To put to rest the recent online kerfuffle, the University of Texas isn’t about to open its impressive checkbook to start paying its student athletes for scoring touchdowns and sinking three-pointers.
This may be the future, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Athletic Director Steve Patterson answered a hypothetical question at a forum on the business of college sports. If the NCAA did not prevail in appeals of rulings related to play-for-pay, what then for UT?
Note, please, the if. Patterson wasn’t saying that the nation’s most profitable athletic program was taking matters into its own hands — in the absence of new rules — to start putting real cash in athletes’ pockets. What he did was put a dollar figure on the supposition. But that in itself is a valuable exercise that reinforces how close this might be.
For the record, his estimate is $10,000 per athlete over 600 scholarships in all men’s and women’s sports, or $6 million per year. That’s barely a rounding error in UT’s athletic budget, but it would be real money if a Southern Methodist University or University of North Texas tried to match it.
One difference is that UT is in a so-called Power Five conference. The Big 12, Southeastern, Big Ten, Pacific 12 and Atlantic Coast conferences have the pedigree and leverage — i.e., revenue — in today’s college sports. Because of TV deals and historic market forces, Power Five revenue is a raging river compared with other Division I schools’ babbling brook.
Yet precious few athletic programs are entirely self-supporting, so any change affects overall university budgets nationwide.
Patterson estimates $5,000 annually per scholarship athlete for compensation from what is commonly called the O’Bannon decision. In it, a federal judge found that the NCAA unreasonably restrained trade by prohibiting athletes from selling their names, images and likenesses.
The other $5,000 is to bring the value of each scholarship to what’s known as full cost of attendance. That means adding annual money for incidentals to the traditional tuition, books, fees, room and board. It would vary for other universities based on cost of living, probably higher for Berkeley, California, than for Austin or Dallas.
Separately, the National Labor Relations Board’s Chicago office ruled that Northwestern University had to allow its football players to vote to form a union, declaring them school employees because of their extensive football hours. The NCAA is fighting both decisions through appeals that could take years.
Still, it’s clear that the system is changing, and Patterson and other athletic directors would be wise to plan for that eventuality by banking some cash today.
That $10,000 or so would be deserved compensation for those who receive it, given the massive revenue at top-level schools. The workers who create the product should share in the bounty.
But don’t pretend this is the only consequence. The gulf between have and have-not schools — Power Five vs. the rest of the NCAA, Texas vs. SMU — also will grow eventually to a completely different place.
— The Dallas Morning News
