Big East commissioner Val Ackerman appeared on SI Live earlier this week and discussed the possibility of allowing student-athletes to sign endorsement deals.
“That’s one that’s actually under consideration I believe by the NCAA,” Ackerman said. “It’s actually a time right now where student-athlete interests are being closely examined. I don’t have an answer for you on that one today but I will say that and a number of other topics are under review, and I think rightly by the NCAA and it’s very possible that over the course of the next year or two as these ideas work their way through the legislative system you could see changes.”
Any pay-for-play topic gets blood pressure rising and spittle rising rising on both sides, so we decided to weigh the measures of this idea in point/counterpoint style.
Point: Allowing teenagers to sign endorsements would turn every recruitment into a bidding war where the richest school wins.
Counterpoint: And? How is that different from the system we have now? Is your argument that allowing endorsements would change a system where Alabama and Florida State sign all the top football players and Duke and Kentucky sign all the top basketball players into a system where... Alabama and Florida State sign all the top football players and Duke and Kentucky sign all the top basketball players?
Point: I'm personally more comfortable with a system where all payments are under the table and, thus, out of my view.
Counterpoint: At least we're being honest.
Point: Don't you see any downsides to businesses handing hundreds of thousands of dollars to teenagers? What's to stop Alabama boosters from opening up their check books to the entire Rivals 100?
Counterpoint: Again, I would caution that there's nothing stoping them from doing that now. But, yes, strong and cogent failsafes would need to be put in place.
Point: Well, what are they? The devil is in the details here, after all.
Counterpoint: I don't have those figured out right this second, but I'm confident the bright minds across college sports could come up with the right regulations to keep the system from collapsing up under itself?
Point: You mean the same group of people that largely voted against their own interests to pass the satellite camp ban?
Counterpoint: Okay, you've got me there.
Point: But isn't there something valuable and, I don't know, nostalgic about college athletes being, you know, amateurs? Once you have college football players making five, six, seven figures, it fundamentally changes the dynamic of the sport in a way that would be totally irreversible. You have to admit that.
Counterpoint: I'm going to respond to your scare tactic with a scare tactic of my own. Allowing athletes to sign endorsements may be what saves the college sports model as we know it. There's a greater than zero chance that someday, maybe five years from now, perhaps 50, some judge agrees with some plaintiff that college athletes are employees and deserve salaries, what's the first budget item cut? Coaching and administrator salaries that everyone agrees are bloated but no one wants to give up.
If Phil Knight wants to skip the Brazilian wormwood floors and pay the next Marcus Mariota a to-be-determined fund to appear in some Swoosh commercials, where are the victims? And what's the harm in Big Jim Jack's Ford in Tuscaloosa wants to put the next Derrick Henry's face on his billboards, who is being hurt? What's the harm in Fuego naming its new taco after the next Johnny Manziel, and then giving him a cut of the proceeds?
Point: Isn't that unfair? If Deshaun Watson get paid a million bucks to appear in a Nike ad, don't you have to pay the third-string punter something or it'll blow up the locker room?
Counterpoint: That's the beauty of this system: players the market believes deserve something beyond the full scholarship will receive something, and the players that don't, won't. There's already a device in place that teaches players the inherent fairness of this concept. It's called the depth chart.
Point: But won't Big Jim Jack's Ford dealership in Tuscaloosa wedge its way into recruiting battles and offer Johnny Five-Star a 10 grand signing bonus to sign with the Tide? And how is Nick Saban supposed to coach his team the way he coaches it when his players are making nearly as much as he does?
Counterpoint: That's why he makes $7 million a year, isn't it? The beauty of bringing all payments above the table is that you can put limits in place, like requiring all endorsees to have completed one full year of classes. You can even put GPA riders on all contracts if you like.
Point: That is starting to sound suspiciously like professional sports, with collective bargaining agreements and agents and all that other icky stuff that makes the NFL and NBA worse than college sports. You don't really want 17-year-olds signing with agents, right?
Counterpoint: No. We can arrange the system where every business has to be certified by the NCAA and every contract negotiated by a representative of the player's athletics department/
Point: And where are schools going to get the money to hire their own in-house agents?
Counterpoint: With all the money they're saving by not paying a salary to the fourth-string deep snapper and the entire swimming & diving roster.
Point: A-ha. Alabama and Ohio State are Nike's golden children, have tons of relationships with corporate sponsors and an army of alums and boosters that own their own business itching to get involved. Won't this system create an even bigger divide between the Power 5 and everyone else?
Counterpoint: That may be my favorite aspect to the entire discussion. What if a group of, say, Memphis boosters decide to spend their way into the Big 12 and decide the best way to get there is endorsing the bejeezus out of every prospect that would come to Fort Collins? Memphis, flush with a roster endorsed by FedEx, has something to offer that Arkansas, Missouri and the like don't. Suddenly Memphis is on a level playing field with the SEC and everyone else.
That's free market economics at work. That's America, baby.
Point: I still don't like it.
Counterpoint: I knew you wouldn't.