NCAA athletes cash in with $160M more in benefits
Two recent changes in NCAA rules are resulting in major-college athletes receiving nearly $160 million a year in additional benefits, a USA TODAY Sports analysis has found.
That figure is certain to rise as more schools implement — or increase their distribution of — athletic scholarships that can cover not only the traditional tuition, room, board, books and fees but also incidental costs of attending college such as transportation and personal expenses.
The enhanced scholarships took effect Aug. 1, following a vote at January’s NCAA convention by school and athlete representatives from the nation’s five wealthiest conferences that allowed, but did not require, all Division I schools to cover athletes’ cost of attendance.
In April 2014, the Division I board of directors voted to allow schools to provide scholarship and non-scholarship athletes with unlimited meals and snacks.
The changes came against a backdrop of antitrust lawsuits against the NCAA, criticism from several members of Congress about the treatment of athletes, drastic increases in TV rights rev- enues for the elite conferences and skyrocketing spending on facilities and salaries for prominent coaches and executives.
“I do think it’d be naive to say that the lawsuits didn’t accelerate things, but there was a lot of discussion about needing to do this before some of the lawsuits came about,” Kansas State President and NCAA board of governors chairman Kirk Schulz told USA TODAY Sports
USA TODAY Sports based its estimate of additional spending for athletes on budget figures it obtained from athletics departments at more than 100 of the 128 Football Bowl Subdivision schools, in- terviews with officials at three-fourths of the multisport conferences outside the FBS, several single-sport conferences and two Division III schools that field Division I teams in at least one sport.
Among public schools, the estimated additional spending for 2015-16 is an amount equal to about 2% of their combined athletic operating expenses for 201314, the most recent year for which those figures are available.