This article needs to be updated. The reason given is: Content predates National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Alston, which greately affects athlete compensation and amateurism. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.(August 2023)
The definition of amateurism within the context of collegiate sports has evolved since it was first pronounced by the NCAA upon its inception in 1906.[1] In its early stages, changes in the NCAA's core beliefs in what a student-athlete should be rewarded and allowed to accept financially for their athletic talents had its effects on the definition of amateurism. Over the course of the 20th and early 21st century, regulatory changes, court claims, and the beliefs of NCAA authority about student-athlete compensation further developed what an amateur collegiate athlete is entitled to receive. This evolution is what impacted the evolving logistics of the NCAA Bylaw 12, which explains the current definition of amateurism and what it grants or restricts a collegiate athlete to be able to receive as compensation for their participation.[2] These guidelines have been described to both benefit and unjustifiably limit the student-athlete and the success of institutions’ athletic performance. This debate has been a strong driver in court claims against the NCAA and the mainstream controversy about what student-athletes should have the right to receive financially.
In 1906, one year after a college football season which resulted in the deaths of eighteen students and severe injuries to 150 more, 62 member schools formed the Intercollegiate Athletics Association (IAA).[3] The IAA's main purpose was to regulate collegiate sports and ensure that players were treated fairly and kept safe.[3] Just four years later, the IAA modified its name to become the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). By doing so, the NCAA was granted additional rule-making power which now allowed them to include amateurism and eligibility.[3] The NCAA was designated as a non-profit institution whose focus was to establish amateurism as the core foundation for college sports.[4] At this time, the NCAA did not allow any sort of payment to their amateur athletes from university faculty nor financial aid.[1] Another effort to protect amateurism at this time was banning the recruitment of athletes from preparatory institutions.[1] In 1916, the NCAA designated an amateur collegiate athlete as someone that played their sport purely for the enjoyment and developing their mental, physical, moral, and social skills.[5] The founders of the NCAA wanted a clear line between college and professional sports, with college sport acting as one of the many branches of the educational program.[6] This line was also drawn by the forbidding of any sort of scholarship for athletic performance.[6]
In 1929, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching published one of the first comprehensive studies on the tensions between amateurism and the economics of college athletics. The Carnegie report analyzed 112 college athletic programs, noting the threats that commercialism posed to the integrity of sport and the role of amateurism.[7] Furthermore, it traced the roots of profit all the way back to 1880, in which the first ticket sales were recorded: "charges for admission to football contests advanced in some instances to $1.50...special financial support began to be solicited from alumni. One result was that alumni who made generous contributions to college athletics received, openly or covertly, in return, a generous share in their control".[7]
In 1948, the introduction of a set of rules to "alleviate the proliferation of exploitative practices in the recruitment of student-athletes," deemed the Sanity Code, in part eliminated financial aid to athletes not available to other students at their school.[8] The newly introduced Sanity Code prohibited colleges from providing student-athletes with additional financial aid unavailable to the ordinary college student.[3] The amateur collegiate athlete was granted the right to receive payment to cover their tuition-and-fees in order to attend the school, but could not receive money towards their room and board.[5] It is also important to note that the student needed to demonstrate financial need and meet the school's standard admissions requirements in order to be eligible for the scholarship.[5]
In 1951, Walter Byers rose as the head authority of the NCAA.[5] Upon his appointment to his position, he created the term “student-athlete” in order to place emphasis on collegiate athletes being students first before athletes.[5] This tactic was used in order to further discourage universities from treating their athletes as professionals with compensation beyond the regulated level, thus solidifying their amateur status.[5] However, towards the end of his career, Byers' views about athlete compensation changed in favor of allowing student-athletes to "endorse products and receive additional financial assistance".[5] Although Byers would be pushed out of his position to lower his voice supporting commercial endorsement, the NCAA would allow athletic scholarships to cover room, board, and “laundry money” before Byers ended his term.[5] The next major regulation change occurred in 2011, when the president of the NCAA Mark Emmert allowed Division 1 institutions to give a $2000 stipend to student-athletes on top of their cost of attendance.[5] Emmert continues to seek additional financial support for student-athletes that covers necessary expenses outside of what is covered by athletic scholarship.[5]
