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https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2021/06/21/shawne-alston-vs-ncaa-case-supreme-court-ruling/5237656001/

This is far from over but it sets precendent that NCAA can't bar students from accepting money and scholarships from universities based on current rules. It is so much more complex than that and we will hear more about it in the coming months but the gist of it is Students Happy, NCAA Unhappy.

This obviously has wide ranging impact across all sports.

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The NCAA has been a glutenous money grubbing whore for too many decades.  This is long overdue.

While the students have been gluten-free.

Well done.

This is going to change college football as we know it.   Schools are going to be classified as haves and have nots.  Sadly, Miami will be a have not. 

Miami's radio guys were talking about that. Teams like Clemson, Alabama, Ohio, and Florida will have a much easier time recruiting than they already do while mid tier teams like Miami will fall further down the line.

I, for one, fear the prospect of a nightmarish hellscape in which there are some college football programs with a sizable recruiting and resource advantage over many others, which they parlay into perennial contention (in a sport where dozens of teams finish with the same record and postseason contention is entirely subjective).

Such a dystopia is hard to even imagine, yet the mere possibility is still terrifying.  Under no circumstances can such a perversion of sport be allowed to become reality.

Don't even speak of such an unfathomable hellscape where one football team has won 6 of the past 12 national championships!

This won't turn college sports into MLB where you can spend whatever you want. There will undoubtedly still be some type of salary cap and scholarship cap for players, they just can't ruin a kid's life anymore for accepting a ham sandwich by an assistant coach.

They also can't pocket 100% of the profits from jersey and videogame sales using the student's likeness. The South Park episode on this really nailed it.

Oh yes it will.  Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Clemson, Ohio State, Penn State, Michigan, USC, Oregon, Texas and Texas A&M have deep pockets and will not hesitate to use it.   

What they need to do is create more leagues like the XFL/AAF.  Kids who value football and have a legit shot at making it in the NFL need to go play there and earn $90k a year.  Let college football be a true amateur sport.

Look to college baseball and hockey - coincidentally(?), two sports with a MUCH higher percentage of white American players.

Baseball and hockey have well-developed minor-league systems that allow players to start making money as a pro from age 18 (and the best young players to make SIGNIFICANT money).  As I understand it, players who choose to play college baseball commit to 4 years before they may be drafted; i.e. they are going to college for the education.

Football and basketball stand in sharp contrast.  I leave it to the reader as to whether the reasons for those differences in structure are the same reasons why fighting is deemed a necessary and protected part of the sport in baseball and hockey, yet penalized in the harshest terms for football and basketball.

Have you read up on the decision? Student athletes will still not be receiving straight pay for play. The ruling just frees up additional educational related money such as scholarships to grad school,  tutors, music instruments, etc. This isn't the major victory for pay the players enthusiasts.

To me, the difference is in the sports. In College, you are much more advanced and prepared for the pros in baseketball and football. Baseball players spend years in the minors, sometimes not debuting until their late 20s. Hockey has a shorter learning curve, some kids go straight to the NHL from high school or college if they are prodigies but in general they stay in the minors for a few years too.

But it also frees up athletes to make money off their likeness, something the NCAA would not allow.   

It's going to force the NCAA to come up with some type of agreement with the students about revenue. The devil is in the details and we are months away from that but this was a very good thing for the students. No one is being signed for millions of dollars to play at Alabama, but jersey sales, video game sales and dumb restrictions that hurt players for accepting a bagel are going to change dramatically.

^^^ And it is about time.

Absolutely. It was always disgusting of the NCAA to make money off of the players but ruin their lives because some booster bought a kid a suit to attend his Father's funeral and yes, that is what actually happened one time. A lot of these kids come from poor upbringings and sports was their only way out and the NCAA took advantage of that.

The NCAA always had the mentality of amateurism over all and if an athlete takes money or gifts from someone outside their family, they become a paid professional athlete.  I think the best way for this to work but stay within NCAA rules would be that anyone who wants to give a player money should give it to the coach instead.   Then that money would be split and evenly distributed among everyone on the team.  That way even the walk ons can get some pocket money while playing college football.  

If you're at college on a music scholarship, or a drama scholarship, you can get a summer job in your field of study paying a full salary and not only do you get to keep every cent of your paycheck, the school will brag about your success.

But if you're on a sports scholarship, you're not allowed to accept a dime.  Again, I leave it to the reader as to why that is.

Too much of a threat of corruption and fixed games in sports

We pay pro athletes enormous sums of money without too much worry about a "threat of corruption and fixed games."  And we also allow minor league baseball and hockey players (of the same age as college football and basketball players) to make an income, despite that concern.

So why are only college athletes uniquely susceptible to a "threat of corruption and fixed games"... so much so that we need to artificially restrict their income?

One school of thought has to do precisely with the portion you bolded, they are in a field of study. Athletics is extracurricular and not a field of study.

They are in college on an athletic scholarship so I don't see how that's any different.

Specifically: if you are attending Duke on a basketball scholarship and you suddenly decide sports are immoral, Duke is under no obligation (https://therecruitingcode.com/lost-athletic-scholarship/) to continue your "scholarship" in your "field of study":

“If a student-athlete is receiving institutional financial aid based in any degree on athletics ability, that financial aid MAY be reduced or canceled during the period of award (e.g., during that year or term) only if the student-athlete:

        • Renders himself or herself ineligible for intercollegiate competition; or
        • Misrepresents any information on an application, letter of intent or financial aid agreement; or
        • Commits serious misconduct which warrants a substantial disciplinary penalty (the misconduct determination must be made by the university’s regular student disciplinary authority); or
        • Voluntarily quits the sport for personal reasons. In this case, the student-athlete’s financial aid may not be given to another student-athlete during the term in which the aid was reduced or canceled."

