The introduction of name, image likeness payments that rule the college landscape is hardly the first time atheltes have been compensated for playing. Almost since the beginning, they’ve received train tickets, some walking-around money and scholarships. For decades, a lot of the money came to players and their families under the table. Now, that money comes with the OK of the NCAA , though it doesn’t mean college sports is truly clean. A brief look at the history of athlete compensation in college sports:
The early years
The NCAA was founded in 1906, in a push from President Teddy Roosevelt to do something about the sometimes-fatal violence in college football and to set some eligibility standards. Long before its rulebook became a spiraling document covering hundreds of pages, athletes would accept cash or train tickets as inducements to come to particular schools. Sometimes tuition and room and board got covered, too. Very few got in trouble.
The age of the amateur
In 1948, the NCAA produced the Sanity Code in an attempt to rein in what was becoming an out-of-control flood of recruiting inducemments to lure what were supposed to be amateur athletes. The organization initially opposed athletic scholarships, arguing they were a violation of amateurism. But the NCAA standardized the granting of scholarships in 1956, opening the door for eventual change. Part of this was meant to eliminate the cash and perks that also played a role in recruiting, but that never really went away.
Athletes win but chaos ensues
When former UCLA basketball star Ed O’Bannon won a class-action lawsuit in 2014 over the use of his likeness in a video game, it marked the first of a series of losses in court for the NCAA that tranformed college sports and illustrated the NCAA’s lack of preparedness to go along with the idea that players should make money off the enterprise they built. The O’Bannon win helped clear the way for athletes to receive a stipend to cover cost-of-living expenses that fell outside their scholarships. Eleven years later, the ratifying of the House settlement, which stemmed from another lawsuit, allowed schools to share athletic revenue with players every year to the tune of up to $21.3 million this season. It also legitimized the concept of third-party name, image and likeness deals that allows schools to blow well past that cap and has led to football rosters with $50 million payrolls.
Coming next
A bill waiting for a vote in the Senate hopes to put into law many of the rules spelled out in the House settlement. But perhaps the most important part of that law would be a doubling of the salary cap to nearly $49 million per school, with the hope that shifting the money from third-party NIL to under the cap will set a more realistic limit on what schools can spend.
If that bill doesn’t pass, the biggest conferneces — the SEC and the Big Ten — could try to establish a framework to keep the college system together. At peril would be Olympic and women’s sports programs, which operate on funds generated by football and basketball. Without cost controls, the entire industry could end up looking to private equity and a potential superleague to inject funds.
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