The case of O'Bannon v. NCAA in 2014, brought to court by former UCLA basketball player Ed O'Bannon, was regarding the legitimacy of the rights granted by the amateurism regulations[9] O’Bannon argued his right to his public image and sought compensation for his image being depicted in an EA college basketball video game.[9] Federal judge Claudia Wilken ruled in favor of O’Bannon, but did not completely remove the limits that the NCAA places on athlete compensation according to their rules of collegiate amateurism.[9] The judge did not want athletes to have the ability to endorse products, so her solution to this issue was to raise the stipend cap from $2000 to $5000.[9] The decision was later brought to the attention of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit by the NCAA, where the court solidified a 2-1 decision, partially affirmed and partially reversing the lower court's ruling.[9] The court agreed with the judge that the NCAA amateurism rules violated antitrust laws, but it took away both the trust fund and stipend beyond the cost of attendance.[9] The reasoning for this ruling was to ensure that cash compensation not related to education did not damage the status of student-athletes as amateurs.[9]
A bill has been proposed in California for student-athletes to profit off their image and likeness from endorsements without losing their athletic scholarship or eligibility. It is Senate Bill 206 (SB 206) or the Fair Pay to Play Act. State Senators Nancy Skinner and Steven Bradford introduced the bill. Lebron James took to Twitter to back this bill, tweeting that it was a "GAME CHANGER". The bill will allow student-athletes in the state of California to use their platform and sport to make their own money. It also allows student-athletes to hire attorneys or agents for any business deal without losing their scholarship or eligibility. Governor Newsom signed this into law on September 30, 2019. It will go into effect in January 2023. Washington state, Oregon, and a number of other states introduced a similar bill; even though the bills have not been passed yet, they have received recognition.
Chloe V. Mitchell, a volleyball player at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, was one of the first collegiate athletes to create, post, and monetize her brand on social media.
In October 2020, the NAIA began allowing athletes to capitalize in the emerging market for college athletes on names, images and likenesses. Mitchell is already a seasoned veteran of social media with 2.5 million followers on TikTok, 41,000 followers on Instagram, and 5,400 fans on YouTube. Known as the “She Shed” maven, she has also co-founded the NIL platform Playbooked, in which she launched her first promotion, called D.I.Y.-A Gift for Dad. In the video, she promotes two different kinds of golf putters that her company has partnered with. Bundling her skills through creating new environments, she “activates” the golf partnership by designing an in-home miniature golf course. [10]
In 2021, the NCAA allowed collegiate athletes to be compensated on their NIL, which is their name, image, and likeliness.[11]
Official Amateurism Regulations: NCAA Bylaw 12
The below guidelines are some of the current NCAA regulations under Bylaw 12, which shape the current rules for an amateur collegiate athlete and the institutions that manage them. These rules are related to the current controversy of how much financial compensation a student-athlete should be entitled to being able to receive. These guidelines can be found in the NCAA Division 1 Manual, which is updated on a yearly basis and has been utilized since the organization's inception:[2]
12.1.2
Athletes are stripped of their amateur status and therefore their right to participate within NCAA sporting events if they receive payment for their athletic skills.[12]
12.5.1.1
The physical appearance, name, and pictures of a student-athlete can be used by the institution that he/she attends for both charitable and educational purposes.[12] Items that do not single out one particular athlete's name or physical likeness can be sold by the institution or its outlets.[12] Items containing one student-athlete can only be used for informational purposes.[12]
12.5.2.1
A student-athlete will lose their ability to participate in NCAA sporting events if they are discovered to be receiving payment through commercial advertisement, promotion, or endorsement.[12]
12.5.2.2
The names and pictures of student-athletes are to be made both aware and requested for use before they are utilized by a student-athlete or institution.[12] It is the responsibility of both the student-athlete and the institution that this requirement is followed.[12]
Claimed benefits
