SOUTH BEND, Ind. – In a tearful locker room this month, after the Notre Dame men’s basketball team finished its season with a narrow loss in the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament, the coach didn’t talk about missed opportunities on the field, but rather the six master’s degrees (in addition to a bachelor’s degree) members of the team had earned, the lifelong friendships they built, and the invaluable lessons they learned about leadership, teamwork, and growing through adversity. The locker room is a classroom where every day is lived that athletics can and should be part of a university’s educational mission. Even Knute Rockne said college athletics should be secondary to academics.
The country is now immersed in the excitement of the NCAA basketball tournament. (Our women’s team plays Maryland on Saturday.) But excitement aside, college athletics are in crisis.
It is threatened on a number of fronts: the growing patchwork of conflicting and confusing state laws regulating it, the specter of crippling lawsuits, the plethora of dubious names, images and likenesses to funnel money to recruits, the misplaced attempts to classify student-athletes as employees. Underlying all of this is the widespread belief that college athletics is simply a lucrative business masquerading as a branch of educational institutions.
We call on universities to reaffirm that student-athletes are students first and ensure that their athletic programs serve the wider educational mission of the school, not the other way around. We call on the NCAA and athletic conferences to enact policies that support that goal. And we are urging Congress to protect the NCAA’s ability to regulate competition for new players to ensure it remains fair and honest.
How did we get here? The history of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament is illustrative. It started in 1939 with eight teams and no television. It was so popular that it doubled to 16 teams in 1951, to 32 teams in 1975 and to 64 teams in 1985, then added a ‘play in’ opening round in 2001 which expanded in 2011. Television coverage grew with the tournament; CBS and Turner pay hundreds of millions of dollars a year (soon $1 billion a year) for the right to broadcast the games. As the popularity of the tournament increased, so did the value of a winning team – and the salaries of successful coaches.
In recent years, the perception has grown that student-athletes, whose talent and hard work bring so much revenue to schools and even coaches, get nothing in return. Following public opinion, courts have struck down longstanding NCAA regulations that prevented student-athletes from capitalizing on their image and likeness. That has resulted in further antitrust suits against the NCAA and athletic conferences.
We have been vocal in our belief that student-athletes should be able to capture the value of using their name, image and likeness (NIL) – in other words, capitalize on their celebrity – for one simple reason: other students are allowed to do so. If a student is a talented artist or musician, no one begrudges him the chance to earn money with his skills. And athletes should be given the same opportunities as other students as much as possible.
Unfortunately, the new NIL rules have proven to be easy to abuse. To get around the NCAA’s ban on paying athletic recruits directly, many schools funnel money to recruits under the guise of an alleged licensing agreement with a third party — regardless of whether a player’s name, image, and likeness have any market value. We must establish and enforce rules that allow legitimate transactions while prohibiting transactions that create enticements or pay-for-play.
The claim that student-athletes otherwise get nothing from a multi-billion dollar sports industry is false – and the fallacy behind it gets to the heart of what’s at stake.
If a talented high school player progresses directly to the minor leagues, he earns a salary. If he goes to college instead, he can earn something much more valuable: a degree. Economists estimate that a college degree is generally worth it about $1 million in more earning power in a lifetime. At our institution, 99 percent of student athletes who stay for at least four years earn a diploma. Because less than 2 percent of all our student-athletes will practice their sport professionally, such an advantage is indeed useful.
At Notre Dame, revenue from football and men’s basketball goes to 24 other varsity sports, including mostly women’s sports—most of which did not exist on college campuses prior to 1972.
Since the advent of Title IX 50 years ago, no development in college athletics has been more significant than the rise of women’s sports. While many women athletes have benefited from NIL deals, those pushing for giving a higher percentage of earnings to football and men’s basketball players should understand that such a decision could put women’s athletics at risk. At Notre Dame, that includes more than 300 female student-athletes, all of whom work just as hard as their male counterparts to compete at the highest levels in their sports and in the classroom.
Overseeing NIL transactions is just the beginning. To improve the educational experience and the overall health and well-being of our student-athletes, the NCAA should also place a limit on the number of days a team can be off campus. Part of a college education is interacting with others in the classroom, dining room, and dormitories. Student-athletes also deserve that experience.
The NCAA or the athletic conferences should establish a national medical trust fund for the benefit of all student-athletes injured in play, regardless of sport, school size, or status. And finally, we need to create a policy so that players who leave school to turn pro have the option to return – with the same financial allowances they had the first time. At Notre Dame, we’ve done this for many student-athletes, including the Pro Football Hall of Fame running back Jeroen Bettyswho returned to complete his studies last spring, 28 years after leaving to play professionally.
Congress, too, must act to resolve conflicting state regulations, clarify that our athletes are students, not employees, and allow the NCAA to establish and enforce rules for fair recruiting and compensation.
Professional athletics must also play a role. While baseball and hockey allow players to turn pro right out of high school, the NBA draft eligibility age requirement forces most of the very talented players to attend college for a year. The NFL does not offer an alternative to intercollegiate football until a player has been out of high school for at least three years. Both policies force talented young players to enroll in a university whether or not they have an interest in the educational experience it offers.
To ensure that players come to college only after making an informed choice – and a real commitment to learning – we are urging the NFL to create a minor league alternative for young players. Similarly, in accordance with the 2018 Commission on College Basketball, we hope that the NBA and its Players’ Union use the upcoming contract negotiations to remove the “one and done” rule and allow 18-year-olds to go directly to the league . .
College athletics is an esteemed national institution. Professionalizing teams, treating athletes more like employees than students, and weakening the vital bond with their colleges’ educational mission will rob college athletics of its special character. Gradually it will be seen as just a version of the professional minor leagues. More importantly, that approach will not serve the vast majority of young men and women who are pursuing college degrees and growing personally while playing the sport they love. We can support them and preserve the institution that serves them.
John I. Jenkins has been president of the University of Notre Dame since 2005. Jack B. Swarbrick is vice president and director of athletics at Notre Dame.