NCAA should pay college athletes, Kentucky governor
For upon |Republican Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin said on Thursday the NCAA should pay student-athletes in order to avoid the corruption scandals that have plagued college basketball and football in recent years.
Bevin told TMZ Sports that he “firmly” believes athletes at the biggest schools should be paid, adding that it is “ridiculous” to say that student-athletes are not lower-tier professionals. Bevin’s comments came as several top college athletics programs, including the University of Louisville and its former basketball coach Rick Pitino, were ensnared by allegations of bribery and corruption NCAA.
“If you want to cut down on the number of scandals that involves these kids, their parents, these shady agents, and these squirrely deals, the key to do that is to come up with a structure whereby a kid who is a talent, who truly is capable of making it to the pros…can be paid to actually be the professional athlete he is, and then allow that person to have that money deferred,” Bevin said NCAA.
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Federal documents
Federal documents revealed last month that more than two dozen current and former athletes and their families received benefits that violated National Collegiate Athletic Association rules, including cash payments. Yahoo Sports was the first to report details of the federal investigation. The documents linked top programs including Duke, North Carolina, and Michigan State to the investigation.
Federal officials arrested 10 individuals, including four NCAA assistant basketball coaches, on charges of using bribes and other incentives to influence college athletes improperly. The University of Louisville ousted its legendary head coach, Pitino, after the school was named in court documents related to the arrests. The NCAA also forced Louisville to vacate its 2013 men’s college basketball championship.
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“It’s a multi-billion industry and we’re just pretending these kids are student-athletes?” Bevin said.
The article was originally published here.
N.C.A.A. Athletes Could Be Paid Under New California Law
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill to allow college athletes to hire agents and make money from endorsements. The measure, the first of its kind, threatens the business model of college sports.
Credit…Thomas Graning/Associated Press
It has been a bedrock principle behind college sports: Student-athletes should not be paid beyond the costs of attending a university. California threatened that standard on Monday after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill to allow players to strike endorsement deals and hire agents.
The new law, which is supposed to take effect in 2023, attacks the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s long-held philosophy that college athletes should earn a degree, not money, for playing sports. That view, also under assault in several other states and on Capitol Hill, has held up even as the college sports industry swelled into a behemoth that generated at least $14 billion last year, and as athletes faced mounting demands on their bodies and schedules.
Under the California measure, thousands of student-athletes in America’s most populous state will be allowed to promote products and companies, trading on their sports renown for the first time. And although the law applies only to California, it sets up the possibility that leaders in college sports will eventually have to choose between changing the rules for athletes nationwide or barring some of America’s sports powerhouses from the competition.
In an interview with The New York Times, Newsom described the law as “a big move to expose the farce and to challenge a system that is outsized in its capacity to push back.”
Students in the University
“Every single student in the university can market their name, image, and likeness; they can go and get a YouTube channel, and they can monetize that,” Newsom said. “The only group that can’t are athletes. Why is that?”
The N.C.A.A., which has been studying the possibility of rewriting its rules on endorsements, has called the measure “unconstitutional” and said without elaboration on Monday that it would “consider next steps in California.”
“Changes are needed,” the association said in a statement but insisted that it was best suited to develop new guidelines that could be enforced on about 1,200 campuses nationwide. The Pacific-12 athletic conference, which includes four California universities, said in a separate statement that the law would “lead to the professionalization of college sports and many unintended consequences.”
Both the N.C.A.A. and the Pac-12 lobbied against the measure, as did several powerful universities, including California, Stanford, and Southern California. If the association declared the schools ineligible to compete, their teams could not appear in showcase events like the College Football Playoff and the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, made-for-TV moments that help some universities pull in more than $100 million each year.
Credit…Max Whittaker for The New York Times
If it survives any legal battles and takes effect, the California measure will apply to the state’s biggest college sports programs, as well as many of its smaller ones. With limited exceptions, the schools and the N.C.A.A. will not be allowed to keep students from participating in sports if they have been paid for the use of their names, images, or likenesses, whether in connection with lucrative shoe contracts or modest endorsements for local restaurants. Students will also be permitted to hire agents, a move now restricted. NCAA.