Being an amateur collegiate athlete allows many students an opportunity to attend an institution that provides higher education that they otherwise may not be able to receive.[5] The rules and approach to amateurism is said to ensure that the athletes are students first, thus protecting education as the primary reason for attending a college or university.[5] The NCAA publicly reiterates their belief that their athletes are scholars first and athletes second, thus being student-athletes.[6] The fear that the NCAA holds about compensating their student-athletes beyond the cost of attendance is the possible blurring of the line between professional and collegiate sports.[6]
The NCAA utilizes the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, which was passed in 1992.[6] The purpose of this act is to protect student-athletes from some of the pressures of professional sports by halting the spread of state-sponsored sports gambling.[6] The act protects the status of student-athletes as amateurs free from the corruption that comes with sports gambling.[6] Participation in these gambling organizations are therefore prohibited.[6] However, due to student-athletes being restricted from financial payment beyond what the NCAA allows, student-athletes are said to be more prone to take part in these illegal practices compared to professionals who do not have the same financial limitations.[6]
Amateurism also helps to protect fair competition and the pro-competitiveness of collegiate sports. In the case of NCAA v. Smith, the emphasis on amateurism and its effects on fair competition is carried out through its ruling.[4] The case involves a volleyball player that was stripped of her remaining years of eligibility due to her enrollment in a post-graduate institution that was separate from her undergraduate university where the eligibility was being used.[4] The NCAA does not want post-graduate recruiting to be allowed.[4] This prevents premier athletic institutions from using an ability to place their student-athletes in postgraduate programs outside of their institutions as a tool to further incentivize prospective athletes to join their program.[4] The Board of Regents stated that the regulatory controls of the NCAA act to stimulate competition between athletic programs and further solidify collegiate sports as pro-competitive by enhancing the public's interest in collegiate sport.[1]
Claimed disadvantages
Both collegiate and Olympic athletes are considered amateur athletes.[5] Unlike Olympic athletes, NCAA student-athletes do not have a right to receive payment for their public likeness.[5] It is due to the NCAA's definition of amateurism that collegiate athletes do not have this right.[5] An example of this can be seen in the case of Jeremy Bloom v. NCAA.[5]Jeremy Bloom was an Olympic skier who had opportunities to receive endorsement deals for his skiing ability, but could not do so if he wished to be eligible to participate as an amateur collegiate athlete.[5]
There have been other cases where the controversy has been in regards to athletes' rights to their public likeness. In the recent O'Bannon v. NCAA case, the allegation is in regards to student-athletes having an income level of zero for the use of their public likeness;[4] the allegation is that the NCAA is in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act due to the restriction of payment to student-athletes for their public likeness.[4] In the Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. case, it is argued that student-athletes have a right to endorsements and other commercial promotional opportunities due to their status as public figures.[5] It is stated within this case that public figures by definition are those with “pervasive fame or notoriety”, which many claim student-athletes to possess.[5]
Another prohibition from the rules of amateurism that both student-athletes and coaches are impacted by is their inability to negotiate for compensation beyond the cost of tuition.[13] In the Southeastern Conference, multiple football programs had come up with a stipend plan that would have been used to create more incentive for better-quality players to attend their university.[13] Due to the rules of amateurism, this plan was not able to be carried out.[13] The plan is claimed to have potentially produced more quality teams to better compete, thus stimulating increased fan satisfaction.[13]
Northwestern Football unionization efforts
One of the most notable challenges to the concept of amateurism began at Northwestern University in 2013. A group led by Northwestern Quarterback Kain Colter and Ramogi Huma, executive director of the freshly formed College Athletes Players Association (CAPA), set out to advocate for the rights of the modern college athlete.[14] Together they testified in hearings before the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in February 2014; the Chicago division of the NLRB ruled on March 26, 2014 that the demands and expectations required of the athletes in question qualify them as employees. Thus, they were entitled to the right to unionize and the opportunity to bargain for improved working conditions.
