action. I don't care for the group in general, but they do try to protect teachers from career ruining lawsuits from angry & spoiled parents. It wouldn't surprise me that the P5 universally supports them because they are members of the NEA themselves.

Quote:You can put two and two together here and see that athletics are one of the clearest ways to use race-blind merit criteria to admit students that often has the outcome of raising the number of underrepresented minority students. For that reason alone, any school with halfway decent academics - and *especially* the top elite schools like the Ivy League, Stanford, Northwestern, Duke, University of Chicago, MIT, etc. that are more focused on this issue compared to everyone else - are going to heavily rely on athletics going forward to address their DEI goals and won't cut back.

I could see that.

(01-13-2023 10:37 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(01-13-2023 10:27 AM)HawaiiMongoose Wrote:  Simple solution. Student-athletes can receive pay in lieu of cost-of-attendance and a fraction of their scholarship money. It’s called work-study and was a major feature of financial aid packages back in the day. I worked 20 hours a week in the dining halls for four years and used the income to cover my personal expenses and books.

I don't think it's an either-or situation necessarily.

There are a lot of benefits to both the student and university in awarding scholarships (particularly in terms of taxes for the student and the funds that can be used by the university).

I'm going to go against what seems to be the grain in this thread: I think universities are ultimately going to "suck it up" and pay the scholarships and full cost of attendance as they do now AND the additional compensation on top of it. I also think that the tolerance for rising costs in athletics is MUCH higher for universities than what a lot of people here believe - while the universities might not LIKE such higher costs, they just believe that being at a certain level in athletics (e.g. simply being in Division I) is so critical for their institutional profile that they will pay what it takes. The universities are out to compete for the best talent just like any other industry and that's the cost of doing business.

You are probably right for the P5. But not for the vast majority of the remainder.

(01-13-2023 10:37 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(01-13-2023 10:27 AM)HawaiiMongoose Wrote:  Simple solution. Student-athletes can receive pay in lieu of cost-of-attendance and a fraction of their scholarship money. It’s called work-study and was a major feature of financial aid packages back in the day. I worked 20 hours a week in the dining halls for four years and used the income to cover my personal expenses and books.

I don't think it's an either-or situation necessarily.

There are a lot of benefits to both the student and university in awarding scholarships (particularly in terms of taxes for the student and the funds that can be used by the university).

I'm going to go against what seems to be the grain in this thread: I think universities are ultimately going to "suck it up" and pay the scholarships and full cost of attendance as they do now AND the additional compensation on top of it. I also think that the tolerance for rising costs in athletics is MUCH higher for universities than what a lot of people here believe - while the universities might not LIKE such higher costs, they just believe that being at a certain level in athletics (e.g. simply being in Division I) is so critical for their institutional profile that they will pay what it takes. The universities are out to compete for the best talent just like any other industry and that's the cost of doing business.

Part of the reason for that is that universities are not run like for-profit corporations.

In a corporation, the CEO is dictator.

Universities are run by committees of faculty (or sometimes staff), and the President is usually merely a facilitator who gets committees to agree with each other. It's much more like a democracy where the President's authority is limited to certain areas, and even then it is usually subject to approval by other groups.

The downside of democracy is that the status quo usually reigns supreme. So unless the faculty, board, president and staff are all largely against D-1 athletics, they'll keep on funding it.

(I'm not being anti-democratic. The upsides of democracy are that a) it is more dependable, and b) any changes require broad support across a wide range of constituencies, so changes are rarely as awful as they can be under a dictatorship)

(01-13-2023 12:01 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(01-13-2023 10:37 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(01-13-2023 10:27 AM)HawaiiMongoose Wrote:  Simple solution. Student-athletes can receive pay in lieu of cost-of-attendance and a fraction of their scholarship money. It’s called work-study and was a major feature of financial aid packages back in the day. I worked 20 hours a week in the dining halls for four years and used the income to cover my personal expenses and books.

I don't think it's an either-or situation necessarily.

There are a lot of benefits to both the student and university in awarding scholarships (particularly in terms of taxes for the student and the funds that can be used by the university).

I'm going to go against what seems to be the grain in this thread: I think universities are ultimately going to "suck it up" and pay the scholarships and full cost of attendance as they do now AND the additional compensation on top of it. I also think that the tolerance for rising costs in athletics is MUCH higher for universities than what a lot of people here believe - while the universities might not LIKE such higher costs, they just believe that being at a certain level in athletics (e.g. simply being in Division I) is so critical for their institutional profile that they will pay what it takes. The universities are out to compete for the best talent just like any other industry and that's the cost of doing business.

You are probably right for the P5. But not for the vast majority of the remainder.

I agree. Most non-P5 schools aren’t rich and aren’t run by stupid people. I don’t think they’re going to pay twice for the same thing. If student athletes attending those schools start receiving a salary you can bet some of the other financial benefits they’ve received in the past are going to be cut back. In the end I doubt they’ll be much better or worse off, they’ll just be compensated differently.

Unpopular as it might be, I am going to repeat a comment I made in another thread on this subject: the 800-pound gorilla in the corner of the room is the students and their families who pay athletic fees and are not/would not be student-athlete-employees. That covers a lot more than just the big bucks schools who seem to be the cash targets and bus drivers of D1 athletics. The Knight Commission data shows many A.Depts. get upwards of 30% of their athletic budgets from those fees; a few get 60-70%.

Throw in that many now-students will be paying off loans, and are working part-time jobs ... and I think a shake-up in the ballooning costs of higher education might/needs to happen. There's already talk without athletics. This employment move might do it. Would there also be a demand to make athletic fees optional? If so, consider impacts of student attendance at games/meets/matches, and what that would do to non-revenue sports. This is a whole lot more than just "pay the players." There is also lanor union interest in all this. Just thinkin.