(03-11-2024 09:37 AM)vandiver49 Wrote:  

(03-11-2024 09:25 AM)TerryD Wrote:  Does a business which fails or refuses to pay its employees deserve to survive?

College sports has been raking in large revenues quite a while now, keep bragging about it, pay coaches and administrators and analysts large salaries and build newer and better facilities.

Who did not get a share of these increased revenues? The players.

The schools and conferences made these increased revenues on the backs of the players actually playing the games that people and networks pay to watch, but did not pay them a salary, just a scholarship.

Now, when it is all but inevitable that the courts will rule that players are employees, people bemoan the fact that a number of these schools' programs may close down.

Thesis: IF those programs do not generate enough money to pay their employees, then they deserve to be shuttered. Its the same thing in any business or industry.

The same thing can be said for those programs who rely on massive student fee subsidies to survive.

It is time to cull the herd of those who shouldn't survive, anyway.

The issue IMO is that college athletics has existed in a gray zone because of its educational mandate. Applying business standards to it should in theory result in numerous closures. But the 'public good' that colleges and its sports serve might preclude that.

The only legal question is whether the players are or should be employees.

There is no legal issue of whether an employer can afford the players when determining employee status.

I don't think that the courts will care about "affordability" at all.

(03-11-2024 08:59 AM)TrojanCampaign Wrote:  If college athletes are considered employees I hope the question of why then are high school athletes not considered employees?

The rule used in the Dartmouth decision was:

(1) Employees receive compensation.
(2) Employer controls activity.
(3) Employer benefits from activity.

NCAA teams are required to maintain time sheets. Players perform their tasks at times designated by team.

An athletic scholarship is clearly compensation. In the Northwestern football decision, only scholarship players were included in the employees. Walk-ons were excluded.

In the Dartmouth case the NLRB may have stretched the concept of compensation.

(a) Players receive about $3000 in clothing.
(b) Players receive tickets (they can't resale, but they still have value).
© Players receive room and board during Winterim. Dartmouth shuts down for 6 weeks from Thanksgiving through New Years. Ordinary students may pay to stay on campus and eat. For basketball players this is free, and they are required to be around since Dartmouth plays games during this period.
(d) Players receive preferential admission.
(e) Players are expected to engage with boosters, who give money to the school. Dartmouth boosters were permitted to buy tickets to the game against Duke (in Durham, NC/not Durham, NH) for $5000. The boosters were permitted to attend the shoot around and go into the locker room.

These probably don't happen to such an extent at a public high school.

(03-11-2024 09:25 AM)TerryD Wrote:  

(03-09-2024 04:05 AM)bryanw1995 Wrote:  

(03-08-2024 08:51 AM)ken d Wrote:  

(03-08-2024 02:05 AM)bryanw1995 Wrote:  

(03-07-2024 01:59 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  To be honest, this happening at Dartmouth is actually significantly more important than this happening at, say, USC. If athletes at non-scholarship FCS athletic departments are considered to be employees, then this effectively means that every athlete at every Division I school (regardless of scholarship status or not) is an employee. If it was a place like USC as the first case, people could try to pass it off as a high revenue school with a pro-level athletic department. The fact that even the non-scholarship Ivy model would have athletes considered to be employees is *much* more wide-ranging.

Personally, I’m not surprised. I’ve repeatedly stated that the likely end point would be that all Division I athletes would be deemed to be employees at a minimum. Too many people are focusing on irrelevant (at least when it comes to employment status) items, such as how much revenue a team makes or performance records.

IT. DOES. NOT. MATTER.

A poor performing employee still has to be paid.

A money-losing business still has to pay its employees.

If you treat someone like an employee, that person is an employee regardless of revenue, performance, or anything else.

Everyone needs to adjust to that fact. Adapt or die.

You say that a money losing business still has to pay its employees, which is actually not true. I've seen businesses over the years, including a few that my company took over, that just stopped paying people at the very end b/c they literally ran out of money.

Actually, it is true. That is to say, employers have an obligation to pay their employees. The fact that some employers don't live up to that legal obligation does not make the obligation false. We all have a legal obligation to not rob banks. Does the fact that some people do rob banks mean the obligation doesn't exist? In both cases, there are legal penalties for not living up to the obligations.