At the center of the debate was whether or not NCAA student-athletes should be classified as employees of the university.[15] According to the initial NLRB ruling, key factors in their decision included the highly lucrative economy that Division I College Football produces and the demands and regulations instilled by the athletic department and coaching staff. Furthermore, despite NCAA’s long standing claim that college athletes are students first, via the term “student-athlete” and the “amateurism” system, the CAPA argument was built upon comparing the demands of big time college athletics to a typical American workday:[15]
“The players spend 50 to 60 hours per week on their football duties during a one-month training camp prior to the start of the academic year and an additional 40 to 50 hours per week on those duties during the three- or four-month football season. Not only is this more hours than many undisputed full-time employees work at their jobs, it is also many more hours than the players spend on their studies.”[14]
In the aftermath of the NLRB Chicago ruling, Northwestern University stated that they would appeal the decision to a five-member NLRB board in Washington. Furthermore, the NCAA also immediately condemned the decision: “We strongly disagree with the notion that student-athletes are employees,” Donald Remy, the N.C.A.A.’s chief legal officer, wrote.”[14] Furthermore, President of the NCAA Mark Emmert came out with a notably strong stance: “the notion of using a union-employee model to address the challenges that do exist in intercollegiate athletics is something that strikes most people as a grossly inappropriate solution to the problem.”
At the time, Mark Emmert was also dealing with several other public relation battles, including the repercussions from the Ed O’Bannon trial, in which the NCAA was accused of profiting directly off the likeness of their student-athletes. During the end of 2014, the NCAA moved to make several reforms including improved protections for athletic scholarships and monthly stipends for student-athletes to cover the cost of living expenses.[16]
On August 17, 2015, the NLRB unanimously voted to reverse the decision, noting several key reasons why classifying scholarship football players as employees of their respective universities would not lead to stable, equitable labor improvements for NCAA athletes throughout the country.[16] One main issue was that the NLRB only has jurisdiction over private entities, and although Northwestern University is a private institution, it would be far too logistically difficult to apply these standards to schools throughout the country:
“In particular, of the roughly 125 colleges and universities that participate in FBS football, all but 17 are state-run institutions. As a result, the Board cannot assert jurisdiction over the vast majority of FBS teams because they are not operated by “employers” within the meaning of Section 2(2) of the Act...More starkly, Northwestern is the only private school that is a member of the Big Ten, and thus the Board cannot assert jurisdiction over any of Northwestern’s primary competitors”.[16]
Finally, the NLRB Washington committee concluded in their formal hearing that “There is thus a symbiotic relationship among the various teams, the conferences, and the NCAA”. As a result, labor issues directly involving only an individual team and its players would also affect the NCAA, the Big Ten, and the other member institutions. Consequently, “it would be difficult to imagine any degree of stability in labor relations”.[16]
In response to the NLRB overturning the decision, Ramogi Huma expressed his displeasure with the outcome, but made it clear this was not the end of the road: “It’s notable they didn’t rule that players aren’t employees,” he said. “The door is still open.”[17]
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, and one in Canada. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges and helps over 500,000 college student athletes who compete annually in college sports. The organization is headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana.
The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) established in 1940, is a college athletics association for colleges and universities in North America. Most colleges and universities in the NAIA offer athletic scholarships to their student athletes. Around $1.3 billion in athletic scholarship financial aid is awarded to student athletes annually.
NCAA Division III (D-III) is a division of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the United States. D-III consists of athletic programs at colleges and universities that choose not to offer athletic scholarships to their student-athletes.
Semi-professional sports are sports in which athletes are not participating on a full-time basis, but still receive some payment. Semi-professionals are not amateur because they receive regular payment from their team, but generally at a considerably lower rate than a full-time professional athlete. As a result, semi-professional players frequently have full-time employment elsewhere. A semi-pro player or team could also be one that represents a place of employment that only the employees are allowed to play on. In this case, it is considered semi-pro because their employer pays them, but for their regular job, not for playing on the company's team.
