[ed. Love this picture. Ice Bowl. One of the greatest games in NFL history. When I was young, the first book I ever read (when I could read) was Jerry Kramer's Instant Replay, about the Packers' 1967 championship season. Highly recommended. And, a lifetime later, in other football news: The NCAA’s proposal to pay college athletes is fair. That's the problem. (Vox):]
And all this sits atop an essential contradiction: This entire commercial enterprise, this massive generator of alumni donations and TV rights, is all meant to be amateur. Just athletes playing for the love of the game and maybe a free college education, often struggling to get by or even feed themselves — even as a single top college football team like the University of Alabama’s Crimson Tide can bring in more than $120 million a year. You don’t get any more American than that.
Except, possibly, for this: That contradiction is finally on its way to being resolved, through a multibillion-dollar courtroom settlement. (...)
Last Thursday, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and what are known as the Power Five college athletic conferences — the leagues with the biggest college football teams — reached an agreement that would for the first time allow colleges to pay athletes directly. (College athletes can now legally make money indirectly, after a Supreme Court decision in 2021 forced the NCAA to allow them to be compensated by businesses for the use of their name or likeness, but the NCAA still prohibited colleges from paying them directly.)
The agreement, largely in response to the class-action lawsuit House vs. NCAA, still needs to be approved by the federal judge overseeing the case. But should it go forward, it would represent a fundamental change to how college athletics operates, solving one contradiction while potentially creating a host of other challenges."
***
"There are over 520,000 college athletes in the US, playing for nearly 20,000 separate teams in more than 20 different sports. College athletics as a whole produce $13.6 billion in revenue, more than any other professional team sport save the gargantuan NFL, while the nearly 200,000 athletic scholarships given each year are worth the equivalent of some $4 billion. In 43 out of 50 US states, a college coach for a big-time team at a top state university — a job that can easily pay eight figures — is that state’s highest-paid public employee. (...)And all this sits atop an essential contradiction: This entire commercial enterprise, this massive generator of alumni donations and TV rights, is all meant to be amateur. Just athletes playing for the love of the game and maybe a free college education, often struggling to get by or even feed themselves — even as a single top college football team like the University of Alabama’s Crimson Tide can bring in more than $120 million a year. You don’t get any more American than that.
Except, possibly, for this: That contradiction is finally on its way to being resolved, through a multibillion-dollar courtroom settlement. (...)
Last Thursday, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and what are known as the Power Five college athletic conferences — the leagues with the biggest college football teams — reached an agreement that would for the first time allow colleges to pay athletes directly. (College athletes can now legally make money indirectly, after a Supreme Court decision in 2021 forced the NCAA to allow them to be compensated by businesses for the use of their name or likeness, but the NCAA still prohibited colleges from paying them directly.)
The agreement, largely in response to the class-action lawsuit House vs. NCAA, still needs to be approved by the federal judge overseeing the case. But should it go forward, it would represent a fundamental change to how college athletics operates, solving one contradiction while potentially creating a host of other challenges."
