I support some sort of payment to college athletes, but $25K per year and >$1M upon graduation is ridiculous. I might support $25k per year and $50-100k upon graduation. Moreover, it makes me cringe to think we would be setting up yet another bureaucracy to administer the program and pay yet another group of a governor's cronies to serve on the CAP Panel.
Yes, it might attract more athletes to stay/come to California, but it's only a matter of time before other states like Alabama and Georgia adopt similar measures (most likely with even greater payouts to the athletes). It will turn into another arms race that Cal cannot win.
Also, last I checked, not a single college football player is homeless. Maybe the legislature and the governor* should quit blindly pouring money into the homeless industrial complex and come up real solutions -- hello mental health, drug addiction, enforcement of criminal laws, etc. -- before they try to address a 3rd-tier (5th-tier?) problem like pay for college athletes.
*It's been almost 20 years since Newsom, as mayor of SF, announced a 10-year plan to end chronic homelessness in SF. Through two terms each as Mayor, Lt. Gov, and Gov, the problem has only exploded exponentially in SF and statewide.
I've long liked the "stipend plus graduation payout" scheme structure.
50% may be a bit high since revenue-negative sports will need even more subsidy. I think the in-kind services will probably need to be counted as payment if we're dealing with 50%. It may be cleaner to just exclude those and make the split something more like 60-40.
Over time, that $25K "salary" will decrease unless it's indexed to inflation.
I like the athlete protection clause but think it probably needs to have more subtlety built in. The lifetime ban provision is probably meant to kick in for only something truly egregious and as a failsafe against an out-of-control program. Medical provisions and safety (like abuse) seem a bit too different to lump together unless we're dealing with a failsafe type of scenario.
Anyway, overall approach seems like it's actually crafted to solve a problem instead of just making a statement, which means we could see a version become law. It would likely get diluted a bit but it's a good opening move.
How do the profit/not-for-profit rules shake out here?
When a professor gets a grant, some of that money can be used for summer salary (if the granting agency permits it) usually at the same pay rate of their 9/10 month salary. The money may also be used to hire labor (such as techs, post docs, grad students, undergrads....) pay for service, equipment, consumables, etc. Every school takes a percentage of the grant for overhead (to pay for general administrative expenses) and some is kicked back as "indirect" funds that the scholar can use for further research and scholarship purposes. So the only monetary gain is by helping to support your pay during the summer (since they don't pay you themselves), at the same rate. If you bring in a huge grant, you don't get more money!
Now compare this with the sketchy NIL and now salary program proposed here. I can tell you that being a state employee sucks financially and they make reimbursement for work expenses ridiculously difficult. It seems like a huge double standard (that WILL draw ire) to let something like this happen.
Nick: while you briefly touched on T9, you ignored the elephant in the room in your deep dive: non-rav sports supported by the media rights of the rev sports. If Cal football and men's basketball have to reserve ~half of the media rights money for the players, less xx millions o pay for the CAP bureaucracy, that means ~half of the media rights are no longer available to support for non-rev sports. The Athletic Department starts running huge losses, ala UCLA pre-BiG,
Will Cal pay to continue those ~28 non-rev sports with money from the academic side of the house? Highly unlikely; Cal has much less campus support than UCLA for D1. Instead, Cal athletics will end up as a shell of its former self. The only positive is that cutting sports could mean we get a new AD (yay). (Again, not likely IMO as Cal would appeal to CAP who would agree that the Uni can't afford 30 sports; JK for life.)
*Yes, I'm aware that a few sports have donor funding to breakeven and golf doesn't cost much at all.
I'd say the actual elephant in the room isn't the support of non-revenue sports by the media rights of revenue sports. No, no no.
The much larger elephant in the room is that universities feel obligated to spend millions that could otherwise support academics for intercollegiate athletics.
There's a cult mindset when it comes to college athletics, particularly football and men's basketball. Fans of college football and men's basketball in particular insist that those sports bring money to the namesake colleges and universities, when, in fact, 90% of FBS programs run a deficit each year that must be covered by the campus. The only programs that turn a profit from football and basketball are the blueblood programs. Those programs include Ohio State, Alabama, Texas, Oklahoma, Penn State, Michigan, probably Georgia, Florida, Clemson, and a few others. Stanf*rd has a large athletics endowment without which they would run a deficit. Cal, not so much. USC probably turns a profit, but they keep their numbers a tightly held secret. We know that UCLA has a 9-figure deficit that they're trying to reduce or eliminate.
The elephant in the room is that we "need" or should participate in an arms race in college athletics.
Just to be clear, men's football (FBS) more than covers its expenses everywhere (due to TV revenue). And I believe so do most men's D1 basketball. The profits from those two sports are used to offset the expenses of all other sports the Uni offers.
