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The Gist
Pay to Play: The NCAA’s Big Payout Era Begins
00:35:29
The NCAA’s $2.8 billion settlement doesn’t just change the rules—it rewrites the entire playbook. Mike talks with Gabe Feldman, director of Tulane’s Sports Law Program, about what happens now that schools can pay athletes directly. They get...
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- [00:00]
Gabe Feldman
Foreign.
- [00:04]
Mike Pesca
It's Monday, Aug. 4, 2025, from Peach Fish Productions. It's the gist. I'm Mike Pesca. And the first days of August, of course, put you in the mind of nothing so much as college football. Wait, it does? Yeah, they've been practicing for a while. College football, other than professional football, is basically the glue that holds two thirds of the nation together. Not my third, not, not the Northeast. But today on the show, I will be conducting an interview. I do this from time to time with a leading expert in the field because there are many legal issues, issues of form, substance and rules concerning college football. Once for amateurs, now admittedly for professionals. That's the big part, admittedly. So have you heard the stories of college football? The big ones? The Florida Gators have recruited Olivier roux, who's a 7 foot 9 guy who plays for the basketball team. So he's already under scholarship on campus to try to jump up and block field goals. Here's a problem, Olivia. Olivier roux has an 11 inch vertical jump. So it hasn't happened yet. And apparently Deion Sanders, known for flair and rebelliousness, went on a screed against players wearing biker shorts under their uniforms. These are big college football stories as we buy the time before the traditional first game. I don't even have to say it. It's the Aer Lingus College Football Classic. Iowa State versus Kansas State. This will kick off college football in the traditional hotbed of college football, Dublin, Ireland. And that will be August 23rd, another fine day when the air is crisp in Dublin for college football. So here's what you need to know in terms of issues beyond just who is going to block a kick for the Gators in 2021. The NCAA knew that it couldn't win. All their lawsuits began allowing nil payments. This is the idea that a player can get paid for drinking vitamin water on Instagram used to be disallowed and you'd be run out of the sport. But now with social media and the popularity of players as endorsers, just because they're players, how could you continue on this indignity, this injustice? We deserve the same amount of consideration as, say, a talented bassoonist or an actor who can get paid for their craft. Okay, fine. It touched off an antitrust case. It is called House vs. NCAA. House is a guy. We'll get into it. And in this antitrust case, the defendants agreed. This is the NCAA agreed to pay almost $3 billion. And this means that every school in the big conferences where they make money has $20 million to spread around. And we're going to talk about how it does not take all the liability off the table. This is for past play. Now they are playing this year. And the state of play brings us to Gabe Feldman, who is an expert on sports law at Tulane University. And we're going to spend the rest of the show taking you through not just what the rules are, but what is fairness in this very strangely but intensely and passionately American of institutions. College football. Bula bula. Up next, there's been so much money schlossing around the NCAA for so many years that the student athletes said a while ago, well, this isn't fair. I mean, the men's basketball tournament rights are worth about a billion dollars. And so. Well, for many decades now there have been grumblings. The Then for many years there have been suits and now finally there is a settlement. It's not the last settlement, but the broad contours mean that students will now get paid and not just via the end around of the name, image and likeness deal, which were private entities giving students maybe millions of dollars if they were famous enough. Now the schools are authorized to to pay the students. There are a lot of details here, and no one is better to talk about it than Gabe Feldman, the nation's leading academic in the field of sports law. He runs the Tulane sports law program and is the school's first endowed. Sure. Garner professor of Sports Law. Hello, Gabe. Welcome to the Gist.
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Gabe Feldman
Hey, Mike, thanks for having me on.
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Mike Pesca
So every school gets what, $20.5 million to spend? How?
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Gabe Feldman
Every D1 school is allowed to spend $20.5 million on their current athletes any way they want to. They can divide it up any way they see fit. The only limitation is that they can't spend more than $20.5 million.
- [05:16]
Mike Pesca
Right. So how many D1 athletes are there per school? Different schools have different number of teams. But if you have, say, a men's football team which has, and I know roster limits were part of this settlement with what kind of salaries might we be talking about when you do division?
