The NCAA is considering big changes to its structure and in the issue of student-athlete compensation.
The group’s president, Charlie Baker, has proposed creating a new subdivision within Division I. Schools in that new subdivision would be able to directly compensate athletes, including through name, image and likeness, or NIL deals done through the school.
NCAA leaders were in Phoenix last week for a conference, and Justin Williams, staff writer at the Athletic, joined The Show to talk about what role this proposal played in that.
Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: So like, this seems from an outsider's perspective, like if this proposal were to go through, it would be a huge change in the NCAA. Is it in fact, would it in fact be a huge change?
JUSTIN WILLIAMS: Yeah, it absolutely would be and, you know, it's fair to call it a proposal, but it's also, you mentioned the convention, that's the annual convention the NCAA has that was in Phoenix this month. That was not voted on, you know, officially at the, at the convention. It's not something that has been, you know, kind of officially discussed and, and put through those channels.
So it's still very early stages, a lot of places you've seen this maybe called a conversation starter, and I think that's fair. It was the NCAA president, Charlie Baker, kind of putting this proposal out there. It was not something that was necessarily vetted or or went through a bunch of different committees that kind of just landed in people's inbox, I believe, in December. And, and yeah, it caused a lot of waves because it would be a massive change for the NCAA, but it's definitely still something that's kind of in the early discussion trial stage.
BRODIE: All right, so let's say this is in fact a conversation starter. What has the conversation about it been so far?
WILLIAMS: Honestly, a kind of a lot of surprise by people that have followed the NCAA, you know, for so long, especially under previous President Mark Emmert. The NCAA was criticized because it was, you know, reactive. It was not kind of making these changes towards compensating athletes, whether it's directly or through, you know, NIL legislation, things like that.
The NCAA has really fought hard for a number of years to kind of hold on to that amateurism model, and that includes, people might know about the Alston case, which the NCAA lost 9-0 to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court that, you know, very rarely agrees, is in agreement unanimously on something. The NCAA lost that in 2021. And so we've seen the NCAA really struggle in court the past couple of years for some of these player empowerment, student athlete empowerment cases that have been brought to them.
And this proposal by Charlie Baker in some ways is certainly viewed as the NCAA finally trying to be proactive and kind of putting out some potential, you know, changes that can be made without it being something that's directed by the court. There's also kind of a more cynical view, which is the NCAA is, is working towards an antitrust agreement or that's what they want to get from, from Congress and that this is, this proposal was kind of a way to try to appease Congress while ultimately, you know, hoping to get that anti-trust exemption that they're looking for.
BRODIE: Well, so for someone like Charlie Baker or other folks who think this might be a good idea. Like, what is the advantage of allowing these NIL deals to be done sort of in-house at the schools? They would be able to basically pay student athletes, what, $30,000 at least half of their students, while still complying with Title IX, so male and female athletes, student athletes would, would each have to be compensated. But like what's the, what's the advantage to the NCAA of doing it that way instead of some other way?
WILLIAMS: Yeah, honestly, the details of it are also kind of up in the air. It could be by bringing NIL payments in-house, like you mentioned. It could be by creating, you know, basically trusts for, for athletes, whether it's, you know, they're getting paid out immediately or maybe those trusts are held until they exhaust their eligibility. The details are kind of all still to be worked out, but essentially what you have is the NCAA is trying to justify paying, you know, finding a way to pay athletes while still again, kind of retaining some form of that amateurism model, meaning the athletes would not become kind of full-blown employees who could then collectively bargain for things like salaries or health benefits or things like that.
So this is kind of the NCAA's proposal of saying, what if we did it this way? And honestly, it's really them working against some of these cases that they're facing in court where student athletes have, you know, whether former or current student athletes have brought forth cases that would result in them being able to be directly compensated or being able to collectively bargain. And so it's kind of, you know, two different things happening at once, which is, there's a bunch of battles being fought on the legal front against the NCAA and then the subdivision proposal is the NCAA saying, right, what if we did it this way? And what if this is a way for us to find a way to compensate athletes whether it's through NIL or trust or whatever it is, but also still maybe kind of fend off some of those legal cases that they're up against.
BRODIE: Right. Well, and we've seen since NIL became such a big deal that it's almost like there's a bit of a haves and have nots situation between schools, which have big booster groups or are able to, you know, are in markets where student athletes can get lucrative NIL deals versus those that can't. If this or something like this were to go into effect, would that just sort of exacerbate that?
WILLIAMS: Maybe, you know, honestly, for a, for a while now, college sports have kind of been that haves and have nots. That's really taken off with the way these conference media rights deals have happened, you know, conferences like the SEC and the Big 10 are making a lot more TV money, than other conferences, and so you're always gonna see, you know, probably the schools and those conferences maybe having a little bit of an advantage financially.
NIL’s has been interesting. You have certainly seen places like Alabama and, and Michigan, kind of those historical blue bloods certainly take advantage, but you've also seen schools like, you know, Washington's a good example. It was a school that was able to use, you know, they just played in the national championship. They're able to use some NIL money to maybe bring back players who would have gone somewhere else or gone to the NFL a year earlier. And so there has in some ways, there's been maybe a little bit examples of where the playing field has been leveled, but I think you're correct in the sense that if this subdivision is created, which would basically create within division one kind of another smaller subdivision. We're really talking about the top programs that, you know, the quote unquote power conference programs and maybe even just the top tier of those conferences or those programs that would be once again setting themselves up above everyone else in college sports.
So whether that's football, which is already really kind of broken apart, or you know, if you're talking about men's and women's basketball or you have something like, like the NCAA tournament, or even though there's big programs and small programs, there's still kind of that chance for anyone to get in and win a game and for Cinderella to, you know, to take down a bigger team. A subdivision proposal like what Charlie Baker kind of put forth, it would pull further and further away from that kind of reality that we still are holding on to.
