Introduction

The NCAA is a shell of what it used to be. Increasingly, the “revenue-generating” sports (namely men’s football and men’s basketball) are forcing the NCAA’s hand in regards to changing long-held beliefs and principles, affecting all NCAA-sponsored competitions and sports. As state legislatures and legislators continue to pass bills that hamper the NCAA from effectively enforcing their principle-driven rules, how should the NCAA and professional sports leagues be handling the problem? Is this the end of the NCAA? Or have rumors of its demise been greatly exaggerated?

Principles: Stick to Your Guns

A governing body for college sports emerged due to concerns about player safety, a desire for all college and university teams to play undes a unified set of rules, and the ability to have a central body for the promotion of collegiate athletics to executives and academics running these institutions. This “governing body” took different forms over the course of the late nineteenth and early-to-mid twentieth centuries. However, in the twentieth century, the NCAA as we know it emerged from the ashes of its predecessors.

Given this history, it makes sense: the main principle of the NCAA is amateurism. How else would a governing body for intercollegiate athletics convince academic “executives” (university presidents and higher-up faculty) that sponsoring sports teams is good for their academic institution? The only other possible convincing argument would be money, but the NCAA and collegiate athletics does not have a very convincing argument there at all: only two sports really regularly make money for an institution (men’s football and men’s basketball), and of the hundreds of NCAA member institutions, fewer than a dozen actually bring in positive revenue over the course of the calendar year (not counting donations, this is typically what helps athietic departments break even, at best).

So, amateurism, that’s great, right? Yes! The NCAA has probably helped thousands upon thousands of athletes who may not have the opportunity to go to a college or university to have that opportunity. In addition, for many sports, collegiate competition is the highest level of competition. The value of an education is often cited as the reason why movements such as NIL (name, image, and likeness) should not be permitted in favor of pure amateurism; for some sports where post-collegiate professional competition may not exist (or maybe is severly limited in the pay that it can offer), this proposition may still be very attractive. In the early days of the NCAA, before professional sports leagues were as common or lucrative as they are now, this was an attractive proposition for nearly, if not all sports. However, as professional sports leagues have taken off in America, collegiate athletics has turned into a “developmental” league for those sports where collegiate competition is not the highest level of competition.

College Athletics as a Developmental League

In this section, I will focus mostly on men’s football and men’s basketball (previously referred to as the “revenue-generating sports”), however it, to some extent, will apply to other sports such as women’s basketball, men’s hockey, men’s baseball, and others.

Let’s focus first on men’s basketball, where the primary means for a player to enter the league is through a draft system. For years, professional basketball in America did not require players to be any years removed from high school in order to be draft eligible. Some of professional basketball’s recent stars, such as Kobe Bryant and LeBron James, entered the NBA straight out of high school. Through the league’s collective bargaining agreement (starting in 2006), draft eligibility requirements have changed over time; players must now be at least nineteen years of age during the calendar year in which the draft is being held, and one NBA season must have elapsed since the player graduated (or should have graduated) from high school (see 2023 NBA Draft eligibility). The second requirement is really the driving force here: players must be one year removed from high school, unlike before.

Now what are the reasons for requiring the one year “separation” from high school in order to be eligible, especially considering some of the sport’s stars not having met that requirement before becoming pro? Ostensibly, this is so the player can mature both mentally and physically, which would help their preparedness for the NBA. Regardless, from when it was enacted in 2006, this rule has resulted in more of the top high school basketball talent choosing the NCAA over other possible options (including the NBA’s D(evelopmental) League and overseas professional leagues). Of course, this was a big boost to the profitability of the NCAA. NBA-focused players surely aren’t choosing the NCAA route for the education value (as mentioned in the previous section; there is no way that you can get your degree in one year), but are likely choosing the NCAA because they offer better coaching and resources than the other options.

For football, the “physical maturity” argument holds much more water. Players coming out of high school are very physically gifted, but are not quite the size of their professional NFL counterparts. The NFL requires that players are three years removed from high school in order to be eligible. The NFL offers no dedicated developmental league as the NBA does, this is in addition to there being very few overseas options for football, since it is largely an American sport. This results in collegiate football being the only viable option for NFL-hopeful high school talent.

In both cases, the NCAA has become the de facto developmental league. This has resulted in immense profits for the NCAA (and its member institutions), but does it really comport with the (stated) goals of the NCAA, namely amateurism and education?

Name, Image, Likeness: the Deathknell of Amateurism?

The NCAA has fought tooth and nail to fight any movement even somewhat related to compensating players. They lost. States continue to pass legislation allowing college athletes to market themselves and use their platform(s) for personal profit. It is important to state how heavily this principle goes against amateurism. Amateurism can be hastily defined as “not professionalism”, i.e. players are not receiving payment based upon their participation in athletics.