College baseball is baseball that is played by student-athletes at institutions of higher education. In the United States, college baseball is sanctioned mainly by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA); in Japan, it is governed by the All Japan University Baseball Federation (JUBF).
College athletics in the United States or college sports in the United States refers primarily to sports and athletic training and competition organized and funded by institutions of tertiary education in a two-tiered system.
An athletic scholarship is a form of scholarship to attend a college or university or a private high school awarded to an individual based predominantly on their ability to play in a sport. Athletic scholarships are common in the United States and to a certain extent in Canada, but in the vast majority of countries in the world they are rare or non-existent.
The Academic Progress Rate (APR) is a measure introduced by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the nonprofit association that organizes the athletic programs of many colleges and universities in the United States and Canada, to track student-athletes' chances of graduation. The Academic Progress Rate (APR) is a term-by-term measure of eligibility and retention for Division I student-athletes that was developed as an early indicator of eventual graduation rates.
Redshirt, in United States college athletics, is a delay or suspension of an athlete's participation in order to lengthen their period of eligibility. Typically, a student's athletic eligibility in a given sport is four seasons, aligning with the four years of academic classes typically required to earn a bachelor's degree at an American college or university. However, in a redshirt year, student athletes may attend classes at the college or university, practice with an athletic team, and "suit up" for play – but they may compete in only a limited number of games. Using this mechanism, a student athlete (traditionally) has at most five academic years to use the four years of eligibility, thus becoming what is termed a fifth-year senior. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, an additional year of eligibility was granted to student athletes by the NCAA who met certain criteria. Student athletes who qualified had up to six academic years to make use of their four years of eligibility, taking into consideration the extra year provided due to exceptional circumstances.
In college athletics in the United States, recruiting is the process in which college coaches add prospective student athletes to their roster each off-season. This process typically culminates in a coach extending an athletic scholarship offer to a player who is about to be a junior in high school or higher. There are instances, mostly at lower division universities, where no athletic scholarship can be awarded and where the player pays for tuition, housing, and textbook costs out of pocket or from financial aid. During this recruiting process, schools must comply with rules that define who may be involved in the recruiting process, when recruiting may occur and the conditions under which recruiting may be conducted. Recruiting rules seek, as much as possible, to control intrusions into the lives of prospective student-athletes. The NCAA defines recruiting as “any solicitation of prospective student-athletes or their parents by an institutional staff member or by a representative of the institution’s athletics interests for the purpose of securing a prospective student-athlete’s enrollment and ultimate participation in the institution’s intercollegiate athletics program."
The National Letter of Intent (NLI) is a document used to indicate a student athlete's commitment to participating in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) colleges and universities in the United States. The NCAA Eligibility Center manages the daily operations of the NLI program while the Collegiate Commissioners Association (CCA) provides governance oversight of the program. Started in 1964 with seven conferences and eight independent institutions, the program now includes 676 Division I and II participating institutions. There are designated dates for different sports, and these dates are commonly referred to as "Signing Days".
Student athlete is a term used principally in universities in the United States and Canada to describe students enrolled at postsecondary educational institutions, principally colleges and universities, but also at secondary schools, who participate in an organized competitive sport sponsored by that educational institution or school. The term student-athlete was coined in 1964 by Walter Byers, the first executive director of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). The term is also interchangeable with the synonymous term “varsity athlete”.
Edward Charles O'Bannon Jr. is an American former professional basketball player in the National Basketball Association (NBA). He was a power forward for the UCLA Bruins on their 1995 NCAA championship team. He was selected by the New Jersey Nets with the ninth overall pick of the 1995 NBA draft. After two seasons in the NBA, he continued his professional career for another eight years, mainly playing in Europe.
Ramogi Huma is the executive director of the National College Players Association (NCPA), a 501c3 nonprofit advocacy group launched by UCLA football players.
The 2011 University of Miami athletics scandal was a University of Miami athletics scandal involving the university's football and men's basketball programs between 2002 and 2010.
