Big payday could be coming for some NCAA athletes

The Clemson Tigers won the college football playoff final in a blowout Monday night, steamrolling the Alabama Crimson Tide 44-18 in a high-stakes, high-paying showdown of powerhouse programs. Qualifying for the game earned the two head coaches a combined $400,000 (U.S.) in bonuses, and Clemson’s Dabo Swinney will bank $250,000 more for the win.

More than 73,000 spectators are expected to fill U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis this April for the championship game of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, the other major revenue generator in U.S. college sports.

But between those two events, a lawsuit filed in Oakland could overturn the amateurism that underpins NCAA athletics, and rattle the college sports industry down to its economic foundation.

Last month, closing arguments ended in Alston v. NCAA, in which former West Virginia running back Shawne Alston sued on behalf of 40,000 current and former college athletes.

Alston and his legal team argue that limiting the value of athletic scholarships violates antitrust laws by preventing programs from competing freely to acquire talent.

In the first 60 days of 2019, judge Claudia Wilken is expected to render a decision in the most significant NCAA lawsuit of the past decade. Former UCLA basketball star Ed O’Bannon spearheaded a class-action suit in 2009 that focused on allowing players to monetize their names and images.

But Alston’s suit takes direct aim at the idea that scholarships alone are fair compensation for the athletes powering a multibillion-dollar industry.

A victory for Alston could create a new college sports reality, where major conferences create their own rules around paying players, and where amateurism disappears for good among top-tier programs.

The NCAA’s lawyers argued that pay-for-play college sports would reward rich programs while punishing smaller schools with fewer resources. That scenario would also torpedo and thought of parity in revenue sports — specifically football and men’s basketball — because underdogs would struggle to keep pace in bidding wars for top recruits.

Except that setup exists right now. Loosening rules against payment would simply give us a more extreme and honest version of it, while enabling the people who generate the revenue to share in it.

Competitive balance already tilts in favour of teams with big budgets. According to the U.S. Department of Education, Clemson’s football program generated $51.7 million in revenue in 2016, while Alabama’s team brought in $108.1 million. The schools spent a combined $17.1 million running their football programs in 2016.

In the five years of college football’s current playoff format, Clemson has qualified for the semifinals four times, reached three championship games and won two national titles. Alabama, meanwhile, has played in all five semifinals and won two championships. Those results aren’t a coincidence.

They spring from those programs’ investments in coaching and facilities, and the cash they devote to recruiting.

Neither school can pay players salaries so they plow money into attractive perks, often unrelated to football or academics.

Clemson’s $55-million football complex features a golf simulator, a basketball court, and a cold tub big enough for 60 people.

Alabama spent $18 million on its dining hall alone, and employs a full-time barber.

Smaller schools already can’t compete with that type of spending. The set-up explains why Alabama and Clemson enrol the most coveted recruits every year, while other schools compete for the best of the rest. Superstar quarterback Tua Tagovailoa was never going to reject Alabama for Eastern Michigan, and salaries won’t change that power imbalance. It’s already entrenched.

Still, NCAA lawyers have argued that amateurism is central to the marketing of major college sports, and that paying players would render the whole enterprise less valuable.

Except if sports fans valued amateur status as much as the NCAA contends they do, interest in Olympic track and field would have cratered after the sport went professional in the early 1980s. But when Usain Bolt, who earned an estimated $20 million in 2016, defeated fellow millionaires Justin Gatlin and Andre De Grasse for Olympic 100-metre gold in Rio, the race drew 35 million viewers on NBC.

Clearly, sports fans found the competition compelling, and didn’t need the veneer of amateurism to add to the drama. And they won’t tune out Tagovailoa or Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence if their football programs pay salaries instead of spending that money adding lanes to the football centre bowling alley.

Of course, these scenarios are all hypothetical.

Judge Wilken could rule in the NCAA’s favour, and deaden the momentum of the movement toward player pay.

But she’s the same judge who heard the O’Bannon class action suit.

Back then, she ruled for the plaintiff.

NCAA lawyers have argued that amateurism is central to the marketing of major college sports