College athletes deserve compensation, but NCAA vote doesn’t do enough

The NCAA Board of Governors unanimously voted Tuesday to start the process of changing rules to allow college athletes to profit off their name, image and likeness.

The Daily Orange Editorial Board commends this decision as a step in the right direction, but the NCAA needs do more than gesture toward progress — they must amend their bylaws and policies in ways that show the organization is truly interested in supporting athletes.

Several state legislatures have proposed bills that would allow college athletes to be compensated. California’s Fair Pay to Play Act was signed into law in September and allows college athletes in the state to profit from their likeness and hire agents. And a New York State Senator proposed a bill in September that would evenly distribute 15% of every athletic department’s annual revenue to college athletes.

Representatives from the NCAA said the new rules would not follow the “California model” of a virtually unrestricted market. The NCAA, they said, would likely stay involved as the group in charge of regulating future endorsement deals.

That answer, though it might finally send some players a paycheck as early as 2021, can be problematic. It’s a new way the organizations overseeing collegiate athletics get to call the shots about how players monetize and market their own reputation.

College athletics has long functioned less as a nonprofit enterprise than a business exploiting its workers. Universities with top teams can make millions of dollars from sponsorships by companies like Nike or Adidas while the athletes whose talent attracts those financial relationships get nothing.

Prominent college athletes are often worth a lot of money — they’re just not allowed to make it. Instead, coaches, schools, apparel companies and agents make that money. Men’s basketball coach Jim Boeheim earned $2.6 million in total compensation in 2017. Football coach Dino Babers made $2.2 million. Syracuse’s athletic department saw a surplus of more than $19 million that same season.

The athletic department’s top players — students who likely spent six days a week practicing, playing, studying and talking to the press — earned the school a lot but get nothing.

Tuesday’s NCAA vote misses the mark when it comes to the work college athletes do. The proposal to craft new rules for compensation that reinforces a distinction between college and professional sports — one that frames college athletes as amateurs, as in-training — is an illusory practice. If colleges and universities are going to structure their athletic programs like those of professional sports teams, if they are going to happily accept the five and six figure revenues that come with doing so, they need to pay the players doing the work accordingly.

An analysis by The Economist found that if college players were paid in proportion to the amount of revenue they bring to their schools, “the top 10 percent of football and 16 percent of basketball players would be paid around $400,000 and $250,000 a year respectively.”

The work top athletes put in has undeniable value, regardless of whether the system allows them to cash a paycheck. The call for compensating college players is not a call for some universal payout — it’s a call for the structural guarantee that the small percentage of players who produce revenues for their schools and the NCAA get a small share of the wealth their performance was used to create.

Tuesday’s announcement wasn’t as promising for players as it could have been. Compensating athletes within the confines of a “collegiate model” all but ensures that the same restrictive systems that exist now get reproduced in the future. If players are ever going to get the money they deserve, the NCAA has to accept that college athletes are more than kids they can exploit.

The Daily Orange Editorial Board serves as the voice of the organization and aims to contribute the perspectives of students to discussions that concern Syracuse University and the greater Syracuse community. The editorial board’s stances are determined by a majority of its members. You can read more about the editorial board here. Are you interested in pitching a topic for the editorial board to discuss? Email opinion@dailyorange.com.