But yes, only a ~dozen schools have total athletic budgets that are profitable -- including all sports. All others require cash infusions from the University's general fund.
My point is that once the profits from football are required to be paid out to the players, there will be an even larger deficit at schools like Cal. So, the simple (and obvious) solution is to reduce the sports offered. The result would be no different if Cal was to drop to FCS.
And perhaps that is the intention of the proposed law, which really only affects four schools; force the two publics to drop out of the arms race. (I have no idea why Sacto would care how Stanford or USC spends their money.)
No, I think the intent of the law is to allow football players and other student athletes to share in the profits generated by their hard work, their massive time commitment to their sport and the recognition it brings to the schools they represent.
You seem to be arguing that college athletics is some sort of exceptional case wherein compensation to student-athletes should be at the discretion of the institution. Amateurism is how we got to this point. Amateurism is why we have a system that exploits student-athletes for their performance while offering peanuts compared to the return from media rights and other sources of revenue. Professional sports are a variant on that idea. The difference being that so-called professional athletes have a shot at huge contracts which no college athlete will ever have at the intercollegiate level.
I love Cal football. I've followed Cal football for more than 50 years. But there's no compelling reason why Cal or any other college or university *must* have a football team.
When one considers the cutbacks in funding to public universities and colleges, a football team looks like a truly costly luxury. But woe unto anyone who tries to cut back the football program. Academic programs don't get that kind of love.
Title IX is enforcement of fairness in access to what universities have to offer. It is no more a drain than the Voting Rights Act is to the levers of power at statehouses and Washington, DC.
UC had a choice when renovation of Cal Memorial was under discussion - don't renovate Cal Memorial. Drop down to FCS. Cancel the football program.
That's not to say these would have been popular moves; they would have been widely excoriated. You think it was tough to announce cutting 5 sports? Try cancelling the football program. And yet, football is the elephant in the room when it comes to Title IX enforcement. It's why maximum scholarship counts in Division I-A football dropped from 130 to 106 to 85. And still, that's not nearly enough cutting back. It's a contributor to why Cal has 30 sponsored sports and not 18 like a number of FBS schools do.
I support some sort of payment to college athletes, but $25K per year and >$1M upon graduation is ridiculous. I might support $25k per year and $50-100k upon graduation. Moreover, it makes me cringe to think we would be setting up yet another bureaucracy to administer the program and pay yet another group of a governor's cronies to serve on the CAP Panel.
Yes, it might attract more athletes to stay/come to California, but it's only a matter of time before other states like Alabama and Georgia adopt similar measures (most likely with even greater payouts to the athletes). It will turn into another arms race that Cal cannot win.
Also, last I checked, not a single college football player is homeless. Maybe the legislature and the governor* should quit blindly pouring money into the homeless industrial complex and come up real solutions -- hello mental health, drug addiction, enforcement of criminal laws, etc. -- before they try to address a 3rd-tier (5th-tier?) problem like pay for college athletes.
*It's been almost 20 years since Newsom, as mayor of SF, announced a 10-year plan to end chronic homelessness in SF. Through two terms each as Mayor, Lt. Gov, and Gov, the problem has only exploded exponentially in SF and statewide.
I've long liked the "stipend plus graduation payout" scheme structure.
50% may be a bit high since revenue-negative sports will need even more subsidy. I think the in-kind services will probably need to be counted as payment if we're dealing with 50%. It may be cleaner to just exclude those and make the split something more like 60-40.
Over time, that $25K "salary" will decrease unless it's indexed to inflation.
I like the athlete protection clause but think it probably needs to have more subtlety built in. The lifetime ban provision is probably meant to kick in for only something truly egregious and as a failsafe against an out-of-control program. Medical provisions and safety (like abuse) seem a bit too different to lump together unless we're dealing with a failsafe type of scenario.
Anyway, overall approach seems like it's actually crafted to solve a problem instead of just making a statement, which means we could see a version become law. It would likely get diluted a bit but it's a good opening move.
Don't blink, the times are a changin
R..I.P. California collegiate athletics
How do the profit/not-for-profit rules shake out here?
When a professor gets a grant, some of that money can be used for summer salary (if the granting agency permits it) usually at the same pay rate of their 9/10 month salary. The money may also be used to hire labor (such as techs, post docs, grad students, undergrads....) pay for service, equipment, consumables, etc. Every school takes a percentage of the grant for overhead (to pay for general administrative expenses) and some is kicked back as "indirect" funds that the scholar can use for further research and scholarship purposes. So the only monetary gain is by helping to support your pay during the summer (since they don't pay you themselves), at the same rate. If you bring in a huge grant, you don't get more money!
