Previous Supreme Court ruling against NCAA created conditions for latest decision
This week, for the first time in more than three decades, the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in on the governance of college sports. The high court unanimously affirmed that student-athletes can obtain compensation tied to educational purposes and that the NCAA violated anti-trust laws by placing limits on benefits.
No one is exactly sure how the decision will be applied, except schools with the biggest athletic budgets are the ones in greatest position to take advantage. The uncertainty is mindful of the previous Supreme Court decision, one that created the conditions for this week’s actions.
Let’s hop in the wayback machine, to 1984, when Oklahoma and Georgia led a move to change the college football television business. Since 1952, the NCAA had controlled the remote. The national office in Kansas City decided the TV lineup, limited the number of times a school could appear on the tube and distributed the income from networks to the schools.
Want to see your favorite team? Most weeks you have to buy a ticket to the game or watch whatever game NCAA selected and perhaps highlights from your team would be shown on the Prudential College Football Scoreboard postgame show.
The college football powers said enough and to went to court to claim their TV rights and revenue, arguing consumers would be given more viewing choices. In a 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the schools. One of the dissenters was Byron “Whizzer” White, a former All-America running back at Colorado.
“Today we hold … the NCAA has restricted rather than enhanced the place of intercollegiate athletics in the Nation’s life.” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote.
This week, Justice Brett Kavanaugh issued a similar sentiment of NCAA power run amok in a concurring opinion: “The NCAA’s business model would be flatly illegal in almost any other industry in America.”
But now that the Supreme Court has ruled against the NCAA, what’s next? What does compensation look like with this decision? It comes only days after athletes in six states begin the ability of earning income off their name, imagine and likeness.
If it’s anything like 1984, the new landscape will take years to be fully realized.
After gaining television freedom in NCAA vs. University of Oklahoma Board of Regents, schools believed the revenue would roll in. The schools were wrong.
Individual schools couldn’t sell their rights and TV networks held the leverage in dealing with a handful of conferences instead of a giant NCAA. Big Eight revenue from TV dropped 35 percent from 1983 to 1987, and it somehow wound up with fewer network appearances.
But in the early 1990s, college football rallied by creating super conferences — among the biggest moves were SEC expansion, Penn State to the Big Ten and the formation of the Big 12 — and championship games. The networks ponied up for better content by the tens of millions.
College football moved into an upscale neighborhood and different tax bracket. Steve Spurrier was the sport’s first million dollar coach in 1996. Two years ago, Clemson’s Dabo Swinney signed a 10-year, $93 million extension. The highest paid state employees in 40 states are college head coaches. More than $9 billion in revenue poured in FBS programs in 2019.
Even with ticket and media income reduced by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, momentum wasn’t slowed when it came to compensating the revenue-generating athletes. The name, image and likeness roll out is uneven and sloppy but will soon be widely available.
Now, the Supreme Court stands unanimously against the NCAA when it comes to amateurism because of money sloshing around the sport in circumstances created the last time the Court ruled against the NCAA.
