The real March Madness: Why don't NCAA schools pay college athletes who make them billions?

As a teenager, I organized a huge NCAA tournament bracket pool at my high school.

This was well before online brackets, so I’m sure my grades dipped every March as I manually updated the standings every Thursday through Sunday.

For the past 30 years, I’ve been an obsessive college basketball fan. As a UConn fan, it has been an amazing ride, and I’ve marveled at how the tournament has grown, now bringing in $1 billion a year for all the adults – the coaches, the network bosses, the sports industry executives – who work in the college basketball industry.

But nobody knows the names of the TV or shoe company CEOs. It’s the athletes who are packing the arenas, selling the merchandise and starring in the tournament’s ad campaigns. It’s the athletes who are pushing their bodies to their physical limits and risking injury. There is no March Madness – or college sports at all – without the players.

So why are they getting cheated out of the money they rightfully earned?

Who has the right to a student-athlete's name, image and likeness?

For years, the NCAA and its members have made it their mission to put their bottom line before the interests of their athletes.

They spent more than a decade arguing in federal courts that the athletes have no right to their name, image and likeness (NIL). They lobbied in state capitols and the halls of Congress for an antitrust exemption as a shield from potential lawsuits. They insisted that any step to put fairness and the well-being of athletes first would be the beginning of the end of college sports.

Despite these efforts, the status quo is quickly crumbling.

In June 2021, the Supreme Court knocked the bottom out of the NCAA’s "amateurism" model and unanimously ruled that its compensation restrictions were in violation of federal antitrust law. A week later, thanks to state laws and litigation, the association was forced to adopt a policy that allows athletes to pursue NIL opportunities.

It has been a year and a half, and unsurprisingly, the sky hasn’t fallen. While there have certainly been challenges, college sports and the athletes are undoubtedly better off.

NCAA athletes deserve the same rights as other students to make money off their talents

Giving athletes back the rights to their own name, image and likeness was an important and long overdue step, but it’s not nearly enough. NIL is about giving college athletes the same rights as their classmates – the right to make money off their own talents, whether that be teaching lessons in the offseason or scoring a six-figure endorsement deal.

NIL doesn’t provide fair compensation for the 40-plus hour work weeks athletes put in to be at the top of their game. It doesn’t solve the problem at the core of college sports: The athletes generating billions in revenue don’t get anything close to a fair share of it.

Treat all students equally: Let college athletes earn money, just like Jodie Foster did

The NCAA and these athletic programs like to pretend that despite tripling revenue from about $4 billion to more than $14 billion in the past 20 years, they’re hard pressed for cash. They can’t afford to pay the athletes, they claim.

That’s a lie. A 2020 study from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that football and basketball players in the Power Five see less than 7% of the revenue they generate, and most Division I schools spend more money paying their coaches and building futuristic facilities than they do on scholarships and stipends.

What college budgets value

Budgets are an expression of values, and right now, college athletes are grossly undervalued.

Rather than waste millions of dollars lobbying Congress for a solution, the NCAA could start by engaging directly with athletes to work out a revenue-sharing agreement that ensures everyone gets a piece of the pie. Nearly 80% of respondents in an ESPN survey of more than 200 college football coaches, players and administrators say that within the next decade, schools will directly pay their players.

The most important thing is that the athletes themselves get a seat at the table. They care about more than just compensation. They want better health protections, improved safety standards and more academic opportunities.

I’ve introduced legislation to make it easier for college athletes to advocate for themselves and collectively bargain with their schools or at the conference level, but let’s be honest: The NCAA doesn’t need Congress’ permission to do the right thing. Our laws already allow for this arrangement.

I’m still a huge college basketball fan. Sure, it’s a little harder to follow these days as too many stars just stop off in college for a year. But college hoops is still a uniquely American institution that brings us together around our favorite teams.

If the college sports industry doesn’t reform, it will destroy itself. Young athletes are increasingly getting wise to the scam and skipping college altogether. Of the top six projected NBA picks in the 2023 draft, four chose to steer clear of the college sports racket. I want to save college sports from itself, and that will only happen if the NCAA and its member schools wise up and see the writing on the blackboard.

With a new president at the helm, the NCAA should seize this opportunity to turn the page on its stained legacy and finally give athletes what they deserve.

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., is a member of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, and he is the leading sponsor of the College Athlete Right to Organize Act and the College Athlete Economic Freedom Act.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: March Madness? NCAA schools don't pay student athletes. What a foul