General SCOTUS stuff

Since Trump is no longer President and we still (mostly) have laws, we need a non-Trump SCOTUS thread beyond general law and lawyer stuff, imo.

We open with most of the justices going after the NCAA and tearing their arguments apart like a pack of wild dogs.

This is awesome and way overdue. Of course if colleges are forced to pay athletes I’m sure we’ll see all sorts of doom and gloom from them, and many of them will cut less-popular programs and blame it on the decision even though they’re making tons of money.

It’s almost like capitalism is a cancer which must be excised, but whaddoino

Agreed, this is long overdue, not only in collegiate sports but in Olympic sports. The myth of the “student athlete” is a joke.

Ultimately yes, several things will happen. Smaller schools will just axe many programs. Larger schools will raise revenues to compensate, either through higher prices, more donations, renegotiated contracts with radio/TV, or some combination of those things. And hopefully, HOPEFULLY, the NCAA will fade into the dustheap of history.

Breyer tho

Yeesh, it physically pains me to be on the same side on something as Kavanaugh, Thomas, and Barrett.

Here the sports teams are a separate organization that gets all licensing and merchandising monies and occasionally may or may not deign to pass some of that on to the school. I figured such athletic association arrangements were the standard at most schools.

Paying athletes won’t actually affect the university budget but I imagine it’ll be used as an excuse for some sort of cuts.

Most big schools are like that. The athletic departments fund themselves. The college football coach at the public university is often the highest paid state employee in most states, but that’s not taxpayer dollars.

Still, the major schools reap like the vast majority of the money. The small schools get crumbs. And that’s the Division I level. Anything below Division I aren’t making money.

I suspect if they’re on board, this is going to be a 7-2 or more verdict.

Yeah, it heavily depends on the school. The local MAC school ran a large deficit and had to prop their athletic department up with general funds this year because they didn’t get any of the Power 5 payouts. If you aren’t in a major conference or a school with a history in revenue sports (mostly football with some basketball) there will likely be cuts out of necessity.

Could someone summarize the actual case being brought here? I am someone who could not possibly care less about sports at any level, collegiate or professional, so I don’t generally follow what’s going on in that world. My assumption has always been that the “compensation” that college athletes get is a free ride to a college degree. But from the responses here I’m guessing it’s much more nuanced than that?

I truly don’t know enough to have an opinion either way, especially since I don’t know the actual specifics of the case.

Compensation for college athletes (I deliberately stay away from the word “pay”) is going to be a massive headache because of the huge variations in type of school and program. Consider, for example, Gonzaga. Or better, Williams College, since I am very familiar with them. Their athletes aren’t even compensated with scholarships in most cases. There are basically no revenues from sports–their fieldhouse doesn’t fill during basketball season, their bleachers don’t fill during football season, and the rest of the sports draw almost nobody at all. No television. Minimal radio, and it doesn’t pay to broadcast the games. So no income from athletics at all. And minimal compensation for the athletes.

On the other hand, take Michigan. Another school I am very familiar with. Excellent compensation for football, for both mens and womens basketball, for some baseball and softball players but not all of them. Compensation takes the form of remission of tuition, fees, housing, food, etc. For an in-state student that amounts to about $30,000 per year. For an out-of-state student that amounts to around $60,000 per year.

How do you reconcile those two situations? Williams, of course, is not NCAA, so right now you don’t HAVE to reconcile them, but where is the future headed? How do you reconcile revenue-producing sports vs. non-producing? Is $30k or $60 sufficient compensation, or should it be considered compensation at all? What about those crew students, or lacrosse students, or field hockey students?

There is a huge can of worms coming that will undoubtedly hurt a lot of student athletes at the expense of the few who cash in. And as I said above, this is long overdue, but its not going to be pretty while it gets sorted out.

I imagine there are some schools that dream about jettisoning all that college stuff and just keeping the sports franchises.

No idea how this will turn out, but my vision for compensating student athletes was more about positioning them for the future, not giving them a weekly paycheck.

My thought was that these athletes get a portion of the licensing revenue from their college and from their specific merchandise (I can’t believe colleges have gotten away with selling the names and likenesses of their athletes), but that money is put into a fund that they get when they graduate.

If they leave college early maybe there’s some sort of penalty or something. Maybe it’s like a 401K at work where you vest over 4 years.

You’re likely on the same side as them on most cases. The most likely outcome of a SCOTUS ruling is a unanimous ruling of all justices. Less than 20% are split on partisan lines.

The problem is the student athlete formation often has ‘’ around the student part.

I dunno, it’s a complex topic with a lot of nuance. The only thing I am certain of is the NCAA is full of shit and utterly corrupt and hypocritical here. How, and whether, student athletes should be paid is a very tricky thing. But removing the prohibition on compensation, such as allowing an athlete money for jersey sales (which currently the school pockets the money from their name) has a lot of benefit. However it also opens a lot of room for abuse.

I don’t have the time to give a more nuanced answer. Just that I know the NCAA is in the wrong, but not that I think giving a paycheck is the right answer either.

It was an uneasy peace for the longest time, but the exploding television deals created an arms race that really put the disparity on the burner.

For example, Jimbo Fisher got a $100 million contract to coach “amateur” players. That’s hard to swallow for a lot of people.

I think the problem here is that many student-athletes don’t have any spending money as students. That’s why they keep getting into trouble — they do something against the rules for pocket money and get caught. Paying them later isn’t really going to alleviate that at all.

Yeah, totally fair. Maybe some sort of stipend for standard expenses?

I would also hope that my plan would also include a stipulation that if athletes are getting paid enough that their scholarship dollars go to $0 and that money is given to someone else who isn’t getting paid as much.