My point seems to have been lost, perhaps I should have phrased it differently:

A money losing business can get away with losing money for a little while, but eventually said company will go bankrupt and nobody will get paid. I believe that forcing every single NCAA school to pay all athletes a full salary on top of their full scholarship would destroy college athletics b/c it would bankrupt over 90% of all athletic departments, and of half of those that weren't bankrupted would only be saved by huge student fees to prop up the Athletic Dept.

Speaking of which, who is going to pay for the salaries of student athletes when/if all colleges are forced to reclassify them as employee athletes? The schools won't pay for it. Some, perhaps most, will drop athletics, or most of athletics. Of those that don't, every one outside of the P4, and possibly every one outside of the P2, will force all students to subsidize the athletic dept, or increase said subsidy if there already is one. The student athletes, and potential future student athletes, wouldn't win b/c there would be far fewer of them and they wouldn't have the choice to participate in their chosen sport for free as they have up to now. The schools wouldn't win b/c many would drop athletics or suffer severe financial hardship. The other students, the non-athletes if you will, would suffer b/c they'd have to pay increased student fees. So, who wins? The leeches win, that's who. They smelled the money and now they're coming to get it, and they don't care if they kill athletics at 950 schools as long as they're able to get paid by the other 50.

Does a business which fails or refuses to pay its employees deserve to survive?

College sports has been raking in large revenues quite a while now, keep bragging about it, pay coaches and administrators and analysts large salaries and build newer and better facilities.

Who did not get a share of these increased revenues? The players.

The schools and conferences made these increased revenues on the backs of the players actually playing the games that people and networks pay to watch, but did not pay them a salary, just a scholarship.

Now, when it is all but inevitable that the courts will rule that players are employees, people bemoan the fact that a number of these schools' programs may close down.

Thesis: IF those programs do not generate enough money to pay their employees, then they deserve to be shuttered. Its the same thing in any business or industry.

The same thing can be said for those programs who rely on massive student fee subsidies to survive, but that is another issue.

It is time to cull the herd of those who shouldn't survive, anyway.

I do not disagree with you at all. However, I believe that the right way to cull the herd is not via an NLRB "judge", and I think it possible but quite unlikely that it will be via the Federal Court System.

My best guess is that a group roughly the size of the P4 leaves to forge their own path and pay all their athletes. It leaves incredible chaos in its wake, and Congress creates a limited anti-trust exemption for the 95% who prefer to not have employee-athletes. Ie, the breakaway group unionizes, collectively bargains, etc etc, not b/c they're forced to do so but b/c they choose to do so, then everyone else gets the protection that they need to keep from destroying the dreams of hundreds of thousands of registered voters. THAT would be something that would get Congress highly motivated to get together and work something out, and every member of both parties would claim the W for it.

(03-11-2024 09:42 AM)TerryD Wrote:  

(03-11-2024 09:37 AM)vandiver49 Wrote:  

(03-11-2024 09:25 AM)TerryD Wrote:  Does a business which fails or refuses to pay its employees deserve to survive?

College sports has been raking in large revenues quite a while now, keep bragging about it, pay coaches and administrators and analysts large salaries and build newer and better facilities.

Who did not get a share of these increased revenues? The players.

The schools and conferences made these increased revenues on the backs of the players actually playing the games that people and networks pay to watch, but did not pay them a salary, just a scholarship.

Now, when it is all but inevitable that the courts will rule that players are employees, people bemoan the fact that a number of these schools' programs may close down.

Thesis: IF those programs do not generate enough money to pay their employees, then they deserve to be shuttered. Its the same thing in any business or industry.

The same thing can be said for those programs who rely on massive student fee subsidies to survive.

It is time to cull the herd of those who shouldn't survive, anyway.

The issue IMO is that college athletics has existed in a gray zone because of its educational mandate. Applying business standards to it should in theory result in numerous closures. But the 'public good' that colleges and its sports serve might preclude that.

The only legal question is whether the players are or should be employees.