- [05:33]
Gabe Feldman
Yeah, the assumption is that at most schools the majority of the money is going to be spent on football players, and that's anywhere between 60 and 70%. So you can do the math. That's about 12 to 13 million for a football roster. Presumably the starting quarterback will get paid more than the backup punter. But it's not clear how the schools are actually going to divide the revenue within each individual team. But generally we expect about 65 to 70% to go to football, 10 to 15 to go to men's basketball, maybe 5% to women's basketball. And then the rest of the athletes will divide up what's left. And in many cases, no other athletes will get any of this revenue other than football and basketball players.
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Mike Pesca
Yeah. And what's the roster limit for football?
- [06:19]
Gabe Feldman
105 now.
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Mike Pesca
Yeah. So doing the math in my head, average of $130,000. 100, you know, $25,000 a student.
- [06:29]
Gabe Feldman
Yeah. And the expectation again is that that won't be divided equally among all 105. And not everyone on the roster will necessarily have a scholarship. So think that the schools are going to treat this like they treat any other form of recruiting, and they're going to do as much as they need to get that athlete. And I think one of the interesting things, and we may get into this, is that those numbers are not going to be public. The schools are required to report them to this new enforcement entity, but they do not have to be disclosed publicly. And it sounds like schools are not planning to disclose it publicly. So we're not necessarily going to know how much each individual athlete is going to get, much less the full team.
- [07:08]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, but in addition to this, the nil, the name, image and likeness deals can also go on. So this means that the most high profile athletes, the quarterbacks who we're talking about, who might get paid a lot by the schools, can also still get their deals from Allstate and Nestle and Under Armour or whoever. But there are, there is a clearinghouse. And so we're going to know more about this. There's less opacity in the system.
- [07:34]
Gabe Feldman
Yeah. So there are two different types of deals are expecting for NIL from third parties. One is, as you said, the traditional company that wants to have a spokesperson or someone endorse their product. So whether it's the Nike, the Allstate, those deals are not subject to any additional scrutiny. If you're a Nike and you want to pay the starting quarterback a million dollars, you have to report it, but there's no additional scrutiny on it. The additional scrutiny comes if you're a collective or a booster. If you're a collective or a booster, basically someone who's given money to the university who's trying to support their athletic program, if that entity does a deal with an athlete that is subject to scrutiny by this new clearinghouse, that is going to determine essentially whether it's a legitimate NIL deal or just an effort to try to funnel more money to the Athlete. One of the main things they're going to look at is the fair market value of the deal and say as long as it's within a range of reasonable fair market value, then we'll accept it. But if you're paying somebody $20 million for one autograph, then we're going to reject it. The athlete can appeal that and then an arbitrator gets to decide whether it's a legitimate deal or not. But that's where most of the action is going to be both, because that's where most of the deals are. Most of the deals are from boosters and collectives and there is no extra scrutiny of the of these quote unquote legitimate deals. Also, there aren't that many of them. If you think about even at the pro level, it's only the top, top athletes that have these national endorsement deals. Yeah, a lot of them probably have local deals, but they're relatively insignificant. And I think we'll see the same thing in college sports. It's been different for the last four years because most of these nil deals haven't really been nil deals. They've just been boosters sending money to college athletes.
- [09:18]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, hi, this is Tom Sheriff of the backup quarterback for your Dallas Cowboys. Come on down to Chevrolet of Arlington for yes, that. That's the kind of deals that they sometimes get on the NFL level.
- [09:34]
Gabe Feldman
Yeah, well, and what's interesting is they can't even use the the name often. Right. Because they're not allowed to use the Cowboys name because the Cowboys haven't given permission to it, which is another issue that these college athletes are dealing with. But, but yes, it's not very common at the pro and I don't think it'll be very common at the college level either.
- [09:51]
Mike Pesca
So I don't know. Perhaps listeners are hearing this and saying, well, 130 on average. That may be good. The quarterbacks will get more. You have to realize that the quarterback at the University of Texas, at the University of Alabama, sure, they're a superstar who going to be making probably millions of dollars in the pros and also all the offensive linemen and everyone else who's a starter. That's a huge amount of money. Then you have the University of Alabama Birmingham and the middle linebacker or the backup middle linebacker. I don't know if UAB wants to spend the $20.5 million can. But if you do the math on the amount of the number of college football players at the Division 1 level, a lot of the them if their colleges spend the money we'll be getting quite a fair compensation before we even get to any of the other aspects of this deal. Is that right?
