NCAA suit settlement: What it means

By Ed Piper

What I've been reading about the settlement in the House vs. NCAA suit will change Division 1 college sports and provide a structure to pay past and present athletes.

The decision, handed down Friday, June 6, stipulates that 22 percent of colleges' athletic revenues will be distributed primarily to football and men's basketball team members--because those are the revenue-producing sports.

A small amount of that money will be split among the remaining sports, including Olympic sports like track.

In addition, past athletes will be paid out of a fund of $2.8 billion over a period of 10 years for their participation from 2016-2025 as a sort of make-up for the NIL (name, image, likeness) endorsement issues.

Beginning July 1, universities can pay current athletes up to a total of $20.5 million in NIL annually.

How do I feel about it? One, universities made billions of dollars off young athletes for decades, which wasn't right. There were cases where a player received a sandwich from a booster when his scholarship stipend ran out in the offseason, and this violated NCAA rules. That was ridiculous.

Another anecdote was from the story of Connie Hawkins, the NBA Phoenix Suns basketball player who was banned from the NBA for a time while he was stuck playing in the old ABA. On college scholarship in Iowa, Hawkins, a 6'8" athlete with tremendous natural talent, was paid for making sure seaweed didn't grow in the school's athletic stadium--obviously, seaweed doesn't encroach on facilities in the Midwest, because the ocean is thousands of miles away.

Do I like young athletes making millions off NIL? No, I'm not thrilled. What sense would you have, without wise family and investment counselors to advise you, at age 18 and a pile of money lands in your lap? Not a pretty picture.

Just take Mikey Williams, the basketball phenom from San Ysidro High. As a high school player, he was living in a million dollar home (I think in Jamul) when friends came up for a visit. Out of jealousy over a girl, he put four bullets into an occupied Tesla. Lawyers worked out a pleaded-out probation so he could move on to play college basketball, where his future is still being decided.

The articles I've read state that smaller colleges--without major football and basketball teams--could benefit by building up teams in lesser-known sports, and thereby prosper in athletics. That may be so.

With roster limits going up to 105 players on D1 football teams and 15 on men's basketball teams, this could drain a lot of the $20.5 million wealthy colleges can pay to their student-athletes.

The lesser sports--non-revenue-producing--could suffer. For example, Long Beach State has a top-flight men's volleyball team that won the NCAA title this year. Its status is in question; where does the program come up with money to pay expenses?

The NCAA doesn't whistle the tune anymore. The conferences, led by the Big 10 and the SEC, are really the movers-and-shakers, as we've seen in the realignment--for gigantic media rights money--the last few years of groupings. The old Pac-10 has dried up and been reborn with lesser teams. The wealthy conferences do whatever they feel in the pursuit of millions and billions of dollars.