The newest dent within the NCAA’s bedrock precept of amateurism got here from an unlikely place: Monaco.
Observe and subject gold medalists will change into the primary athletes to earn worldwide prize cash on the Olympics, the game’s worldwide governing physique stated Wednesday. Every gold medalist will obtain $50,000 for particular person wins. World Athletics, which governs monitor and subject from its headquarters in Monaco, additionally pledged to award prize cash to silver and bronze medalists on the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028.
“It is necessary we begin someplace and ensure a few of the revenues generated by our athletes on the Olympic Video games are straight returned to those that make the Video games the worldwide spectacle that it’s,” World Athletics president Sebastian Coe stated in a press release.
What is just not but clear is that if present faculty athletes are allowed to obtain that prize cash. In what looks like a relic of faculty sports activities’ antiquated previous, the NCAA presently bars athletes from accepting prize cash in occasions such because the U.S. Open in tennis or golf. The NCAA didn’t instantly reply to a request for touch upon the World Athletics announcement.
Whereas the NCAA does enable cash to be paid to Olympic athletes in faculty below its Operation Gold program, that rule clearly states that the cash should come from the game’s governing physique for the athlete’s sport in his or her house nation. They will settle for cash paid by their nationwide governing physique in addition to the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee; the USOPC presently awards $37,500 for every gold medalist, $22,500 for every silver medalist and $15,000 for every bronze medalist.
In that one very particular setting, faculty athletes may be paid to play their sport — they usually can keep their NCAA eligibility. In primarily some other setting, they will’t.
It’s effectively previous the time for the NCAA to permit its athletes to simply accept their hard-earned prize cash, no matter which governing physique fingers it out. That ought to embody World Athletics, which is paying its prize cash from the income it receives from the Worldwide Olympic Committee. That also needs to embody particular person skilled sport organizations such because the USTA or USGA, which might then enable collegiate tennis gamers and golfers to earn prize cash whereas sustaining collegiate eligibility.
Such circumstances are the guts of a lawsuit filed by College of North Carolina tennis participant Reese Brantmeier, who’s arguing that she and different athletes like her should hold the prize cash they earn by taking part in and successful tournaments. Proper now, they will solely hold sufficient to cowl their bills.
In the meantime … these athletes see Caitlin Clark showing in nationwide tv commercials and quarterbacks hawking headphones by means of profitable title, picture and likeness (NIL) offers whereas sustaining their NCAA eligibility.
“I can’t consider one other scenario the place a corporation can have a draconian quid professional quo the place you’re prohibited from accepting cash you earned with your personal sweat,” UNC affiliate head tennis coach Tyler Thomson advised The Athletic final month when Brantmeier filed her lawsuit. “I simply suppose it’s actually unsuitable, and particularly within the age of NIL.”
That time is much more poignant in an age of NIL marked by pseudo-salaries paid by booster-backed collectives. These NIL offers successfully enable donors to pay athletes to play at a selected faculty — a nonsensical workaround in a established order wherein colleges and conferences can’t straight pay athletes. The argument {that a} tennis participant accepting prize cash is just too carefully tied to pay-for-play holds far much less water whenever you examine it to what’s taking place in sports activities reminiscent of soccer and males’s basketball.
UNC tennis participant Reese Brantmeier has sued the NCAA for not permitting faculty athletes to simply accept prize cash and keep their eligibility. (Preston Mack / NCAA Images by way of Getty Photographs)
The present system might not be what it’s for for much longer anyway, as a laundry listing of lawsuits proceed to chip away on the NCAA’s longstanding authorized arguments in protection of its model of amateurism. Within the meantime, the group and all faculty athletes are caught in a kind of grey space, as guidelines which will have made sense as soon as upon a time exist unchallenged till the highlight shines squarely upon them.
That mild has discovered the NCAA’s hypocritical stance on prize cash. It’s blindingly shiny in opposition to the backdrop of million-dollar NIL offers and recruiting inducements-that-aren’t-supposed-to-be-inducements. It’s wild to suppose that faculty sports activities’ governing physique could possibly be forcing tennis gamers to go professional as a substitute of permitting them to go to class and compete collegiately whereas accepting prize cash at varied occasions. Or that the NCAA may bar a collegiate sprinter who beats the world’s quickest from accepting cash from World Athletics just because it’s not run by means of the USOPC.
All that these draconian guidelines do is push elite athletes to go away campus sooner than they’d like. That’s not what the NCAA ought to ever be doing, deliberately or not.
So, right here’s an opportunity to proper a unsuitable. Right here’s an opportunity for a commonsense win amid a number of losses in courtroom. Let faculty athletes hold their prize cash — and their eligibility, too.
(Prime photograph of Athing Mu, who left Texas A&M to show professional simply earlier than the 2021 U.S. Olympic Observe and Area Trials, celebrating her gold medal within the ladies’s 800-meter on the Tokyo Olympics: Jewel Samad / AFP by way of Getty Photographs)