Last Monday, in a federal courthouse in Oakland, California, Judge Claudia Wilken began hammering a nail into the coffin of one of America’s most ridiculous, if stubbornly enduring, concepts.
Amateurism, at least in college athletics.
“I think it’s a good settlement,” Wilken stated, signaling her willingness to approve a deal in the so-called “House case.” It will soon open the door for college athletic departments to pay their athletes directly with revenue gleaned from media rights, tickets, sponsorships and so on. It’s what many think should have happened generations ago.
Amateurism was already effectively dead, of course. Over the last few years, name, image and likeness deals have served as de facto pay for play for athletics.
This would be the official death certificate, though. No more work-arounds — players would receive checks from their schools. While the fallout and challenges of what comes next remain, it’s worth taking a beat to note the historical moment.
Gone are the days of someone surveying Ohio Stadium at a kickoff or a packed dome before a Final Four game and trying to claim anything “amateur” was going on. Over is attempting to justify how something run by million-dollar commissioners, coaches and athletic directors traveling on private jets wasn’t big business.
Trying to explain to future generations that college athletes were once prohibited from receiving even a free slice down at the campus pizzeria will be like describing life before the internet to a 13-year-old.
Consider that, as recently as four years ago, the NCAA vehemently argued it would ruin the entire enterprise, if, say, JuJu Watkins appeared in a State Farm commercial. Even now it sounds absurd.
The general concept of amateurism was conceived in the 1800s in England, where athletic competition was largely reserved for the wealthy elites who had the time, energy and resources to participate. The working class toiled in factories or on farms six days a week, sometimes more.
The idea was born amid fears of increased competition — or that rival elites might pay great proletariat athletes to bolster their teams.
There was supposedly something noble and proper about competing for the love of the game, not money. Or so claimed the people who already had money. Amateurism was designed to protect the self-interests and self-worth of the rich.
For whatever reason, perhaps no one embraced this ethically bankrupt theory more staunchly than American college athletics.
The NCAA smartly sold amateurism as a sepia-toned example of purity; then it sold billions in March Madness advertising.
Look, it was a nice idea, it just wasn’t rooted in reality. Players received scholarships, after all, which are quite valuable, even if not always commensurate with what was being brought in by the schools. As such, with the value of talent artificially capped, under-the-table payments became the norm. Great players have been getting paid for decades.
Yet even 30-plus years after the International Olympic Committee — hardly a role model — gave up and began allowing professionals into the Games, the NCAA was fighting to the bitter end.
As recently as 2021, NCAA lawyers echoed an old IOC talking point in front of the United States Supreme Court that fans would reject watching professional athletes, or anyone who was already profiting off their talents.
The Dream Team, Michael Phelps, Simone Biles and so on at the Olympics long ago proved that wrong, of course. It became obvious no one was going to turn off the television because Caitlin Clark had a Gatorade commercial during halftime.
Even if it were true, however, that logic didn’t override the Sherman Antitrust Act. Not that the NCAA didn’t try. “To preserve the character and quality of the ‘product,’ athletes must not be paid,” NCAA attorney Seth Waxman argued to one appellate court. Later, in front of the Supreme Court, he dubbed “amateurism” a critical “differentiating feature” of college athletics.
The NCAA lost by a vote of 9-zip.
“Nowhere else in America can businesses get away with agreeing not to pay their workers a fair market rate on the theory that their product is defined by not paying their workers a fair market rate,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a concurring opinion in NCAA v. Alston, before noting: “The NCAA is not above the law.”
With that, amateurism in college athletics collapsed like a house of cards and made the ratification of something such as the House settlement inevitable.
College sports leaders knew the wealth had to be shared and would rather try to have at least some of it — up to $20.5 million per year over the next decade — come directly from their coffers than all of it via booster collectives doling out NIL deals that had little to do with NIL.
What is to come remains to be sorted out. How will rules be enforced? Can the new system survive legal challenges? What about some of the positives that came from the unregulated NIL era — the spreading out of talent, the increased number of football teams able to contend for national championships, the diminished influence of shoe companies in directing basketball talent, etc.?
All of that is to be determined. Some things will be lost. Some things will be gained. Change is change. It takes time to digest.
If nothing else, though, the charade is over.
That multibillion-dollar industry is a professional operation, all the way down to the players.
And while amateurism was always good to the already wealthy, and college sports made plenty of people and institutions plenty of wealth, it doesn’t mean it ever should have existed, let alone survived this long.