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Student Opinion

College Athletes Can Now Be Paid. But Not All of Them Are Seeing Money. Is That Fair?

A Supreme Court ruling allows student athletes to be compensated. Should those who are raking in the money have to share it with their teammates?

By Shannon Doyne and Jeremy Engle

Do you follow college sports? Did you know that college athletes can now make money? They are not paid by their colleges or universities, but they can receive gifts from boosters; make deals with companies to use their names, images and likenesses; and endorse products.

What do you think about that? If you play a sport, would you like to play in college someday? Do you think you could make money doing it?

In “ Student. Athlete. Mogul? ” Bruce Schoenfeld wrote about changes made in July 2021 to the rules that govern collegiate athletics that allow student athletes to earn money from corporate sponsorships and to accept money from supporters. But few players, he writes, are seeing any of it:

For more than a century, or as long as the N.C.A.A. has presided over college sports, athletes had no legal way to earn anything more tangible from their achievements than plaques and trophies. The rules were as clear as they were strict: Players couldn’t receive any benefits linked to their participation in a sport. Over the years, football and men’s basketball have come to generate billions of dollars for television networks, corporate sponsors and universities. Seven-figure salaries for coaches have become common. The players, however, could get nothing beyond a free — often perfunctory — education. That changed on July 1, 2021. Following a Supreme Court decision against the N.C.A.A. , the organization ended nearly all its restrictions on what athletes could earn from the use of their names, images and likenesses, an amorphous category that has become known as N.I.L. Overnight, those athletes could make deals with companies and endorse their products. They could even accept money from boosters — usually longtime donors, or local businessmen with ties to a university — in transactions that previously would have led to severe sanctions against their teams. Around the country, administrators were astonished by the abrupt reversal. “It’s not a hole in the dike,” is how Vince Ille, a senior associate athletic director, describes the N.C.A.A.’s change of course. “It’s the obliteration of the entire dam.”

The article continues:

The upheaval that gave college athletes the right to earn money from their sports began with a reasonable grievance. In 2014, Ed O’Bannon, a former power forward on the U.C.L.A. basketball team, sued the N.C.A.A. and E.A. Sports because he felt entitled to income from a video game that included his likeness. His primary claim was that the N.C.A.A. rules prohibiting student-athlete compensation were a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The U.S. district judge who heard the case agreed with O’Bannon. In 2019, the same judge issued a similar ruling in a separate lawsuit, known as the Alston case. Those decisions struck a chord with many sports fans, who identified with O’Bannon’s position. When California’s Legislature passed a law that year allowing college athletes to hire agents and negotiate business deals, Gavin Newsom, the state’s governor, signed it on HBO with LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers sitting beside him. By then, the N.C.A.A. understood that change was inevitable. That fall, it surveyed its members about whether income should be shared by all players or retained by those who made individual deals. When North Carolina’s football team met to discuss the issue, a quarterback named Sam Howell, then a freshman, made the case that letting players profit from deals they negotiated would unfairly favor those, like himself, who played marquee positions. Everyone pretty much agreed. “I knew N.I.L. was coming,” Cunningham says now, “but I didn’t think it would happen the way that it did. I thought we’d start with group licensing — bring back the video game, jersey sales, things that you could somewhat control.” He figured the schools would make the deals, collect the money, then spread it out among their athletes. In the months that followed, the N.C.A.A. created a template for distributing money through the schools. But in the wake of the Supreme Court’s unanimous opinion upholding the lower court’s decision in the Alston case, the organization decided that any limitations on college athletes’ potential earnings could prompt a lawsuit — and that it probably would lose in court. In the end, the N.C.A.A. (which declined to comment for this article) felt comfortable imposing only a few rules on its member institutions regarding the deals that athletes could make. The most basic rule is that for an athlete to earn money, something of ostensible value must be provided in return. You can’t just give $10,000 to Leaky Black ; he would at least have to pose for a selfie with you, or sign an autograph, or maybe agree to call your sister on her birthday. Income cannot directly compensate performance — a specific sum per touchdown pass, for example. Schools can’t pay their players, though some coaches have proposed that college athletes be treated as salaried employees. Also, the promise of deals can’t be used to recruit high schoolers, or to entice current students to transfer through a web portal that was created in 2018 to make player movement more transparent. The rule against recruiting, which is all but unenforceable, is widely believed to be broken by one school or another pretty much every day. The other rules are flimsy enough to be easily circumvented. The opportunity to earn money while playing college sports is available to all athletes, from football’s Heisman Trophy winner to small-college wrestlers. But of the approximately 520,000 students currently competing in intercollegiate athletics, maybe 519,000 are making nothing at all. A vast majority of deals reward the top players on the nationally competitive teams in two sports: football and men’s basketball. Some of the deals are as lucrative as those that established professionals earn. According to On3, this academic year the Alabama quarterback Bryce Young will earn a total of at least $3.2 million from Nissan, BMW of Tuscaloosa, the mobile-payment service Cash App and other companies.

Students, read the entire article , then tell us:

What do you think of the Supreme Court’s recent decision allowing student athletes to earn money from the use of their names, images and likenesses (N.I.L.)? Do you think the ruling goes far enough in compensating players, or does it go too far?

The article points out that “of the approximately 520,000 students currently competing in intercollegiate athletics, maybe 519,000 are making nothing at all.” Is this fair? Do you think collegiate athletes who are making money — like Armando Bacot, a senior on North Carolina’s basketball team who will earn roughly $500,000 this year, or Bryce Young, an Alabama quarterback who will earn at least $3.2 million — should have to share it with their teammates? Their school? Or is that money entirely theirs?

Should all college athletes be paid? Or are their scholarships, free education and fame enough? If yes, what do you think is fair compensation?

Are you a fan of college sports? If so, which schools and programs do you root for? Do you think N.I.L. will help or hurt college athletics? What ideas do you have to improve college sports — for players and fans?

Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public and may appear in print.

Find more Student Opinion questions here. Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate these prompts into your classroom.

Jeremy Engle joined The Learning Network as a staff editor in 2018 after spending more than 20 years as a classroom humanities and documentary-making teacher, professional developer and curriculum designer working with students and teachers across the country. More about Jeremy Engle