Supreme Court decision will change college athletics forever

In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court sided with the plaintiff Shawne Alston against the NCAA. It essentially ruled that the NCAA could not place limits on education-related benefits schools may make available to student-athletes. The ruling did not touch on whether student-athletes could be paid directly to play but hinted that the Court might rule in favor of the athletes if such cases were raised. College sports are about to go through significant changes.

Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh wrote the following in his concurring opinion: “The bottom line is that the NCAA and its member colleges are suppressing the pay of student-athletes who collectively generate billions of dollars in revenues for colleges every year. Those enormous sums of money flow to seemingly everyone except the student-athletes. College presidents, athletic directors, coaches, conference commissioners, and NCAA executives take in six- and seven-figure salaries. Colleges build lavish new facilities. But the student-athletes who generate the revenues, many of whom are African American and from lower-income backgrounds, end up with little or nothing.”

The NCAA also must now deal with name, image, likeness (NIL) state laws. NIL state laws go into effect July 1st in the following states; Florida, George, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, and New Mexico. It’s no coincidence that, except for New Mexico, these states all have top national college football programs in the South Eastern Conference (SEC). The SEC generated $721 million in revenue for the 2019 fiscal year and is the most profitable conference in the NCAA.

The new NIL laws will allow student-athletes in these states to receive compensation from companies using their name, image, or likeness. In addition, the Supreme Court ruling likely strengthens these state laws making it more difficult for the NCAA to win lawsuits to strike down these laws.

The NCAA has known about this since the beginning of the year but has been unable to agree on what to do about the other forty-four states that don’t yet have these laws. There was some hope that Congress would pass a national standard for NIL before July 1st, but that isn’t going to happen. The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee had a hearing titled “NCAA Student-Athletes and NIL Rights.” Senator Maria Cantwell is the committee chairwoman and told reporters, “I know that that date is imminent, so I think it’s probably safe to say something isn’t going to make it through the halls of Congress by that date.”

Until the NCAA levels the playing field, schools in states where NIL state laws are in place will have a recruiting advantage. Many observers expect lawsuits to follow and not just the NCAA seeking to delay the NIL state laws from taking place. I’d expect lawsuits from the other states as well. Without some sort of collective bargaining between student-athletes and the NCAA, a level playing field isn’t possible anymore.