Random Thoughts: A freedom cry for college athletes

A freedom cry for college athletes

JR BALL

THE ZIP-A-DEE-DOO-DAH days of the indentured servant model of college athletics—the one where everyone gets rich except the young men and women putting their bodies at risk—are all but over.

A more equitable—and businesslike—age is dawning at LSU and everywhere else where the tail of athletics tends to wag the university dog. Smashed into oblivion is the notion that the only thing amateur in the $8.5 billion enterprise known as Division I athletics are the athletes who double as students.

The emancipation proclamations are raining down like confetti at a ticker-tape parade.

With state legislatures, including the one here in Louisiana, about to do what the NCAA has spent years and billions in legal fees trying to prevent, Mark Emmert and a cadre of plantation presidents acquiesced in late June, setting free the name, image and likeness (NIL) of college athletes.

That means a star quarterback can go into business with a video game maker or trading card company. It means that volleyball player with 80,000 social media followers can make a deal to promote products on her channel. It means that baseball player can become a pitchman for a business near you.

Think about this, Joe Burrow as a senior at LSU, based solely on his Instagram followers, could have earned an estimated $700,000, according to research by AthleticDirectorU. Among current Tigers, gymnast Olivia Dunne, the only current NCAA athlete with more than 1 million followers on TikTok and Instagram, has the second-highest NIL income potential, per Darren Rovell and The Action Network, and right behind her is Shareef O’Neal, Shaq’s son and a UCLA transfer who comes to LSU with 1.1 million Twitter followers. Football’s Derek Stingley Jr. is 14th on the list, giving the Tigers three soon-to-be-earning athletes in the top 20.

Which makes one wonder just how willing LSU’s football players will be to spend hours signing autographs at fan day? Why give away one’s John Hancock for free?

Navigating this new world is going to be a challenge. “It’s like building an airplane while you’re flying,” Stephanie Rempe, the chief operating officer of LSU’s athletic department, told ESPN.

Yet a unanimous Supreme Court earlier in June struck the real blow for economic freedom. Both the liberal and conservative justices joined forces to annihilate the plantation mentality of college athletics, declaring the NCAA is violating antitrust law by placing limits on academic-related benefits a school like LSU can provide to athletes donning the purple and gold.

Though the decision in NCAA v. Alston was on a pretty narrow issue, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh provided the drop-the-mike moment, writing this in a concurrence to the decision: “The NCAA couches its arguments for not paying student athletes in innocuous labels. But the labels cannot disguise the reality: The NCAA’s business model would be flatly illegal in almost any other industry in America.”

That’s some harsh truth.

But there was more, with Kavanaugh concluding, “Nowhere else in America can businesses get away with agreeing not to pay their workers a fair market rate on the theory that their product is defined by not paying their workers a fair market rate (and) it is not evident why college sports should be any different. The NCAA is not above the law.”

How many lawyers are lining up to file the first in what will be a barrage of litigation demanding compensation for college athletes beyond education-related expenses? And if what Kavanaugh wrote didn’t do it, this will: “Put simply, this suit involves admitted horizontal price fixing in a market where the defendants (the NCAA) exercise market control,” wrote Justice Neil M. Gorsuch in the majority opinion.

“Flatly illegal?” “Price fixing?” Mighty damning words. Emmert and everyone else getting rich off the cheap labor of athletic teenagers now knows what those in Atlanta felt like when Sherman came marching through on his way to the sea.

No matter how anyone at the NCAA, LSU or any other sports-playing university tries to spin it, the Supreme Court made clear that the student-athlete myth is just that—a myth. Over are the days when everyone involved in this sham system—coaches, athletic directors, university presidents, conference officials, NCAA pooh-bahs and television network executives— gets rich off the semi-free labor of the college athlete workforce.

Will allowing athletes to profit off their name, image and likeness impact the revenue flow of athletic departments? Once the teetering final domino—non-education compensation—falls, what’s fair compensation for a football or men’s basketball player? What about the other sports? Will there need to be salary caps to keep the rich from monopolizing talent?

Those are questions for the free market—or state and federal legislation—to answer. The NCAA and its member institutions will do what they can to preserve their golden empire, but the tarnish is on the walls.

Using a collective bargaining model similar to what’s in place in the NFL and NBA (a 50-50 revenue split), a study from the National Bureau of Economic Research estimates each Power 5 conference football player would receive $360,000 per year, and each basketball player would earn nearly $500,000 annually. A starting quarterback and wide receiver (the two highest-paid NFL positions) would land deals worth $2.4 million and $1.3 million, respectively, while starters on the men’s basketball team would knock down between $800,000 and $1.2 million per year.

But if history makes anything clear it’s this: Those in power don’t give it up easily, especially when there’s a billion-plus in lucrative television dollars at stake.

One option—especially if the market moves in the financial direction of six-figure salaries— might be for schools and leagues to spin off the cash cow sports of football and men’s basketball, essentially creating professional developmental leagues. In the case of LSU, for example, the university could charge the football and basketball programs a rights fee for the use of the LSU name as well as rent for stadium, arena and facility use. Under this model, coaches would not be university employees and the players would essentially be professionals with the right to a tuition-free education.

What course college athletics ultimately charts remains to be seen. What’s certain is the days of student-athlete oppression are fading fast, and to borrow a phrase from Martin Luther

King Jr.: Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty student-athletes are free at last.

TODD KIRKLAND/ICON SPORTSWIRE INSTA-RICH: One estimate says Joe Burrow could have earned $700,000 off his Instagram account during his senior year at LSU.