“People are just so aware of the fact that you’ve got a multi-billion-dollar industry that — let’s set aside scholarships — basically denies compensation to the very talented, the very work that produces that revenue,” said Senator Nancy Skinner, a Democrat, who wrote the legislation. “Students who love their sport and are committed to continuing their sport in college are handicapped in so many ways, and it’s all due to N.C.A.A. rules.”
Skinner introduced the legislation in February, and Newsom said he had not expected it to reach his desk. Still, sensing the severity of the legislative threat from California, as well as from a handful of other states and Congress, the N.C.A.A. announced in May that it had convened a committee to consider changes — a tactic that supporters of the existing model hoped would buy time and stave off legislative action.
The group’s recommendations are expected in October, but California officials, skeptical that the N.C.A.A. would adopt substantive changes, chose to press ahead with their legislation.
Public Universities
“People said, ‘You know what, we’ve got to force their hands,’” said Newsom, who was once a regent for some of California’s largest public universities. “They’re not going to do the right thing on their own. They only do the right thing when they’re sued or they’re forced to do the right thing.”
At least on this issue, the sentiment was bipartisan; the bill passed unanimously.
Like Newsom, Senator Brian Jones, a Republican from San Diego County who supported the legislation, doubted that the leaders in college sports would pull together quick reforms.
“My attitude was, let’s prod them a little bit and see what happens,” Jones said.
The legislation left open the possibility that California could rework its approach once the N.C.A.A.’s plans are made public. At the same time, the law also explicitly declared that it was the Legislature’s intent “to avoid exploitation of student-athletes, colleges, and universities.”
Before and after it became law, the California proposal drew strong support from some current and former student-athletes who said that it would edge the college sports industry, however reluctantly, toward an era when its athletes would be compensated for their talents and the risks that they assume. NCAA.
Newsom signed the bill during an episode of a television show hosted by LeBron James, the Los Angeles Lakers star and a prominent supporter of the legislation.
“NCAA, you got the next move,” James said in an Instagram post. “We can solve this for everyone!”
Only a fraction of college athletes eventually turn professional, and for the rest, “college is the only time they have to profit off their hard-earned athletic successes,” Hayley Hodson, a former Stanford volleyball player, said during legislative testimony in July.
Michael Pittman Jr
Others who have taken the field for their universities, like Michael Pittman Jr., a wide receiver at Southern California, were more ambivalent and said they expected to earn their compensation in professional leagues.
“The N.C.A.A. has given us a great opportunity to play football,” Pittman, a senior whose father played in the National Football League, said in an interview. “I think it would be great for players to get paid, but honestly, that’s way past me. I’m just going to keep playing every week until I reach that level that actually pays me.”
A legal challenge by the N.C.A.A. or its members could hinge on the constitutional provision that grants Congress the authority to oversee interstate commerce.
Earlier legal skirmishes have allowed the N.C.A.A.’s business model to stand with limited modifications, and the association has adjusted some rules in recent years to allow students to receive limited stipends and unlimited food from their universities NCAA.
State Officials
Any litigation is likely to be protracted, and state officials set the 2023 effective date, in part, to allow California’s colleges and universities ample time to prepare for the sweeping changes. The next few years will also give the N.C.A.A. time to contemplate its own strategy, especially if the courts ultimately uphold the measure NCAA.
In its statement on Monday, the N.C.A.A. complained that the law was already “creating confusion for current and future student-athletes, coaches, administrators and campuses, and not just in California.”
But the association did not threaten, as it had as recently as Sept. 11, to impose severe penalties against the schools that comply with the law, including being “unable to compete.” (An analysis by the California State Assembly’s staff said some public universities could have losses “potentially in the tens of millions of dollars,” but acknowledged that it was not clear whether the N.C.A.A. could lawfully punish members for complying with a state statute.)
The governor, a former baseball player at Santa Clara University, effectively dared the N.C.A.A. to expel the schools. He and other supporters of the legislation argued that the N.C.A.A. simply could not afford to let the California universities — and their popularity in major media markets — slip away.
“It’s a threat,” Newsom said. “I don’t necessarily take it to heart.”
Billy Witz contributed reporting.
The article was originally published here.
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