There is no legal issue of whether an employer can afford the players when determining employee status.

I don't think that the courts will care about "affordability" at all.

Take out the $10m coach salaries and $300m sports entertainment complexes, go to 1-AAA or D2/3, and what you have is a bunch of volunteers who play for love of the game, just like they did in HS. If I'd gone to Rose-Hulman, Dartmouth or an Academy then I'd have played football or basketball, but I wouldn't have wanted to play at A&M even if I could have. I wanted to have fun in college. I could have done that at a small school without athletic scholarships, ie, most places. We all know this, but on this board we have disproportionate representation from the A&Ms and NDs of the world like you and me, so we talk a lot about what would work for the 5% and forget to really think at all about the rest a lot of the time.

The difficulty that I have with a court deciding this issue, whether it's a federal court hand-picked to be sympathetic (possible) all the way up to the SC, is that it would be extraordinarily difficult to draw that line. How much income is too much? How is a judge qualified to make that decision at all? Then we get into the Big Programs, and their top players, even if they eventually get a salary from the school, will be getting Millions from A&m Booster Club Inc and 50k from Texas A&M University. Who does that kid work for? He works for the guy paying him millions a year! And, ironically, that guy has zero input on the kid's day to day life, all he wants is to see Ws on the field. So, really, the only people that could reasonably be considered employees are mid-tier P4 kids, maybe they're redshirts, maybe they're backups, some are lower end starters, and some top end g5 kids. I don't feel qualified to draw that exact line, and a judge certainly isn't. You know who is? Greg Sankey, Jim Phillips, Brett Yormark, Kliavkoff and Tony Petitti. Maybe throw in Nevarez, Aresco ( I know he's retired but he knows the system as well as anyone ) and Swarbrick. Put them in a room, give them places to eat/sleep inside, and tell them if they leave without something figured out then David St gets to decide how to run things.

(03-11-2024 12:40 PM)jimrtex Wrote:  

(03-11-2024 08:59 AM)TrojanCampaign Wrote:  If college athletes are considered employees I hope the question of why then are high school athletes not considered employees?

The rule used in the Dartmouth decision was:

(1) Employees receive compensation.
(2) Employer controls activity.
(3) Employer benefits from activity.

NCAA teams are required to maintain time sheets. Players perform their tasks at times designated by team.

An athletic scholarship is clearly compensation. In the Northwestern football decision, only scholarship players were included in the employees. Walk-ons were excluded.

In the Dartmouth case the NLRB may have stretched the concept of compensation.

(a) Players receive about $3000 in clothing.
(b) Players receive tickets (they can't resale, but they still have value).
© Players receive room and board during Winterim. Dartmouth shuts down for 6 weeks from Thanksgiving through New Years. Ordinary students may pay to stay on campus and eat. For basketball players this is free, and they are required to be around since Dartmouth plays games during this period.
(d) Players receive preferential admission.
(e) Players are expected to engage with boosters, who give money to the school. Dartmouth boosters were permitted to buy tickets to the game against Duke (in Durham, NC/not Durham, NH) for $5000. The boosters were permitted to attend the shoot around and go into the locker room.

These probably don't happen to such an extent at a public high school.

Great summary.

An easy rule to use, would be to ask kids the following: Did you go to this school to play basketball/football/soccer/whatever, or did you go to get an education? Almost every single kid at any Ivy will say it's for an education. Almost every single kid in any P4 sport will say it's to play the sport. In various other schools in various other sports, it might be somewhere in between. If you want to dictate that student-athletes are employee-athletes, those P4 athletes should be your targets.

Here is how I think this all eventually plays out (over some years), as there is no stopping the designation of almost all D-I athletes as employees (I think D-II will get tested and lose as well).

1. Class action lawsuits for back pay.

Former athletes will sue their former schools for backpay. These will likely hit universities, conferences and the NCAA as a whole. Down the road settlement(s) will be made going back X number of years before today. (We will get those commercials that go like, "Have you or a loved one ever play college sports? You might be eligible for monetary compensation from the SEC/NCAA/Universities of ... Funds and time are limited, contact ... and ... now at ..."). This will cause significant financial stress.