O'Bannon v. NCAA, 802 F.3d 1049, was an antitrust class action lawsuit filed against the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). The lawsuit, which former UCLA basketball player Ed O'Bannon filed on behalf of the NCAA's Division I football and men's basketball players, challenged the organization's use of the images and the likenesses of its former student athletes for commercial purposes. The suit argued that upon graduation, a former student athlete should become entitled to financial compensation for NCAA's commercial uses of their image. The NCAA maintained that paying its athletes would be a violation of its concept of amateurism in sports. At stake are "billions of dollars in television revenues and licensing fees."
Schooled: The Price of College Sports is a 2013 documentary film by directors Trevor Martin and Ross Finkel. Based on the Taylor Branch book The Cartel: Inside the Rise and Imminent Fall of the NCAA, the film explores the history and business of college sports as well as the treatment of NCAA athletes.
The Fair Pay to Play Act, originally known as California Senate Bill 206, is a California statute that will allow collegiate athletes to acquire endorsements and sponsorships while still maintaining athletic eligibility. The bill would affect college athletes in California's public universities and colleges.
National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Alston, 594 U.S. ___ (2021), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case concerning the compensation of collegiate athletes within the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). It followed from a previous case, O'Bannon v. NCAA, in which it was found that the NCAA was profiting from the namesake and likenesses of college athletes. The case dealt with the NCAA's restrictions on providing college athletes with non-cash compensation for academic-related purposes, such as computers and internships, which the NCAA maintained was to prevent the appearance that the student athletes were being paid to play or treated as professional athletes. Lower courts had ruled that these restrictions were in violation of antitrust law, which the Supreme Court affirmed in a unanimous ruling in June 2021.
In college athletics in the United States, a student-athlete who participates in a varsity sport on any and all levels is eligible to profit from their name, image, and likeness (NIL). Historically, the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) was the first association to permit pro-am, as the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) resisted efforts to compensate college athletes beyond the scholarship and stipend. However, the Supreme Court's decision in NCAA v. Alston (2021) allows for non-scholarship earned income across every division.
References
1 2 3 4 Muenzen, Kristen (2003). "Weakening Its Own Defense? The NCAA's Version of Amateurism". Marq. Sports L. Rev.
1 2 NCAA Division I Manual. Overland Park, KS: NCAA. 1998.
1 2 3 4 Gerrie, Wes (Summer 2018). "More than Just the Game: How Colleges and the NCAA are Violating their Student-Athletes' Rights of Publicity". Texas Review of Entertainment & Sports Law. 18 (2): 114–118 – via EBSCOhost.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Grimmett, Edward (2014). "NCAA Amateurism and Athletics: A Perfect Marriage or a Dysfunctional Relationship? -An Antitrust Approach to Student-Athlete Compensation". Touro Law Review.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 Afshar, Arash (2014). "Collegiate Athletes: The Conflict Between NCAA Amateurism And A Student Athlete Right Of Publicity". Willamette Law Review.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Buckstaff, Caitlin (2013). "Covering The Spread: An Assessment Of Amateurism And Vulnerability Of Student-Athletes In An Emerging Culture Of Sports Wagering". Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law.
1 2 Savage, Howard James (1929). American college athletics. New York: The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. OL13557688M.
↑ Gaona (1981). "The National Collegiate Athletic Association: Fundamental fairness and the enforcement problem". Arizona Law Review. 23 (1981): 1065–1070.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Kaburakis, Anastasios (2012). "Is It Still "In The Game"; Or Has Amateurism Left The Building? NCAA Student-Athletes' Perceptions Of Commercial Activity And Sports Video Games". Journal of Sport Management. 26 (4): 295–308. doi:10.1123/jsm.26.4.295. S2CID145650010.
1 2 3 4 Edelman, Marc (2013). "A Short Treatise On Amateurism And Antitrust Law: Why The Ncaa's No-Pay Rules Violate Section 1 Of The Sherman Act". Case Western Reserve Law Review.
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