- [10:42]
Gabe Feldman
Yeah. I mean, I don't. Fair, I guess, is in the eye of the beholder. I think you're right that the uabs of the world are not for the most part going to spend up to the 20.5 million. And let's say they spend 5 or 6 million. If they do the same percentages, if the 70ish percent goes to football, then you're talking about 4 million spread across the entire football team. So it'll be smaller dollars. And that's certainly one of the things that these smaller schools are concerned about, is that they're going to lose all the top recruits to these bigger schools that can spend more nil money. Of course, they're already losing all the recruits to these bigger schools who are spending more money in other ways. It's not as if many athletes chose UAB over University of Alabama because they preferred to play there. It's because University of Alabama didn't want them. I know there's an outlier probably.
- [11:29]
Mike Pesca
Well, a whole series of schools below the University of Alabama didn't want them not to pick on uab. I just chose that one because they recently eliminated their football program and might be the most tenuous football program in Division one.
- [11:41]
Gabe Feldman
Right. No, and that. And that's fair. And it's again, not picking on any particular school. It's just if you look at the revenue they generate from their sports, these bigger programs that have budgets that are as large, if not larger than pro teams, the $20.5 million, it's not just a drop in the bucket, but they can handle that. It's these smaller schools where the 20.5 is four or five times their existing budget. So to add that on to what they're already spending is not feasible.
- [12:09]
Mike Pesca
So taken from the perspective of who's generating the money, it's football and basketball. Therefore, that's who's getting the money. That's quote, unquote fair. But there are other laws and other considerations. We are talking about colleges which define equity differently than American society or the law does. Why does this pass Title nine, muster, legal muster, or any other kind of ethical muster to kind of allow this system that cuts out all other athletes who work just as hard as the football players or basketball players?
- [12:43]
Gabe Feldman
Yeah, I mean, I think the. For many years, people were asking the opposite question. Why aren't football and basketball players able to get more of the money they generate? Because they're working really hard and generating in some cases, billions of dollars. But now it's through a combination of factors. I think this became a civil rights issue, this became an economic rights issue, an antitrust issue, social issue that eventually got people to say it seems unfair that a football player can have generated millions of dollars in value in their nil, but they don't get any of it because they happen to play football. But the drummer who's the football player's roommate can make as much money as they want off of social media or YouTube, whatever it might be. So I think this was designed to try to be more fair, whether now the payouts from the school, part of that $20.5 million, they're not calling it compensation. They're not calling it pay for play. They're still saying that this is for their nil, primarily their nil in broadcast. So from that perspective, it's just consistent with this move to allow them to earn money for the value they've created. But from a Title IX perspective, we're about to find out whether this passes muster. There are likely going to be a series of Title IX suits claiming that it is against the law to pay male athletes 70% or 90% of the money, while the female athletes only get 10 or 15%. Those lawsuits are being drafted or have been drafted. And then it's just a question of do these courts consider payment for nil money? That's called broadcast nil. Do they consider that to be financial aid or a treatment and benefit that would otherwise have to be distributed proportionately under Title ix? I think, as most people know, Title IX is probably wildly under enforced, and many schools are in breach of Title ix. It's just a question of is someone going to sue and are they going to be able to determine that? So this is just adding another piece to that, potentially. But you might be right. It may turn out that it's illegal to do it this way, and they have to go to a proportionate spending mix, which I think would not be permanent, because I don't think schools intend to pay $10 million a year to athletes that aren't generating a lot of money for them, whether they're male or female.
- [15:04]
Mike Pesca
Oh, I see. So the law could say you could spend up to $10 million for the women's lacrosse team, and the schools might just all say, thank you, we choose not to, and the playing field might still be even, even without issues of collaboration. Also, I'll add that I'm sure the lawyers for the women who are bringing the Title 9 case. There's also a whole lot of other plaintiffs who haven't opted into this particular settlement. But I'm sure they're going to say one reason we don't have as much money for us is also because of sex discrimination. When negotiating our TV rights, they've always undervalued the women's NCAA tournament, and there is a lot of scholarship to back up some of those claims.
