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Is This What “The Alliance” Is For?

Blue Kahuna

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May 29, 2001
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The biggest threat to the NCAA isn’t athletes forming unions — it’s the Supreme Court of the United States.

The college sports world changed when the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled against the NCAA in the Alston case in 2021. That was the initial crack in the dike of the NCAA’s attempts to defend amateurism in college sports. The decision showed that the justices do not buy the NCAA’s arguments in defense of its version of amateurism. The NCAA rules violate federal laws which are older than the NCAA itself. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a scathing concurring opinion in the NIL case that essentially asked for more lawsuits challenging the NCAA’s business model.

That’s lead to more class action lawsuits which will break the NCAA financially, resulting in the NCAA’s recent announcement that they will no longer attempt to enforce their rules against NIL payments to college athletes. The U.S. Department of Justice joined three states suing the NCAA over rules limiting the rights of athletes to transfer.

The NCAA president has recently gone so far as inviting schools or conferences to form a new self-governing division which will pay their athletes. How long will it take for that to happen? With TV rights contracts approaching $2 billion, the financing of such a division will be affordable.

The college presidents won’t easily let go of 10-20% of the TV payments to revenue-share with the athletes, but the athletes are the TV product and seem to hold a winning hand, when they choose to play it.

The current situation of free-for-all free agency for athletes is crying out for some group to accept the NCAA president’s invitation to form a new self-governing division which will pay its student-athletes and set its own rules.

Is this what the Big Ten-SEC “alliance” is intended for? The ACC and Big 12 TV contracts are nowhere near as rich as the B1G and SEC. Can the ACC and Big12 afford to join in?
 
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