College sports: It’s just business

 Brawner

The speed with which college sports has been changing in recent years accelerated with the recent announcement that major programs are ready to pay athletes directly.

The NCAA and the five major conferences agreed to pay current and former athletes $2.77 billion in damages over the next 10 years. Starting with the 2025 football season, schools would be allowed to distribute to their current athletes up to $21 million annually. That number can rise as revenues rise. The agreement would end the House v. NCAA court case if approved by a federal judge.

The NCAA has been moving in this direction since 2021, when it started allowing athletes to benefit from name, image and likeness (NIL) deals with sponsors.

If NIL was ever meant to reward athletes for their play and contributions, it quickly devolved into a pay-for-play recruiting tool run by outside “collectives” affiliated with the schools. Because of another change — the transfer portal — players can freely switch schools during specified time periods. In effect, they have become free agent professional athletes without the multiyear contracts that bring order to established professional leagues like the NFL and the NBA.

No less an expert than former Alabama football coach Nick Saban said as far back as 2022 – ancient history – that the model is not sustainable. It’s far from certain that the recent settlement agreement makes it more so. While schools will be paying their student-athletes a salary, the settlement doesn’t end NIL. It simply provides an additional revenue stream for players.

The NCAA is hoping Congress will step in and create national standards while specifically allowing it to avoid referring to its hired players as “employees.” It doesn‘t want the players to have collective bargaining rights.

The NCAA should not hold its breath. Anyone relying on Congress to save its bacon is in bad shape. Nothing will get done this presidential election year for sure, or maybe ever.

The arms race of skyrocketing salaries that has characterized traditional professional sports leagues has already started at the collegiate level. How high those salaries rise will depend on how much university athletic departments and their boosters are willing to pay. A team’s competitiveness will depend less on the coach and more on the millionaires and billionaires who support the program.

Will Arkansas be able to compete in this new environment, particularly in football? There’s a lot of money in Northwest Arkansas, but there’s a lot more in Texas. Furthermore, what happens to less big-time programs like those at Arkansas State University and the University of Central Arkansas?

One thing is certain: College sports has changed forever. Gone is the myth of the young student-athlete playing for pride of school and love of state. And gone are the days when Hog fans could expect to develop personal connections with players over three or four years.

Instead, these are now teenage and barely older businesspeople making business decisions and selling their services to the highest bidder. Surely star Razorback players long have been given special treatment on campus. Now, will academic professors be able to hold them accountable when Nike’s millions are at stake, and the players are making 20 times what the professor is making? Do they even have to go to class now?

It will be tempting to say that money has ruined everything. But money in our free market system simply follows what consumers value. When we value something, we tend to put a dollar figure on it. Long ago, the public collectively decided that the most important thing many universities did was win football and basketball games. This became big business, so of course the wealth generators — the players – should be paid. Meanwhile, the universities themselves have become almost secondary. The tails have wagged the dogs for so long that I’m not sure we can tell which is which anymore.

Let’s be honest: As a society, we’ve long said big-time athletes stopping temporarily on campus on their way to the NFL or NBA are more important than students studying four years to become doctors and teachers in Arkansas for the rest of their lives. What’s changed is, we’re now openly putting our money where our mouth is.

That being the case, we shouldn’t blame any athlete who takes the money to play at the University of Arkansas one year and then takes someone else’s money and plays elsewhere the next.

After all, you know what they say: It’s not personal. It’s just business.

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Steve Brawner is a syndicated columnist published in 17 outlets in Arkansas. Email him at brawnersteve@mac. com.