Tl;DR: Men’s and women’s fencing, field hockey, lightweight rowing, men’s rowing, co-ed and women’s sailing, squash, synchronized swimming, men’s volleyball and wrestling
Cancelling smaller, less popular, more expensive, more problematic sports to save money.
This was a pretty good summary of why the uber-programs at the top of the dogpile break the governance model of the NCAA. College football contains multitudes:
All of D3, D2, and half-ish of D1, for all intents and purposes are playing a different sport from the Power 5. The Power 5 conferences (and really maybe the top half of those) are the ones raking in millions upon millions, driving TV deals, the programs you hear about on national sports talk.
And surprise surprise, the two sides have different agendas in the face of corona.
I imagine the other Power 4 will follow suit.
The question in front of the court is whether the NCAA deserves special relief from normal antitrust rules in order to protect its educational mission and preserve a tradition of amateurism in college sports
Bust that trust!
Stanford is uncanceling 11 varsity sports:
The hits keep coming:
The article has some juicy quotes from the decision. “Price-fixing labor is price-fixing labor.”
My favorite quote is “The NCAA’s business model would be flatly illegal in almost any other industry in America.”
This is basically the NCAA after that decision:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmInkxbvlCs
It might take a little while, but they’re effectively done.
There need to be proper leagues that manage the major D1 college sports where athletes are unionized, compensated properly. It could be one organization that handles all the sports, or maybe one per sport. e.g.: all the major college football teams simply split off and become an NFL minor league the way MLB has a minor league.
There also need to be non-profit organizations that do what the NCAA does for all the college athletics that make no money. All those college volleyball teams still need to have rulebooks, officiating, tournament organizers, etc.
The NCAA could choose to serve in none or all of these roles in a legal fashion going forward. The NCAA could split itself up. It could also dissolve. It’s up to them, but the status quo of operating in an illegal and exploitative manner is coming to an end, and it’s still too little too late.
After crying about it for decades, that took all of a week?
“This is an important day for college athletes since they all are now able to take advantage of name, image and likeness opportunities,” NCAA President Mark Emmert said.
Reminded me of
Justice for Reggie
This sounds pretty drastic, and on a short timeline! I guess we’ll see if they are serious or just paying lip service still.
Good riddance! He’s been opposing all the recent wins for athletes for a decade plus.
On the topic of all the conference realignment happening in college sports:
I haven’t followed college sports for the better part of a decade for a variety of reasons, most of them related to what this thread exists to call out - the immoral way that schools, conferences, coaches, and administrators make obscene amounts of money on the backs of unpaid labor. And of course it is naive to not see that the conference realignment of the past decade, and especially the last couple of years, is all about grabbing more money for the privileged schools and further crowding out the lower-tier schools, further reflecting in college athletics the societal strata that the wealthy and powerful enjoy.
I also know that this disparity is not new in college athletics, but at least up until fairly recently the regional conference groupings and annual schedules including rivals and traditional match-ups kept a veneer of inclusion and deference to institutional relationships. Now that is all being blown apart in a naked cash grab and to best position schools to not be left out of the possibility of winning a national championship.
My point with this line of thinking, and I am cautious to not draw too strong of a connection where it does not exist, is that I see a similar driving force in the crumbling of historic American democratic norms & institutions as with colleges throwing out decades of history and regional associations because they CAN (someone else started it, so they are just acting in self-interest to not get left out). And because any past norms that would have provided restraint are not worth being beholden too in this dog-eat-dog world, or they would have liked to have been this nakedly capitalistic in the past but didn’t want to risk being singled out and shunned by the community. But now, all rules and history and tradition is out the window so get as much as you can for yourself without concern for the broader institution or those who will be hurt as a result. Make your alliances to protect yourself and those you care about and everyone else can get fucked.
The US National Labor Relations Board’s general counsel office has determined for the first time that the National Collegiate Athletic Association is violating the law by failing to treat student basketball and football players as employees, opening a potential path to let them unionize.
It’s lawsuit time!