College athletes deserve fair wages

College athletes have been playing under a corrupt economic model since the creation of the term “student athlete.” In 1953, NCAA commissioner, Walter Byers, adopted the term amidst a lawsuit by Ernest Nemeth in regards to lack of wage compensation. At that time, according to the Taft-Hartley Amendments (1947) to the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, which allowed independent contractors to be deemed employees. By this model, the college athletes were employees of the NCAA, but this swift label of amateurism shifted the emphasis on players being “students” and using this as compensation for the wages they legally earned.

To better understand how athletes deserve wages, it’s important to put the hours of labor of major student athletes into perspective. The College Football Playoff and bowl games are coming up, so, football players, for example have an estimated fifty three hours of football a week, in addition to the needed study time to pass classes. Historically in the US, a forty hour work week has been standard for a full time job, however in recent years, there is more flexibility to work full time and work as low as thirty five hours per week. This is significantly more hours per week than a full time job. This isn’t only the case during the season, but in the offseason as well. If teams make a bowl or playoff game, their schedule increases from around 240 days of the year to around 262. The US standard is to work 260 days per year for a full time job. So athletes meet the requirements of the Taft-Hartley Amendments of 1947 as employees, yet they aren’t able to earn any wages.

To be clear, there are two distinct developments in the NCAA community regarding paying athletes. The first, is regarding athletes’ ability to profit off of their own name, image, and likeness. This could include, but is not limited to: jersey signings, personal advertisements, profitable side jobs, profitable social media presences, and NCAA video games. This has been banned in the past in accordance with amateurism a development expedited significantly by Governor Gavin Newsom of California signing the “Fair Pay to Play” act into law on September 30, 2019. This set the stage to allow all athletes of California schools to benefit off of their name, image, and likenesses starting in 2023. The NCAA announced new policy in October 2019 to follow in the steps of Newsom, and generalize new policy for the entire country, keeping the power within the institution. While this seems like a positive step in the right direction, it feels eerily similar to other developments over recent decades that have allowed players to get more benefits from the schools, but still keep schools free from having to pay any of their players a cent.

One aspect of this new development that must not go overlooked is the benefits for women’s athletes. Most female athletes are unable to have professional athletic careers, because women’s professional sports leagues lack the infrastructure of men’s leagues across the board. For the vast majority of female athletes, college is likely the most optimal time to profit off of their name, image, and likeness, because they have a spotlight. One example is former UCLA gymnast, Katelyn Ohashi, who earned a perfect ten in a floor routine in January of 2019. The video of her performance on youtube currently has over 75 million views, and will likely be one of the greatest accomplishments in Ohashi’s career. She was unable to benefit off of this performance or the massive viewership that the video acrued at all. Transitioning to this level of economic freedom regarding athletes’ names, images, and likenesses, will thus benefit athletes of all divisions, levels, and genders, because it will allow them to monetize off of their athletic performances while they are still playing.

Memphis star freshman James Wiseman must sit out 12 games total and will be eligible to return to the Tigers on Jan. 12, the NCAA announced Wednesday.

Wiseman will also have to donate $11,500 to a charity of his choice. pic.twitter.com/BfTE6NMdkK

— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) November 20, 2019

James Wiseman, the number one recruit in the class of 2019, was suspended, because Penny Hardaway donated $1 million to Memphis in 2008 making him a booster. He donated $11,500 to the Wiseman family two years ago to help them relocate to Tennessee and as a result the family is charged to pay the money to charity. If the family needed monetary assistance to move, it’s not like this money is going to appear out of thin air, putting college legislation into perspective yet again.

The other distinct change in NCAA policy needs to be an established system of salaries. While allowing players to benefit off of their name, image, and likenesses is clearly a step in the right direction, it is by no means close to an end result. As shown earlier on, players are putting in the labor hours of full time employees of a corporation and earning masses of money that never reaches them. To put the money generated by men’s basketball and football athletes in perspective, The Michigan Wolverines get $54 million per year in ticket revenue, $28 million in corporate sponsorships and deals.In addition to donations, they have a three year average profit of $139 million and an average revenue of $83 million, third behind Texas A&M and Texas respectively. Michigan’s head football coach Jim Harbaugh got paid $7.5 million in 2018 alone. The money being generated by this nonprofit organization is astounding, and yet, the players don’t get any of it. There needs to be a new system devised to attend to athletes of all genders and levels of play, that allows athletes to earn a wage through their collegiate careers, and not simply earn benefits from the colleges they are essentially employees of. Not all educations are equal, the myth of the “student athlete” is outdated, and it’s time for athletes to be compensated.

NCAA adopting ‘Fair Pay to Play’

Since Governor Gavin Newsom signed the “Fair Pay to Play” Act into California law on September 30, congressmen in Ohio, North Carolina, Florida and other states have started to introduce similar legislation and put the pressure on the NCAA. Since then, the NCAA has announced that they are passing legislation that will allow players to benefit off of their likenesses, following the suit of California’s legislation. At face value this seems like a major step forwards that is only pushing the ballot on efforts made in California, but historical NCAA decisions make this one seem underwhelming. 

In the past, there have been minor changes to the structures regarding “student athletes” and their compensation for their athletic labor, but change has been slow. The NCAA continues to push the narratives that paying players will make the leagues more unbalanced or unfair, however not every athletic program is equal as it stands right now. Amongst men’s football and basketball programs, which would likely benefit the most off of this legislation, the playing field hasn’t been even to start with. Programs have widely varying endowments for athletics to start with, and have paid athletes under the table to attract them to their schools. It is already an uneven playing field, and justifyingly paying athletes won’t change that. 