Now compare this with the sketchy NIL and now salary program proposed here. I can tell you that being a state employee sucks financially and they make reimbursement for work expenses ridiculously difficult. It seems like a huge double standard (that WILL draw ire) to let something like this happen.
Nick: while you briefly touched on T9, you ignored the elephant in the room in your deep dive: non-rav sports supported by the media rights of the rev sports. If Cal football and men's basketball have to reserve ~half of the media rights money for the players, less xx millions o pay for the CAP bureaucracy, that means ~half of the media rights are no longer available to support for non-rev sports. The Athletic Department starts running huge losses, ala UCLA pre-BiG,
Will Cal pay to continue those ~28 non-rev sports with money from the academic side of the house? Highly unlikely; Cal has much less campus support than UCLA for D1. Instead, Cal athletics will end up as a shell of its former self. The only positive is that cutting sports could mean we get a new AD (yay). (Again, not likely IMO as Cal would appeal to CAP who would agree that the Uni can't afford 30 sports; JK for life.)
*Yes, I'm aware that a few sports have donor funding to breakeven and golf doesn't cost much at all.
I'd say the actual elephant in the room isn't the support of non-revenue sports by the media rights of revenue sports. No, no no.
The much larger elephant in the room is that universities feel obligated to spend millions that could otherwise support academics for intercollegiate athletics.
There's a cult mindset when it comes to college athletics, particularly football and men's basketball. Fans of college football and men's basketball in particular insist that those sports bring money to the namesake colleges and universities, when, in fact, 90% of FBS programs run a deficit each year that must be covered by the campus. The only programs that turn a profit from football and basketball are the blueblood programs. Those programs include Ohio State, Alabama, Texas, Oklahoma, Penn State, Michigan, probably Georgia, Florida, Clemson, and a few others. Stanf*rd has a large athletics endowment without which they would run a deficit. Cal, not so much. USC probably turns a profit, but they keep their numbers a tightly held secret. We know that UCLA has a 9-figure deficit that they're trying to reduce or eliminate.
The elephant in the room is that we "need" or should participate in an arms race in college athletics.
Well-said
Just to be clear, men's football (FBS) more than covers its expenses everywhere (due to TV revenue). And I believe so do most men's D1 basketball. The profits from those two sports are used to offset the expenses of all other sports the Uni offers.
But yes, only a ~dozen schools have total athletic budgets that are profitable -- including all sports. All others require cash infusions from the University's general fund.
My point is that once the profits from football are required to be paid out to the players, there will be an even larger deficit at schools like Cal. So, the simple (and obvious) solution is to reduce the sports offered. The result would be no different if Cal was to drop to FCS.
And perhaps that is the intention of the proposed law, which really only affects four schools; force the two publics to drop out of the arms race. (I have no idea why Sacto would care how Stanford or USC spends their money.)
How about San Jose State, Fresno State and San Diego State, all FBS programs? They would also come under the law.
Nick said it applies to schools with $10m+ in Rev and the Group 5 conferences don't pay that much.
No, I think the intent of the law is to allow football players and other student athletes to share in the profits generated by their hard work, their massive time commitment to their sport and the recognition it brings to the schools they represent.
You seem to be arguing that college athletics is some sort of exceptional case wherein compensation to student-athletes should be at the discretion of the institution. Amateurism is how we got to this point. Amateurism is why we have a system that exploits student-athletes for their performance while offering peanuts compared to the return from media rights and other sources of revenue. Professional sports are a variant on that idea. The difference being that so-called professional athletes have a shot at huge contracts which no college athlete will ever have at the intercollegiate level.
One other thought -
I love Cal football. I've followed Cal football for more than 50 years. But there's no compelling reason why Cal or any other college or university *must* have a football team.
When one considers the cutbacks in funding to public universities and colleges, a football team looks like a truly costly luxury. But woe unto anyone who tries to cut back the football program. Academic programs don't get that kind of love.
Title IX is enforcement of fairness in access to what universities have to offer. It is no more a drain than the Voting Rights Act is to the levers of power at statehouses and Washington, DC.
UC had a choice when renovation of Cal Memorial was under discussion - don't renovate Cal Memorial. Drop down to FCS. Cancel the football program.
That's not to say these would have been popular moves; they would have been widely excoriated. You think it was tough to announce cutting 5 sports? Try cancelling the football program. And yet, football is the elephant in the room when it comes to Title IX enforcement. It's why maximum scholarship counts in Division I-A football dropped from 130 to 106 to 85. And still, that's not nearly enough cutting back. It's a contributor to why Cal has 30 sponsored sports and not 18 like a number of FBS schools do.