2. Bifurcation of college athletics into employee-athlete sports and non-employee sports

This bifurcation will happen both at the university level, with some opting some opting full or mostly in and others full out, and also within university athletic departments with some sports deemed "performance sports" with employee student athletes and others "collegiate sports" with non-employee student athletes. The latter category will be sports run under different rules than today, with rules designed to not trigger any employee status: largely no recruiting, no specific athletic scholarships or any ties of scholarship to performance, limited time in team activities and practice, very few events outside of class terms (Mid-December until the 2nd week of January could be pretty dead), and so on.

What many of you get wrong is thinking this will only happen at the University level, with say MAC schools opting to go with non-employee teams for their athletic departments, while B1G schools will go with employee athlete teams for their athletic department. What is more likely is to see are splits within athletic departments in D-I, especially FBS. Simply too much time money and effort has been put into their football and most schools also basketball, along with one or two other sports at some places (baseball, softball, ice hockey, e-sports, et al) in possibly one-off situations. Note, a few women's sports other than basketball will get dragged along despite nonexistent revenue for Title IX sake.

G5, FCS and non-football D-I schools will push hard for allowing a bifurcation within athletics. They really only care about football and basketball, but the rest of athletics are simply carried to meet NCAA minimum number of sports requirements and to meet title IX. Note, many FCS could move to a Pioneer type non-scholarship non-employee rules football making them more like the "basketball" schools in D-I.

These same G5 and FCS schools will push for lower scholarship numbers within football. Having only 55 employee players is dramatically cheaper than having 85. If Title IX applies to employee athletes, this will equally reduce the cost of co-dependent women's sports, as you would need 30 fewer scholarship/employee positions in the "revenue free" sports (e.g., you can maybe drop women's track and swimming to non-employee category sports for example). Coaches of course want the full 85 or as close as they can get, along with a slew of walk-ons. But budget control is going to push back saying, 'we can't afford to have a bunch of guys on the payroll who are not playing at least 15-20 snaps; you are going to have to make some choices.'

Long-term (late in this decade), I predict the roster sizes will drop to 75 max, with 55 or 60 the acceptable minimum to allow G5 to stay in the category/division. P5 carrying 15 fewer players will save them $500-750K annually in salary alone, as well as allow better concentration of NIL to players who are actually playing. For G5 schools the savings of having 25-30 fewer players is nearly double that, This also positions everyone better for Title IX and salaries to women playing sports with net negative revenue, as a couple sports can be transitioned to non-employee sports.

Payrolls, TV/Media contracts, other structural factors will have completely replaced regulation as a way to gatekeep who is in the elite group. The question is, can this be managed or will it wind up a free for all, with every school and conference going different directions?

Since NIL started, this has always been heading towards CBA's and salary caps and all that jazz.

I'm just running out the string. There is an upcoming expiration date on my continued interest in NCAA basketball.

(03-11-2024 06:03 PM)bryanw1995 Wrote:  

(03-11-2024 09:42 AM)TerryD Wrote:  

(03-11-2024 09:37 AM)vandiver49 Wrote:  

(03-11-2024 09:25 AM)TerryD Wrote:  Does a business which fails or refuses to pay its employees deserve to survive?

College sports has been raking in large revenues quite a while now, keep bragging about it, pay coaches and administrators and analysts large salaries and build newer and better facilities.

Who did not get a share of these increased revenues? The players.

The schools and conferences made these increased revenues on the backs of the players actually playing the games that people and networks pay to watch, but did not pay them a salary, just a scholarship.

Now, when it is all but inevitable that the courts will rule that players are employees, people bemoan the fact that a number of these schools' programs may close down.

Thesis: IF those programs do not generate enough money to pay their employees, then they deserve to be shuttered. Its the same thing in any business or industry.

The same thing can be said for those programs who rely on massive student fee subsidies to survive.

It is time to cull the herd of those who shouldn't survive, anyway.

The issue IMO is that college athletics has existed in a gray zone because of its educational mandate. Applying business standards to it should in theory result in numerous closures. But the 'public good' that colleges and its sports serve might preclude that.

