It has taken almost 40 years, but the complete professionalism of big time college athletics is finally here. This past week a federal judge in Tennessee has barred the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) from any role in enforcing its rules prohibiting the use of name, image, and likeness (NIL) compensation in recruiting prospects, thereby completely undermining a fundamental principle of the organization’s amateurism model. This is the culmination of what has been a long evolution beginning with the Supreme Court’s decision in 1984 in NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma which held that the NCAA football television plan violated the Sherman and Clayton Antitrust Acts. This ruling set in motion access to a flood of TV funding that ultimately, and to the surprise of no one, triggered the human nature that would not be denied in spite of numerous warnings and studies over the years.
What comes next? As I have suggested, my guess is that within five years the players in the top division of college football and men’s basketball will be paid employees of the schools (if we can still call them that) they attend. A sad development.
Danny Billingsley says
Agreed Jim. There are many complicit in the decade’s long evolution of the professionalism of college sports. And as you noted, at the root is human nature. In the late 1960s and early 1970s I was a student at Sam Houston State and lived on a street just off a main exit of IH-45. Just pass me lived a local justice of the peace. On weekends I was use to seeing cars with out of state plates turn down my street followed by state troopers enroute to the JPs residence. I was working in my yard one Sunday afternoon when a blue sporty looking car with Oklahoma plates turned down the street followed by a trooper friend of mine. A short time later the car came by and turned back towards the freeway. Shortly the trooper friend stopped in front of my house and told me the story. The driver of the car was Greg Pruitt, a Houston native and then All American running back for the University of Oklahoma and the car was registered to the University of Oklahoma. Pruitt had been visiting his mother and was headed back to school. A few years later I was friends with a former Texas A&M football player who had been roommates with former A&M quarterback star Lex James. He said every Sunday morning during football season an envelope with James’s name on it, full of cash, was placed under their dorm room door. My friend was not a star and seldom got into a game and got no cash. So, I know the evolution was underway that far back. We all knew that NIL drove the last nail in the coffin of amateurism in college sports.
Jim Windham says
Good stories, Danny, and there are many many more. In fact, I have heard of NIL being called “Now It’s Legal”. Unfortunately, we have all had a role to play in this evolution, and as one past President of UT once said to me, to fix this problem would require a repeal of human nature.
Gregory Stachura says
Money becomes a driving force in a capitalist country. When colleges were faithful to the liberal arts, virtue was taught and respected. It is in that realm that amateurism could thrive.
vern says
Sad. A further denigration of our education system.
Jim Windham says
Good points, Vern and Greg, and I am reminded that a big part of successful political and institutional leadership should be to overcome the darker aspects and tendencies of this nature.
Dr, Tom says
College football and the NFL have long needed and used, with college “scholarships”, special dorms, trivial courses in anthropology and sociology. It has never been about true education.
Yes, some blacks are bright. Thanks be to God for Clarence Thomas and Thomas Sowell.
But it is reasonably documented, by decades of IQ data, by Charles Murray, author of the large volume, The Bell Curve, in a small tome, Facing Reality, that the average American black male’s IQ is 10 points less than the average white male’s. The black male IQ bell curve is no bell curve; it is a spike, with a tiny header asymptomatic to zero in the higher IQ region.
Dr. Tom says
Adios, Moderator.
Danny Billingsley says
ESPN reported this morning that Bronny James, LeBron’s son, as a college freshman has gotten $6 million in NIL money. At that rate who needs the NBA draft?
I frequently watch pro rodeo on TV. While watching a Cinch Tough rodeo in Columbus, Ohio, they had the Ohio State quarterback come in the arena and throw footballs into the stands. He probably got paid more for that than the winners of each rodeo event.
James Windham says
The demise of college sports amateurism has moved even much faster than I thought. In my February 25 post on the subject in answer to the question what comes next I predicted that within five years the players in the top division of college football and men’s basketball will be paid employees of the schools (if we can still call them that) they attend.
Less than two weeks after my post it was announced that the Dartmouth men’s basketball players voted to join the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in an election ordered by the National Labor Relations Board. One player, serving as the team’s union representative, was quoted as saying, “It’s time for the age of amateurism to end.” It appears that he will get his wish even quicker than most people thought, and Dartmouth is not even a Division I school. Whatever small and weak authority continues to be held by the NCAA has now been completely surrendered.
The Wall Street Journal editorial headline on the story was “A Doomsday Scenario For College Sports”. No doubt, and quickly.