With LSU entering the College World Series for the 20th time and an upcoming LSU football season with an expectation of a possible national championship, the college sports landscape is leaving the pretense of amateurism and entering a new phase of full-blown professionalism with the final settlement in House V NCAA. Lawyers have a saying that “pigs get fat, and hogs get slaughtered”. After the settlement in the House, you can now visit the NCAA in any local slaughterhouse or grocery butcher shop. Yet, fans wonder whether the changes or for the better or the worse. The answer is both.
As a student worker at LSU in the mid-1980s, Coach Dale Brown, the former legendary LSU basketball coach, predicted that college athletes would conduct a nationwide strike to protest the NCAA’s financial exploitation of college athletes. The NCAA’s confiscating and hoarding of the revenue generated by collegiate athletes and its heavy-handed enforcement tactics were beyond distasteful. Coach Dale Brown was still furious that the NCAA would not grant a waiver to allow school money to fly his basketball team to St. Louis to attend the funeral of an LSU basketball player, Mark Alcorn, who died of cancer. The greed and arrogance finally caught up with the NCAA in House V. NCAA.
Forty years later, the NCAA is required to pay $2.8 billion to former and current athletes, as well as approve revenue sharing to college athletes. Player contracts will be negotiated between the athletic department and the athletes. Player contracts will contain signing bonuses, negotiated time periods, options, incentives, injury protection, and buyout provisions. College administrations will structure teams’ administration similar to pro sports franchises with a general manager, a high school scouting department, another department scouting other college teams for the transfer portal, a salary cap expert and negotiations with agents.
Additional litigation will ensue for any rules imposed on college athletes as a restraint of trade or anti-trust violation. College athletes will become employees, which imposes a whole new set of labor laws. Eventually, college athletes may unionize, much like the NFL, NBA and MLB, to collectively bargain for their rights on compensation, health insurance, injury protection, deferred compensation and general working conditions.
There will be many sad and heartbreaking stories of naive and immature 18-year-old college athletes squandering millions of dollars and losing a once-in-a-lifetime financial opportunity to enjoy a great headstart in life. There will be tragic stories of athletes financing a self-destructive lifestyle from receiving too much money too soon. There will be heartbreaking stories of financial predators stealing from college athletes or placing their earnings in highly speculative investments.
Is the new landscape good or bad? If you remember, in 1981, the TV rights to college football were deregulated from 1 or 2 weekly college football games of blue bloods to the airing of unlimited games in all conferences on new networks (I.e., ESPN) broadcasted ground-breaking cable outlets. Many prognosticators professed that the deregulation and proliferation of college football would lead to the demise of college football. On the contrary, college football has flourished since the 1980s,
So, what is the future of collegiate athletics? Maybe we should ask Dale Brown, the 89-year-old former LSU basketball coach.
Doug Sunseri is the host of “All Things Legal” on Sunday mornings on WWL/AM/FM/Audacy.com and managing attorney for The Sunseri Law Firm, LLC and has worked in the professional and college sports industry for the past 37 years.