- [15:45]
Gabe Feldman
Yeah, and that's. That's often been a response to schools, Title IX claims when they say, yeah, we're spending more money on soccer, men's soccer, than women's soccer, because more people are interested in men's soccer, or we give men's soccer the prime time start and put the women's soccer team earlier in the morning because more people want to attend the men's soccer game. And several judges have said, well, have you thought about the fact that the reason people are more interested in attending the men's soccer game is because you're promoting the men's soccer game more and because you've historically discriminated against women's sports? So under Title 9, the market value is typically not a defense, in part because the market value is based on historic discrimination. And so we'll see whether that can be a defense in these cases. But this is, as Everybody knows, in 1972, the drafters of Title IX were not thinking about college sports very much, but certainly not thinking about nil compensation to college athletes 50 years down the road.
- [16:47]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, I mean, what was Nixon thinking of? Maybe, you know, wiretapping his rivals in the Democratic Party? Who knew? I haven't listened to all 87 episodes of your excellent podcast series, Sports Wise. But suffice it to say, this has been a long and winding course through the courts. It doesn't end there. I want to hit on a couple of interesting aspects. One is, so we're Talking about how 60 to 70, 50% going to football and then some to the revenue sports. This settlement is called House vs. NCAA, and it's not the House of Representatives. It's a swimmer named Grant House. Is that right?
- [17:25]
Gabe Feldman
That is correct. He'll be on my podcast next week.
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Mike Pesca
So you're getting the Grant House.
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Gabe Feldman
Grant House.
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Mike Pesca
He's not going to see any money from this, is he?
- [17:34]
Gabe Feldman
Well, he is, in part because all athletes who are playing from 2016 to 2024 can get a share of the back damages, which is a total of about $2.8 billion over 10 years.
- [17:47]
Mike Pesca
And how do they define. How do they apportion the Back damages.
- [17:51]
Gabe Feldman
So the back damages are a portion of that formula I mentioned. That's 70% football, 15% men's basketball. That's where those numbers come from. The plaintiffs have economic experts who said, if we look at all the lost nil opportunities over the last eight years because the NCAA didn't allow athletes to make money from their NIL, that 70ish percent of it would have gone to football players. So we're going to distribute 70% of the damages to our football players, and then it's based on how many games you played, how many years you were there. So they have an algorithm that's supposed to spit out how much you get. And football players will get a lot. The women's volleyball players will get very little, sometimes maybe $100 or even less than that. That's how the back damages are being apportioned. But for Grant House in particular and some of the other named plaintiffs, there is actually a stipulation in the settlement that the named plaintiffs will get a higher payout in part because they put their name on there. It was a bigger risk. And so there's been some pushback that. Well, why does this one swimmer get more money than these, you know, then the other? All your house.
- [19:04]
Mike Pesca
House versus ncaa.
- [19:05]
Gabe Feldman
I'll ask him. I'll ask him next week. But wait, Mike, how many of my episodes have you listened to out of the 87 ballpark?
- [19:13]
Mike Pesca
Definitely three. The last three. I haven't gone back to episode one. Your mic sounds better here than it does in the other episodes. I don't know why.
- [19:23]
Gabe Feldman
Well, the last three episodes I recorded from Greece.
- [19:27]
Mike Pesca
Well, that's why.
- [19:28]
Gabe Feldman
And you know the Greeks and their microphones.
- [19:30]
Mike Pesca
Yes. Well, no, the microphone is, I think a Greek word. But that's about how advanced they are in the technology. A lot of times I don't have to tell you as the first ever professor of sports law, but in general, things are called a settlement because you've settled that case. But there's the boilerplate, and this takes off the table all other claims, but maybe in the specific that applies. But my point is there is so many other claims that are still out there to be adjudicated as regards student athletes getting compensated for what they're doing and what they did. What are some of the big ones?