You are attending the university as an athlete, just as much as someone on a music scholarship is attending as a musician.

If the universities were putting that revenue in their pockets, maybe your argument would hold more water. But that revenue is being used to fund other sports that generate very little revenue or none at all (and that includes scholarships for those sports). When you look at the overall numbers in a school's athletic budget, you can say that the athletes are more than fairly compensated across the board. Most colleges barely break even with athletic revenue.  Now the football and basketball players want to take a big bite out of that revenue.

I think this is a dubious claim at best.

These staffs, specifically head coaches and ADs are making booku cash.

I'll repeat myself, it is not a field of study.

The football and basketball coaches are.  Other coaches, not so much.  And they make more because they are the cash cow.  So you gotta take care of them.

I thought this was interesting in Justice Kavanaugh's ripping of the NCAA.

"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 under ordinary principles of antitrust law, it is not evident why college sports should be any different.

The NCAA’s business model would be flatly illegal in almost any other industry in America

"The NCAA is not above the law."

He is 100% correct. It has been illegal for a long time, I have no idea why it took so long for it to reach SCOTUS. I know Justice can be slow, but not one person brought up a lawsuit about this in all of these years until recently?

They are.  A university paying millions to a coach is no different than paying millions to a professor or a dean.  If a business were paying millions to its executives, you wouldn't say that business "isn't putting revenue in its pockets."

As of 2019, the highest-paid public employee in 40 states (https://fanbuzz.com/national/highest-paid-state-employees/) is a football or basketball coach.

The revenue being used to fund, say, badminton does not come "from" football any more than it comes "from" tuition.  Revenue is revenue, and the funding for other sports is not tied to football revenue any more than the funding for the medical school is tied to football revenue.  It's all just money.

No one is going to tell UNC that they're not allowed to spend money on the law school because that money came "from" the basketball program.

They "barely break even"... after they pay their coaches and ADs millions of dollars, and spend even more millions on stadiums, practice facilities, state-of-the-art equipment, blah blah blah.  But the one thing that they DON'T have money for is... paying the players.  Sure.

The idea that a ~$50k communications degree (which isn't even likely to be completed for the most valuable players!) is "fair compensation" is insulting.  Tell Jim Harbaugh that instead of receiving his salary as a coach, his kid can attend Michigan for free.  See how far that gets you.

I think your point is misguided.  Football and Basketball players at smaller programs that barely break even aren't going to be compensated that much because they really aren't generating much revenue off their likenesses.  It's the players at the top programs, which earn huge sums of money, that are the ones that are going to benefit the most.  Nick Saban is going to make $9.5 million this year, if Alabama was worried about their other sports programs he wouldn't be paid that much.

I'm bumping this thread because thanks to this ruling, things have gotten out of control pretty quickly.   

Caleb Williams, who balled out at Oklahoma last year entered the transfer portal.   He said that Oklahoma was still in the running, but everyone thought he would follow Lincoln Riley to USC.  Then it comes out that former NFL QB Charlie Batch is offering him $1 million to go play at Eastern Michigan.

https://www.saturdaydownsouth.com/college-football/caleb-williams-offered-1-million-by-former-nfl-qb-to-transfer-to-specific-school/

That, plus seeing Travis Hunter spurn Florida State to go to a division 1-AA school tells me that the smaller programs can and will come up with the cash, through certain boosters and/or businesses.   And while the NFL has protocols in place to regulate how much money can be given to a player, the NCAA does not. 

This is going to turn college football into an all out bidding war, and I see it splitting up into amateur football vs NFL minor league type football.

Aren't these kids supposed to be in school for getting an education, so at the very least they can sound somewhat literate and articulate while giving their post game interviews?

That's what college football was created for.   But for powerhouse programs like Alabama, Michigan, Georgia, USC, Miami, Florida, Florida State, etc... you are not a student athlete.  You are an athlete student.   When you arrive on campus, you are there to play football.   If it wasn't for football, you wouldn't have a scholarship and therefore wouldn't be going to school there.   So it's up to each athlete to be able to balance the rigors of being a Division 1 college football player (which in itself is a full time job) with being a full time college student.

No one seems to think that's necessary for baseball or hockey players, as the best players go straight into the minor leagues after high school.

I don't know. Never really thought about it. The answer is probably in your statement to me. Baseball and hockey have minor leagues where those athletes can train and be groomed into professional players on the big league level  if they can make it that far. Football doesn't have a minor league system so in effect college football has become the NFL's minor league system. Same exists for basketball too in some regard I suppose. I was in high school with a couple of hockey and baseball players who were drafted by pro teams before graduation. They went on to play collegiately but never made it anywhere. I'm not a hockey fan, but I know some, and am told that it's common practice for an NHL team to draft some kid out of high school because the drafting team sees some potential in them. All comes down to rules maybe for each individual league. NBA stopped drafting players straight out of high school until fairly recently. Now I think a college basketball player has to at least complete two years of college before becoming draft eligible.

The bottom line is that regardless of what it used to be or what it's intended to be or what you wish it were, college football programs aren't about education at all.  They are a business.  They are a fundraiser.

Student athletes are essentially employees of that business.  And they've been denied compensation and worse yet, have been denied the ability to compete against what's essentially a monopoly.

All judges saw through that veil of bullshit.

Now, it opens up a shitstorm for the reality of how to work out that compensation, but that's a separate issue.  You don't continue to do things that are illegal bullshit just because the fallout of having to deal with it is inconvenient and complicated.