Paying college athletes will usher in a new era of uncertainty. But here’s what won’t happen

This week, the NCAA, ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC voted to allow schools to pay their athletes.

Let that sink in for a moment.

A day that few would have considered imaginable three years ago, let alone 30, has (almost) arrived. Technically, their votes were just the first step toward reaching a $2.7 billion settlement in the landmark House v. A judge still needs to approve it. There will be more audiences. Still, college sports leaders agreed to something they spent a century railing against — albeit grudgingly, and only because of the pending threat of a verdict that would likely bankrupt the entire system.

There are still many details to be ironed out: how many schools will actually offer the roughly $20 million annually in revenue that they will now be able, but not required, to share with their athletes; how they will meet Title IX requirements; collective negotiations will be established with athletes, etc.

All I’m willing to predict at this point are all the widely predicted ramifications of paying college athletes that will NEVER come to fruition.

Fans Won’t Stop Watching College Football

It’s the doomsday scenario that NCAA lawyers, expert witnesses and some fans have been threatening for years: The public will lose interest in college sports if athletes are ever compensated beyond their scholarships.

“If we go down the path of paying players substantial sums, all will be lost,” former CBS Sports president Neal Pilson testified during the O’Bannon v. Sports trial. Citing misleading public opinion polls the NCAA relied on during the case, he predicted viewership would drop 15 to 20 percent.

Well, we have almost three years of data that confirms that this argument was complete nonsense. Many college athletes – not just in football and men’s basketball – began receiving “substantial sums” of NIL money starting July 1, 2021. What has happened since then?

Thirty-seven regular-season college football games last season drew at least five million viewers, up from 29 a decade earlier. Last year’s Ohio State-Michigan game drew the sport’s largest regular-season attendance (19.1 million) since 2011, when serving cream cheese on bagels was still an NCAA violation. And, of course, there’s women’s basketball, which has seen stratospheric viewership growth, probably in part because the biggest stars — Caitlin Clark, JuJu Watkins, Cameron Brink — are now paid to appear in national advertising campaigns.

People will continue to watch college football because A) there is no greater loyalty in American sports than a person’s favorite college and B) fall Saturdays remain amazing.

Athletes’ academic experience will not be affected

The NCAA for years framed its arguments to preserve amateurism as a noble attempt to protect their “student-athletes.”

“It is critically important that we…protect the amateurism of college sports and support rather than undermine the student-athlete’s educational experience,” former NCAA President Mark Emmert said in testimony before the Senate in 2020.

That would be really cool if it were actually happening. If we completely ignored the decades-old practice of funneling athletes into the easiest classes possible; “group” high percentages of athletes into easier specialties; athletes spend much more than the supposed limit of 20 hours per week on activities focused on their sport; embarrassing graduation rates; and, in certain cases, outright academic fraud.

That doesn’t mean all Football players treat school like a joke. On the contrary, as on any campus, there are highly motivated students who are well prepared for life after college and others who cannot identify the library on a map. And that won’t change for better or worse because of revenue sharing.

NIL collectives will not go away

In the administrators’ ideal world, the House agreement will put an end to the “wild west” era that emerged when the NCAA was forced in 2021 to allow NIL but instituted few if any regulations around it. Unlikely.

The deal will allow, say, Ohio State to share up to $20 million with its athletes. Which seems like a lot. But schools will not be able to give all 20 million dollars to the football team, otherwise they will want to be sued by their female athletes.

In AtléticoIn recent reports about the transfer portal and NIL, a CEO of a collective said: “We will spend about $14.5 million (this year). Football is probably 80% of that. Another: “We’re between $12 and $13 million.” And this reporter has heard of several major programs with numbers higher than that.

NIL collectives won’t need to raise as much money as they currently do, but they will likely serve as something of a salary cap workaround for higher-level programs with national championship ambitions. After all, boosters were inducting recruits long before NIL, and there’s no reason to think they’ll stop at the new model.

The NCAA won’t stop being sued

The NCAA and conferences chose to settle the House case in part because it would be consolidated with several similar lawsuits brought by the same lawyer. But the first hint that many more billable hours are in store for defendants came Thursday, when a Colorado judge denied a motion to move another athlete compensation case, Fontenot v. NCAA, for the Northern California court that oversees House.

Meanwhile, the NCAA is still involved in lawsuits over athlete employment (Johnson v. NCAA; NLRB cases involving USC, Dartmouth, and Notre Dame), transfer rules (Ohio et al v. NCAA), and booster involvement in recruiting (Tennessee and Virginia v. NCAA). There are also lawsuits from Florida State and Clemson challenging the ACC’s granting of rights, which could have industry-wide ramifications.

House may reshape college sports unlike any previous lawsuit, but the larger reshaping project may still only be in the early stages.

People won’t stop complaining about the state of things

College football is a rare phenomenon that is somehow extremely popular but extremely frustrating to its consumers on all sorts of issues.

The Chamber’s agreement may bring some much-needed stability to the NIL/portal world, but it will not resolve any of the following widespread complaints:

• Exorbitant ticket prices (which, at the very least, will rise further to help offset lost revenue)
• Traffic inside and outside the stadium
• Inconvenient start times
• Conference realignment
• Targeting
• Officialization in general
• Long reviews/lots of commercials
• The end zone disappears
• Clock management
• The overtime format
• Coaches leaving before bowl game
• Lots of bowl games
• Your team’s recruiting ranking
• Your quarterback’s decision making
• Losing to your rival

Considering we’ve endured all of these things and still continue to watch, a running back getting a paycheck probably won’t be the final straw.

(Photo: David E. Klutho / Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)