- [20:11]
Gabe Feldman
Yeah, and you mentioned one earlier, is that with every class action, the plaintiffs have a chance where people who are part of the class have an opportunity to opt out and say, we don't agree with the settlement. We don't want to sign on to the settlement, which means they don't get any of the money from the settlement, but also means they can continue suing. So there is a group of plaintiffs out in a case in Colorado that are continuing to sue for the same thing that the NCAA just settled for, the $2.8 billion and this new revenue share model going forward. So that's one threat is the same old rules that this case resolved, but only resolved in part. Then there are other antitrust suits that might be brought, potentially challenging this new cap, the $21.5 million cap. This system looks a lot like pro sports, where you have a salary cap and then players can do nil deals, but the leagues have strict restrictions in place. Strict restrictions. They have restrictions in place to make sure that those nil dollars aren't being used as an end around to the salary cap. The NCAA is putting in through the House settlement similar rules, but the pro sports leagues can get away with that without worrying about antitrust suits because it's part of a collective bargaining agreement. There is no collective bargaining agreement. The athletes here are not employees. There is no union.
- [21:25]
Mike Pesca
So they're likely to get sued, isn't it? If the athletes are.
- [21:29]
Gabe Feldman
Well, that's another. Yeah. So there's these antitrust cases that might challenge the terms of the settlement. And then there are the ongoing employment cases where college athletes at all levels of Division one claim that they should be employees under the Fair Labor Standards act, which would allow them to be paid or require them to be paid minimum wage. There's going to be a wave of Title IX lawsuits. There is pressure from state laws. States are passing different laws seemingly every month that are potentially inconsistent with the new House settlement rules, the new NCAA rules. So, yes, this is a settlement inconsistent how?
- [22:03]
Mike Pesca
More lenient or more restrictive? Strictly restrictive.
- [22:06]
Gabe Feldman
In fact, they are the most strictly restrictive restrictions that I've seen, but they are, for the most part, less restrictive. They want their athletes to be able to make more money. And that's what started this nil race to begin with, is California said, we think it's unfair that college athletes don't get compensated for their nil money. And then many, many other states said, oh, we think it's unfair, too, but we really want to make sure we don't get. We don't fall behind in terms of recruiting for football and basketball.
- [22:38]
Mike Pesca
We'll be back with more of Gabe Feldman and the NCIA nil in a minute. We're back with Gabriel Feldman, who teaches sports law at Tulane. And we were talking before the break of where the NCAA is going to go with all their money and how they're going to give it to the players. One big problem in college sports is I use the word opacity. The nil deals, no one knew how much anyone was getting unless, you know, someone put out a press release. And so this would lead to a situation of players changing teams, Sometimes based on, you promised me something and there was nothing signed, sometimes based on the perception that more money could be made elsewhere. And without, it was a wild west. And without anyone knowing anything, everyone was at a deficit except, I guess, the biggest schools with the most money who could always try to lure athletes from other schools telling them that they were getting screwed. Does any of that get solved in any of these settlements?
- [23:52]
Gabe Feldman
Some of it gets solved, but not so we know that teams or schools are only going to be paying $20.5 million. So if you see reports that athletes at a particular school are getting more than $20.5 million combined, you know, somebody's not telling the truth. But there is no plan for public disclosure of these deals. And there are arguments that maybe these should be public record. Certainly if you're a private school, I'm not quite sure why you would have to turn those records over. We don't turn over records about payments that other students are getting on campus. So to an extent, no, it won't clear up the opaqueness. I'm going with opaqueness over opacity. It won't make it more transparent, but certainly internally it will because there is a reporting requirement. That reporting requirement is to this third party and to Deloitte. So there will be oversight of it, but there won't be the type of transparency where, you know, oh, I know that quarterback is only getting 1 million. So if they're threatening to transfer, I know I don't have to pay them more than 1 million. And frankly, there's, again, there's not a lot of reason necessarily for those, those payments to be public, other than just sort of the fairness of competition. But in, again, most other aspects of college life, we don't require the school to disclose how much money they might be giving to a particular student or how much aid they're giving to a particular student. So there's a question of how this will land. It'll be more transparent, but not completely transparent.
- [25:33]
Mike Pesca
Yeah. So a couple things. One, opacity, also a Greek word, but they pronounce it Opa City. Secondly, sorry, sorry to all my Greek listeners or anyone who doesn't love puns. Secondly, I can Think of a couple things that are problematic about it. The teammates themselves don't know how much they're getting paid and it could lead to a lot of resentment, unfairness. Secondly, yeah, if the analogy is with other aspects of college life, it's not open. But this is professional sports. Is it not being paid and compensated for? They're not employees and I know the law doesn't consider them professionals qua professionals, but this is professional sports. That's the stronger analogy. Then there's also the fact that many states will issue the list of most highly paid employees and it usually goes football coach, basketball coach, president of the top university, now slot the quarterback of the school in there over the school president. So that might have to be disclosed. It doesn't seem that clean to me.