The only legal question is whether the players are or should be employees.

There is no legal issue of whether an employer can afford the players when determining employee status.

I don't think that the courts will care about "affordability" at all.

Take out the $10m coach salaries and $300m sports entertainment complexes, go to 1-AAA or D2/3, and what you have is a bunch of volunteers who play for love of the game, just like they did in HS. If I'd gone to Rose-Hulman, Dartmouth or an Academy then I'd have played football or basketball, but I wouldn't have wanted to play at A&M even if I could have. I wanted to have fun in college. I could have done that at a small school without athletic scholarships, ie, most places. We all know this, but on this board we have disproportionate representation from the A&Ms and NDs of the world like you and me, so we talk a lot about what would work for the 5% and forget to really think at all about the rest a lot of the time.

The difficulty that I have with a court deciding this issue, whether it's a federal court hand-picked to be sympathetic (possible) all the way up to the SC, is that it would be extraordinarily difficult to draw that line. How much income is too much? How is a judge qualified to make that decision at all? Then we get into the Big Programs, and their top players, even if they eventually get a salary from the school, will be getting Millions from A&m Booster Club Inc and 50k from Texas A&M University. Who does that kid work for? He works for the guy paying him millions a year! And, ironically, that guy has zero input on the kid's day to day life, all he wants is to see Ws on the field. So, really, the only people that could reasonably be considered employees are mid-tier P4 kids, maybe they're redshirts, maybe they're backups, some are lower end starters, and some top end g5 kids. I don't feel qualified to draw that exact line, and a judge certainly isn't. You know who is? Greg Sankey, Jim Phillips, Brett Yormark, Kliavkoff and Tony Petitti. Maybe throw in Nevarez, Aresco ( I know he's retired but he knows the system as well as anyone ) and Swarbrick. Put them in a room, give them places to eat/sleep inside, and tell them if they leave without something figured out then David St gets to decide how to run things.

The schools and conferences had one hundred years to figure this out, but didn't want to and refused.

So, now by default, the courts will push the schools aside and decide employee status for college athletes.

It won't be the NLRB by itself, it will be the Federal courts.

The schools did this to themselves.

(03-11-2024 06:11 PM)bryanw1995 Wrote:  

(03-11-2024 12:40 PM)jimrtex Wrote:  

(03-11-2024 08:59 AM)TrojanCampaign Wrote:  If college athletes are considered employees I hope the question of why then are high school athletes not considered employees?

The rule used in the Dartmouth decision was:

(1) Employees receive compensation.
(2) Employer controls activity.
(3) Employer benefits from activity.

NCAA teams are required to maintain time sheets. Players perform their tasks at times designated by team.

An athletic scholarship is clearly compensation. In the Northwestern football decision, only scholarship players were included in the employees. Walk-ons were excluded.

In the Dartmouth case the NLRB may have stretched the concept of compensation.

(a) Players receive about $3000 in clothing.
(b) Players receive tickets (they can't resale, but they still have value).
© Players receive room and board during Winterim. Dartmouth shuts down for 6 weeks from Thanksgiving through New Years. Ordinary students may pay to stay on campus and eat. For basketball players this is free, and they are required to be around since Dartmouth plays games during this period.
(d) Players receive preferential admission.
(e) Players are expected to engage with boosters, who give money to the school. Dartmouth boosters were permitted to buy tickets to the game against Duke (in Durham, NC/not Durham, NH) for $5000. The boosters were permitted to attend the shoot around and go into the locker room.

These probably don't happen to such an extent at a public high school.

Great summary.

An easy rule to use, would be to ask kids the following: Did you go to this school to play basketball/football/soccer/whatever, or did you go to get an education? Almost every single kid at any Ivy will say it's for an education. Almost every single kid in any P4 sport will say it's to play the sport. In various other schools in various other sports, it might be somewhere in between. If you want to dictate that student-athletes are employee-athletes, those P4 athletes should be your targets.

If you ask the student cafeteria workers at Dartmouth whether they went to the school to sling hash or get an education, all would claim it was to get an education. Yet they were treated as workers and were able to organize to collectively bargain.