Ex-buff, Olympian Bloom says NCAA’S power will fall “like a house of cards”
When it comes to what Colorado’s “Fair Pay to Play” bill — or whatever they end up calling it once the thing hits the committee stage in January — is about, let’s start, quickly, with what it isn’t.
And, mainly, it isn’t asking for CU, CSU, Air Force, Metro State or whoever to funnel more athletic department dollars, or your tax dollars, to student-athletes.
In simplest terms, think of it like the Olympic model: If a company wants to endorse or sponsor a specific football or softball or track star, it can. If a wrestler or a softball player wants to run a private instructional camp in the offseason and keep the profits, he or she can do that, too.
“I’m amazed at how many otherwise thoughtful and well-spoken people can’t understand that aspect of it,” Jeremy Bloom said.
“They seem to be unwilling to recognize (the right) for them to have the freedom to do what everyone else in American can do. Go out and start a blog. Speak at a local charity event and let them pay you in honoraria. Highschoolers can do this, but the NCAA has decided that its athletes can’t do anything like that.”
Bloom, the Loveland native, former CU Buffs wideout and Olympic skier, has a vested interest in the tug-of-war going on right now between the NCAA
and various state legislatures, including Colorado’s, regarding the profitability of a student-athlete’s name/image/likeness, or NIL.
In 2004, Bloom famously went to the mat against the NCAA, and lost. When the costs of the Winter Games necessitated sponsorship money, the suits in Indianapolis declared him ineligible to continue playing for the Buffs football team. NCAA rules allowed players to be paid professionally in one sport while competing as an amateur in another, but forbade accepting endorsements.
Ergo, what was supposed to be a Tim-dwight-esque stint at CU was cut short after just two seasons, two punt return scores, one kick return score and 39 touches from scrimmage, combined, in 2002 and 2003.
“I think it’s a house of cards,” Bloom, now 37, tells The Post. “There’s nothing about college athletics today that’s amateur. You’ve got coaches making $4-5 million a year. You’ve got contracts like the one between CBS and March Madness for $4-5 billion.
“And beyond that, you have civil rights issues. You show me another group of people in this country that can’t capitalize on their talent in a free-market environment.”
You can’t, which is why Colorado is expected to fairly quickly follow in the footsteps of California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed the “Fair Pay to Play” act — allowing collegiate student-athletes to be paid for the use of their names, images and likeness and sign with licensed agents — into law.
Bloom has been working with Republican state Sen. Owen Hill and Democratic state Sen. Jeff Bridges on a bill similar to California’s, which is slated to go into effect in January 2023, allowing Colorado collegians to profit off their respective names and likenesses; to seek representation; and giving them the right to sue the NCAA if their eligibility is threatened.
And in an era of vehement political polarization, going after the NCAA seems to be one of the few things both sides of the aisle can agree on in the current climate. At least nine other states are reportedly expected to bring similar bills up for discussion in the coming year.
Which means it’s going to be an interesting month for the NCAA’S 18-person working group on NIL — a group that includes CU athletic director Rick George — as it’s expected to make a formal proposal to the Board of Governors on Oct. 28-29 in Atlanta.
George has declined to comment on the workings of the NIL group, as well as on the potential Hill/bridges bill.
“It’s almost primal,” notes David Ridpath, an associate professor of sports management at Ohio University, a CSU alum, and president of the Drake Group, an academic collective seeking NCAA reform. “When somebody’s power and money are threatened, it’s fear.
“When Title IX was being debated, everything was ‘The world is going to end.’ And at the end of the day, (fans) just want to watch. We don’t care if the players are paid. We don’t care if they’re going to class. With Jeremy’s situation (in 2004), is he a student, or is he an employee? We recruit them as employees, but we don’t let them collectively bargain. We’re trying to say that college athletes exist in some type of vacuum?”
ESPN shelled out $7.3 billion for the rights to the College Football Playoff through 2025. In 2016, the NCAA extended its March Madness deals with CBS and Turner Sports for $8.8 billion.
Meanwhile, according to a 2011 joint study by Drexel University and the National College Players Association, the average annual scholarship shortfall — outof-pocket expenses — for student-athletes at FBS series programs was $3,222. The same study estimated that the average FBS football player’s name would be worth $121,048 in 2011 dollars, while the average FBS men’s basketball player would be worth $265,027, not counting individual endorsement deals.
“The most common (thing) I hear is that if student-athletes are able to, in fact, play the open market and seek money from boosters, that big-money schools will have a recruiting advantage,” Bloom says.
“But guess what? They already do. What kind of world are we living in when they don’t think Alabama has a recruiting advantage over CSU?” This’ll kill it, they counter. Kill it stone dead. You’re taking a machete to the sanctity of the game, a tire iron to the spirit and fundamental purity of the sport.
It’s the same bit heard more than three decades ago, when the International Olympics Committee was hemming and hawing over adding professionals to the Games.
Only in 1988, when the IOC more or less gave the green light to the pros, a funny thing happened: Nobody crashed. The games rolled on.
“History,” Bloom says, “is always a good indicator of the future.”
And the future says the NCAA is standing on the wrong side of history. The only question is how much longer before the ground beneath its feet finally gives way for good?