Thousands of student athletes – both past and present – are lining up to receive their share of a $2.8 billion settlement. an antitrust case against the National Collegiate Athletic Association and the nation’s five largest conferences. The challenge now will be to decide how much each player gets and why.
The complaint, filed in Northern California in 2020 by former Arizona State swimmer Grant House and Sedona Prince, a former Oregon basketball player and current Texas Christian University, accused the NCAA, along with the five wealthiest conferences, of unfairly targeting athletes kept from earning endorsement money. based on their name, image and likenesses, or NILs.
The finer details still need to be ironed out, but the NCAA’s agreement calls for the league and conferences to pay $2.77 billion over 10 years to more than 14,000 former and current college athletes who claim the now-defunct compensation rules prevented them from making money. of endorsement and sponsorship deals dating back to 2016.
The deal still needs to be approved by the federal judge overseeing the case and problems could arise. But if the deal holds up, it will mark the beginning of a new era in college sports, where players are compensated more like professionals and schools can compete for talent using direct payments.
The NCAA can proceed in two ways: either pass some of the money on to colleges across the country and let someone on campus determine the size of the payouts, or hire an outside entity in charge of handling the logistics , said Carnegie Mellon University sports marketing professor Tim Derdenger. In the latter case, the NCAA will have to decide whether all athletes should receive the same amount or whether some will get more than others because of how well they played, experts said.
“If the money goes to the university, I see each player getting one lump sum,” Derdenger said. “Is that based on merit or market? Absolutely not. But I’m an economist, so I would allocate these funds based on their competitive success.”
The NCAA did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.
If individual payout amounts are determined by other measurements, college basketball and football players will most likely get the lion’s share of the settlement, experts told CBS MoneyWatch. That’s because basketball and football games generate the most revenue for a university’s athletic department. And in that scenario, star quarterbacks or starting point guards would get the biggest payday, Derdenger said.
“I can definitely see someone like Caleb Williams getting a check for $100,000, if not more,” he said, referring to the University of Southern California quarterback who was recently drafted into the NFL.
Members of a school’s golf, hockey, lacrosse, football and volleyball teams will also receive payments, but they likely won’t be in the six figures because these sports don’t generate revenue, Derdenger said.
The NCAA should take a page from European football’s playbook and adopt a payment formula that gives players an equal share and rewards those who play the most popular sports, said Patrick Rishe, a sports business professor at Washington University in St. Louis.
“For example, the English Premiere League allocates 50% of its national media revenue equally to all teams, but then 25% is allocated based on team performance and 25% based on popularity,” he said. “Perhaps a hybrid model based on a combination of equality, performance and popularity is the right route.”
— The Associated Press contributed to this report.
