How do you think it would be received if Harvard tried to seize ownership of Facebook because it gave Mark Zuckerberg a scholarship? Or that Harvard should take ownership of Facebook because some kids that didn't goto Harvard won't have the luxury of starting a billion dollar corporation.
If the schools were paying them, then talking about fairness between sports (Football vs Swimming for example) at least makes sense. Personally, I'm not against the schools directly paying athletes different amounts based on their individual worth because this is exactly how the labor market works (and the NFL too). This is how academic scholarships work too, the better "candidate" you are, the more money the school gives you to enroll. But note that this is not what all this is about.
The problem is that the NCAA is dictating what an athlete can do with their own time outside of sports. This is like Google prohibiting employees from getting paid to teach a class on the Go Programming Language because they learned it on the job. Or the engineer who created Go to get paid to give a speech about it at a conference. Or even prohibiting a famous Google employee from appearing in a car commercial for the local Tesla dealership. If we saw these examples in a newspaper, we would say: "wow, that's not right, Google can't do that!". And there would also be lawsuits against google.
Also, I think the ncaa rulemaking concerns use of the athlete’s likeness — I’m pretty sure that would cover the school’s own use to promote their programs so in fact I think it means that the schools would also be paying the student athlete for that use. And that becomes the problem - in its current form it’s not well thought out.
But my point is slightly different: I’m saying the policy disproportionately impacts a few athletes at a few top schools. And doesn’t resolve the issue of allowing students the ability to earn an income if they need to or desire to. The ncaa is trying to thread a needle and in doing so is making bad policy. The only athletes who stand to benefit are going pro anyway... you’re telling me they can’t wait a few years and simply focus on their degree and supporting their school’s program?
https://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/media-center/news/board...
