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(Courtesy of the NCAA)
NIL & the NCAA
The question you have to ask then: Are U.S. college sports a business? Because they certainly look like they are.
As Victoria Jackson, a sports historian at ASU and expert in the field, asked us: "What is the mission? How are we building this? Who are we serving and how? What are our guiding principles?"
The college sports system, she said, "has never been designed for those big-time sports and those athletes."
"If you spent even just a week during the fall with a big-time college football program, you'll see that is not an educational program serving students who play sports. It is a professional football industry."
What she means is the money around college football—and, to a degree, basketball—has skyrocketed in the last two decades in terms of TV deals, coaches' salaries, and income generated. Yet, the rules that govern college sports haven't kept pace. The rules for student-athletes are still built off an old amateurism model.
And, now, those rules are changing almost every week.
New Name Image Likeness (or NIL) rules were created to allow student-athletes some ownership over their talents and ability. For example, said Jackson, if a student was an amazing video gamer or coder, they'd be allowed to sell their app or sign a contract for a post-graduation job or have Google pay for their education. Now, NIL lets athletes sign endorsement deals, too — but the NCAA still regulates how, when, where, and how much. At least until a judge said they can't enforce those rules.
What's the problem?
"The very interesting and predictable thing," said Jackson is that boosters and alumni then started meddling and creating "collectives," which now offer scholarships or endorsements or sponsorships to top athletes to get them to sign with their respective schools. FOX even considered offering Caitlin Clark an NIL deal to get her to stay playing college hoops!
Students are also allowed now to enter the transfer portal and change schools (again, within rules regulated by the NCAA — some of which can lead to unintentional repercussions). All of which allows big-time football and basketball athletes to move and look for the best deal. And, which has prompted a lot of concern about the future of college sports.
But, the hand-wringing, said Jackson, is misguided and focused on the wrong problems.
Critics argue that:
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If colleges are forced to view athletes as employees, it'll lead to the defunding of the smaller non-revenue-generating sports (many of them women's sports) and it'll bankrupt the schools.
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They say that student-athletes get their value in their education.
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And Olympic and women's sports have benefitted from the escalating income football generates — creating a best-in-the-world U23 development pipeline.
Jackson says, however: Use your imagination. There's no reason college football can't be spun off and professionalized under a partner organization, or athletes in revenue-generating sports can be given college scholarships to use at any later date after they play. And Olympic sports need to start reimagining how they fund their development pipeline.
"If only there were a business model that existed in the world to prevent all this from happening," Jackson joked. "And that's professionalizing college football, right? Then you have contracts, and you have agents, and you have a players association and agreed upon restrictions on actions."
Tip of the week
A study of competitive female runners and the effects of supershoes found that women had a slightly smaller metabolic improvement than previously found in male runners.
This is in contrast to an analysis done of the 100 best performances annually over the last 12 years — which found that elite women appeared to benefit more than men from advanced shoe technology, especially in distances longer than 1500m. But that analysis was observational and simply looked at the existing database of professional runners (which means there could be other explanations for the bigger drops in women's times).
Whereas the study of 12 competitive female runners was the first to look at the actual running economy improvements from super shoes. And, you'd be shocked to hear: More research still needs to be done on female athletes.
READ MORE: The Influence of Super Shoes on Metabolic Cost and Joint Mechanics in Female Competitive Runners
The highlight reel
Feisty recommendations
What to read: Miles From Nowhere: A Round the World Bicycle Adventure
What to listen to: "On Women's Running Research & Women's Specifc Shoes"
What to apply for: Run the Block — a grant for Black-owned businesses to open a new retail running store
What to do for the good of science: Participate in this study on oral contraceptives and cognitive function (if you're 18-30 & Canadian)
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