The NCAA’s pursuit of “true” amateurism took some pretty ridiculous lengths over the years. Famously, players used to go through an approval process in order to get a job, the NCAA wanting to ensure that there were no “impermissible benefits” that would adversely affect competition. Perhaps the most blatant example of flouting the NCAA rules on persuading potential recruits resulted in the suspension of the SMU football team for an entire season. The Northwestern football team unionization attempt (linked in the “tooth” portion of the above paragraph) culminated in athletes’ scholarships covering the “full cost of attendance” at the school, something that it did not cover before.

This is what has made the recent push by state legislators and legislatures particularly interesting. The NCAA doesn’t have free reign over college athletic competition any more, like it used to do. The public sees how ridiculous the hardline stance on amateurism is. Sure, should the SMU example be allowed in the first place? Probably not, in the pursuit of fair competition. But tell me how that is much different than what is happening now with NIL(see the car dealership example), especially cases where the NIL money is tied to organizations with some relationship or affiliation with a particular university (or sets of universities)?

Let me be clear: yes, players should be able to market themselves and profit off their name, image, and likeness. The universities and the NCAA should not be the only bodies to profit off athletes especially when they are unable to do so themselves. I think this is even more obvious in the case of sports where collegiate competition is the highest level of competition. But I also want to make clear: this is not the amateurism that the NCAA advocates for.

The Education Thing is Kind of a Lie, Anyway

So if the amateurism portion of the NCAA isn’t coming to fruition, how about the educational component?

Formally, NCAA athletes dedicate twenty hours a week to their athletic pursuits, which allows them time to achieve their educational goals. As someone who worked in college athletics for three seasons, I will tell you that this is very loosely enforced.

College sports also require a lot of travel. For football, for example, teams typically travel to their game’s location the day before the game, stay at a hotel that night, then begin their preparations the entire morning (and afternoon in the case of a night game) before driving to the stadium. Tell me how this works to promote education (and is not solely a cash grab) to have football games in the middle of the week during football season? This requires players missing classes, taking time out of their week to fly to a game, all (supposedly) in the name of educational pursuit.

The Pro Leagues’ Role in All of This

I somewhat implied this in the “College Athletics as Developmental League” section, but here I’ll lay it out: it is the professional leagues themselves making the NCAA the de facto developmental league. Does the NCAA probably lobby the NBA and NFL to continue keeping those clauses regarding draft eligibility in their collective bargaining agreements? Yes. As established earlier, those clauses are what keeps talent (and therefore money) coming to the NCAA.

But money-making is not a stated goal of the NCAA; education and amateurism are. Either the NCAA should come out publicly in favor of being a profit-driven organization (and dropping their stated goals of educational opportunity and amateurism), or they should make substantial changes to the rules to further weed out the money-making element present in their organization. Those defending amateurism in college athletics are often staunch defenders of the NCAA, but they should only really do so if the NCAA takes the latter path, something that the NCAA seems hesitant to do in the face of the recent state legislation.

Solution?

I think that the ideal solution does the following: promotes the value and pursuit of education and amateurism (perhaps not “full/true” amateurism) within college athletics, but also allows for the pursuit of professional athletics for those athletes that are wanting to take the risk on that path.

Practically speaking, I think this requires the elimination of the clauses in the NFL and NBA collective bargaining agreements relating to “years removed from high school” for draft eligibility. In their stead should be dedicated, professional developmental leagues. Players should be allowed to be drafted from high school and then be required to spend a number of years within the developmental league (likely a longer period of time for football than basketball, as discussed earlier). If those players are not drafted out of high school, they should then look to pursue collegiate athletics, where they should be required to stay for a longer period of time (or perhaps even graduation?).

This more closely mirrors the draft and development of baseball players. Baseball players can currently be drafted immediately out of high school; typically, players who go this route play several years in the minor leagues (read: developmental leagues) before making entry into the major league, if at all. Now, the baseball minor league system is plagued with its own pay issues, to be sure, but players are at least given the option to earn money straight away, if one team in the MLB deems them ready. The other option for baseball players, for those who are drafted and are not ready to come to terms with an MLB organization or those who want to pursue their education, is collegiate baseball, in which they must spend at least three seasons before becoming draft eligible again. The other somewhat common route for baseball players out of high school is to attend a junior college, where they are eligible for the draft the following season.

Ultimately, I think this system is a fair balance of the following:

• players who want to pursue professional athletics (i.e. paid) and are ready to do so (as deemed by the pro leagues) are able to do so
• players who want to pursue professional athletics and are not ready to do so as deemed by the leagues can still play in collegiate sports, where they are allowed to build a brand, profit off of their name, image, and likeness, and can continue to develop as athletes in their sport
  • in the worst case, in terms of injury or lack of development, they will be in a position to obtain an education (this likely will also require NCAA reforms)
• players who either do not want to pursue professional athletics or that option does not exist for their sport can still play in collegiate sports, where they can build a brand, etc.
  • ultimately, playing at the highest level of competition and obtaining college education is probably a good long term consideration