Underestimating the intelligence of the American public finally stops paying off

I have more about the Supreme Court’s decision finding the NCAA in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. What’s striking in the end is what an easy case this was. There is no question that the NCAA is a monopsony engaged in egregiously anti-competitive practices, and the claim that the NCAA should be exempt from rules that would otherwise apply was ultimately based on a feeble tautology. To put it another way, the arguments are so bad Brett Kavanaugh could serve the NCAA its ass in aspic:

According to the NCAA, its rules about the amateur status of the athletes increase the number of college sports and sports teams, help to maintain competitive balance between teams, and offer consumers an attractive “amateur” alternative to professional sports.

The first two justifications for limiting competition were so feeble that the NCAA didn’t even try to defend them before the Supreme Court. The idea that limiting compensation to athletes (let alone limiting book stipends to student-athletes) increases the amount of college athletics is nonsensical, and the NCAA was unable to produce any credible evidence to bolster its argument.

The NCAA’s arguments on the “competitive balance” of teams were even more absurd to any American who watches college sports: even under the current draconian rules for athletes, the NCAA has no competitive balance and is less competitively balanced than the American professional sports leagues. Take the current four-team Division I college football playoffs: Since the format was created, for example, more than 70 percent of the playoff slots have gone to just four programs (Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State and Notre Dame), and only the first three and Louisiana State University have actually won the championship.

To pause briefly, it’s hilarious that the NCAA abandoned its “but muh competitive balance” argument, given how many water-carrying sportswriters have tried to sell it over the years. Personally, I am Very Concerned about a possible future in which Alabama and Clemson meet in the College Football Playoff year after year. Almost unimaginable!

The NCAA thus relied on its argument about the unique benefits of “amateurism” at the Supreme Court, which the justices found unconvincing.

The problem with the amateurism argument, of course, is that everybody involved in college athletics except the players is allowed to make money hand over fist. As Justice Neil Gorsuch observed in his opinion, the president of the NCAA is paid nearly $4 million a year, the conference commissioners make as much as $5 million and top NCAA coaches more than $10 million.

It might be possible to defend the importance of amateur competition if university-level coaches were paid like associate professors of history at those institutions (average salary: $69,710 in 2020). It is not, however, possible to defend a system in which everybody involved is allowed to make as much money as they possibly can except for the players who are actually putting their bodies on the line to generate enormous revenues for everyone else.

[…]

As Kavanaugh writes, the idea that college sports are defined by amateurism – that is, by not allowing players to be compensated – is “circular and unpersuasive,” not to mention self-serving. While the NCAA “couches its arguments for not paying student athletes in innocuous labels,” the brutal truth is that “[t]he NCAA’s business model would be flatly illegal in almost any other industry in America.”

Despite the formal narrowness of the ruling, the jig is almost certainly up. Thanks to some state legislatures the NCAA is already having to give up on the particularly rank and discriminatory ban on third party compensation, and Congress is extremely unlikely to bail it out. Players in revenue sports are going to be paid, and probably sooner than later. And this is a great thing — it’s unconscionable that such an obviously indefensible system has survived as long as it has.

…for context, take a look at this list of the salaries being paid to the assistant coaches of Michigan’s football program. Tight ends coach Jay Harbaugh, who surely got the job through the purest impartial merit, will make $415K this year and $430K next year. In conclusion, we cannot spoil the Noble Ideals of Amateurism by compensating players.