The whole notion of a student athlete was created through the NCAA narrative of exploiting ameteur athletic performance for immense monetary gain. This is a step in the right direction, of the NCAA allowing athletes to benefit off of their likeness, but on a closer look it’s a cop-out. With the pressure of states like California, the NCAA was in a position to either make change early on, or to wait and fight the pressure of this strong wave of government and athlete support against current NCAA legislation. As an organization, they have waited until the last minute to make the most minor of changes in hopes of keeping the structures of the institution similarly exploitative going forwards. The wording on recent changes has been very vague, and in doing so, the NCAA has enabled masses to get off their back regarding new policy, as they did literally make change. What’s next is looking at the actual changes and making sure that this is actually taking a step in the right direction. 
In terms of athletes getting paid to play, as the California law seems to suggest, this is but a small step. For now, athletes will be able to profit off of their likenesses, which will mostly be social media branding and video game endorsements. To put the actual pay of athletes into perspective, this morning, Trey Johnson, a former Villanova football player filed a lawsuit against the NCAA for violating minimum wage laws. While great changes are being made, it is important to continue to follow the literal legislation the NCAA puts in place and not fall victim to allowing a minor tweak to end efforts much larger towards athletes getting compensated. Additionally, it’s time to really call into question what it means to be a “student athlete” and whether or not it’s time that athletes get paid for the money they bring into their schools, and if so, what this might look like.

“Fair Pay to Play” Act Just a Beginning

On September 30, Gavin Newsom, governor of California signed the “Fair Pay to Play” act into law after it unanimously passed through the legislature. This law will go into effect on January 1, 2023, and allow for college athletes to profit off of their likeness in jersey sales, video game representations, monetized Youtube channels, or other jobs. In the past, NCAA athletes have been compensated for their play through scholarship offers, however, there have been regulations in place preventing athletes from benefitting at all off of their likeness. In addition, the “One and Done” rule, implemented in 2006 prevents high school basketball players from going straight to the NBA, and forcing them to play at least one season in college. College football forces athletes to stay for at least three years of college. Other sports including baseball allow players to go straight from high school to the pros.

The O’Bannon v. NCAA lawsuit, which was filed in 2009 and reached a court decision in 2014, was a major precursor to the current legal developments regarding college athletes and their likenesses. Ed O’Bannon’s likeness was used without any compensation in the NCAA Basketball 09 video game. The courts determined that the NCAA was in violation of antitrust laws, which led to slightly more player compensation, and the discontinuing of college sports video games. Now, Governor Newsom is working to change the current NCAA model, which has been compared by current professional athletes to indentured servitude. This new law could be a step towards shifting the power more towards the athletes, and away from the coaches and league officials that have benefitted off of their abilities without full compensation.

While critics of the “Fair Pay to Play” law remark that this rule will only benefit the stars of men’s sports, it will make just as big, if not more, of a difference for many female athletes as well. Men’s professional sports leagues make higher revenues for many male athletes than their female counterparts. For many women’s athletes, college is either the prime of their career, or a time when they’ll receive the most publicity. Katelyn Ohashi, for example, put together a gymnastics workout, with a perfect score of 100, that generated 65 million views on Youtube. She was unable to get sponsorships or profit at all off of potentially the peak performance in her career. While women certainly might not make as much money as their male collegiate counterparts, that disparity won’t change in professional sports. This law could allow some female athletes to profit off of their athletics, when professional opportunities can be hard to come by.

It is important to keep in mind that this law will not go into effect until January 1, 2023. Other states such as; North Carolina and Ohio, amongst others, are looking into implementing similar laws of their own. The NCAA has threatened to ban California schools from competing in the NCAA league if they abide by this state law. This law is symbolic of what could be upcoming in the process of compensating college athletes for their play, but it is just a small step.

Nike Hypocritically Advocates to ‘Dream Crazier’

Following the release of Nike’s “Dream Crazy” ad in September 2019, Nike started an ad campaign to inspire disenfranchised groups, including women and people of color. Five months later, Nike published “Dream Crazier,” an ad featuring solely female athletes, using the image of the US Women’s National Soccer Team, specifically Megan Rapinoe, and other prominent female athletes to inspire young girls with how much athletic opportunity there is in our country.

Alysia Montaño, a US Olympic runner and three time national champion, wrote a New York Times opinion piece “Nike Told Me to Dream Crazy, Until I Wanted a Baby,” in May around Mothers’ Day, calling Nike out for their hypocrisy. Nike has had the right to decrease an athletes pay if they do not perform up to standards. This has given Nike a shortcut to not pay their female athletes or provide health insurance while they are on maternity leave, because their performance is not up to standard. Montaño ran the 2014 National Championships eight months pregnant and made unpaid appearances on Nike ads. She fought to make it back within Nike’s timeline and return to training a week after giving birth, but beyond the ridiculousness of that feat, nursing her new child at the same time is impossible. Fellow US female track stars, Allyson Felix, the most decorated woman in US track and field history, published an article a week later with the New York Times and distance-runner Kara Goucher has been vocal alongside Montaño and Felix. It is simply not safe for women to be pushed in the prime of their careers to ignore their bodies during the process of childbirth and rush back into racing to keep their jobs.

Nike has since amended their policy to provide eight months prior to giving birth and the ten months following, amassing eighteen months compensated for female athletes. While this is a much needed improvement to a harmful policy, there’s a deeper issue. It’s easy for Nike to advertise inspirational messages, to tug at the heart strings of ad-viewers and inspire predominantly women and people of color that there is in fact hope, but that’s too easy. Those are great messages, but it’s up to the consumers to hold Nike accountable to the messages they spread, to not be blind to the hypocrisy of their support of women and girls in sports, amidst some other great strides. A year after Nike released “Dream Crazy” it is the responsibility of consumers everywhere to know what they’re buying beyond the physical shoes, to hold Nike and other companies accountable to policies that are unsafe, unfair, and go against their branding.