- [26:44]
Gabe Feldman
Yeah, it's. It might, but those are. I do think we, we treat students fundamentally different than we treat our traditional employees on campus. And so for a public university, yes, you have to make those salaries available, but in many ways we've already been compensating athletes over the last hundred years. It's just been capped at scholarships and then the definition of scholarship has expanded. So. So I do think there are different issues here than with the non students on campus. But I don't disagree with you. I think there is going to be a push for more disclosure and then it's just a question of balancing privacy versus the interest in having this information disclosed publicly. But for where we sit right now, there is no plan to publicly disclose these numbers.
- [27:34]
Mike Pesca
So what are. And these aren't legal. These are practical. But I know that you're very well versed in all of it. What are the practical concerns about the unintended consequences of this system? Not even talking about shoes yet to drop in other law cases. I've been reading about how this might greatly damage the Olympic sports, gymnastics, wrestling and so forth. I'm not quite clear on what that argument is, but what have you been hearing and what do you think has the most merit to worry about?
- [28:04]
Gabe Feldman
Well, I think there is no question that people are concerned that if schools now have to pay an additional $20.5 million, that for many of them are going to have to find that money from somewhere and they might try to cut costs. And one way to cut costs is to reduce the number of teams you sponsor. And we know they're not going to sponsor the revenue generators. So the fear is that they will cut Olympic sports because Olympic sports don't make.
- [28:30]
Mike Pesca
We know they're not going to cut the revenue generators right Right. Yeah.
- [28:34]
Gabe Feldman
Yeah, right. Sorry if I misspoke there, but that they. The ones are at risk are the ones that don't generate revenue, which is most of the Olympic sports on most college campuses. And we've seen since the House settlement was finally approved that I believe the number now is 39 Olympic sports teams have been cut, which is over a thousand roster spots. And that the anticipation is that this will continue. Some would say, look, this is not because of House. This is just because schools now have an excuse to be able to cut sports that maybe they've wanted to cut for a long time, just like they tried to do during COVID just like a lot did during the financial crisis in 2008. So we've seen this before, but this is now a new opportunity for schools to say, you know, we love having lacrosse on our campus, but we can have club lacrosse. And the thing we like more than having club varsity lacrosse is having a winning football team. So I think there is some threat, there is some risk to Olympic sports, and I think people are taking it very seriously. One, because of what might happen as schools reprioritize, but also two, because it's already started to happen. So I do think that's a real threat, and Congress is taking notice of that. And if anything can unify this country and our Congress, it may be protecting not only college sports, but Olympic sports. Because one of the arguments is if we lose Olympic sports on college campuses, then that hurts our pipeline to the Olympics, and then we won't win as many gold medals. And again, if anything can get people to rally around something, it's, we want to win more gold medals than everybody else.
- [30:15]
Mike Pesca
Even though lacrosse isn't even a. Well, true.
- [30:18]
Gabe Feldman
Lacrosse is not an Olympic sport. But if you talk about swimming and diving and tracking crew and fencing. Yes. Yeah. And we've already seen a number of programs not cut track, but cut the number of events that they're going to have within track. So they're getting rid of field. There was an article written that they should start be calling track or field, because a lot of these schools are just going to have track now. Same thing with swimming and diving. So that's one of the concerns. Another concern is, and this is not a new concern, Wither the steeple chaser. Yeah. I mean, look, you know, I come from a long line of steeplechasers, and.
- [30:57]
Mike Pesca
You never did catch that steeple, no.
- [30:58]
Gabe Feldman
Matter how much you try. But it's what brought us up in the drink.
- [31:01]
Mike Pesca
You wound up in the drink far too often. Yes.
- [31:04]
Gabe Feldman
But it built character and discipline and look where I am today. But another concern is that this just can't or won't be enforced, that we're going to go from a system where athletes were not allowed to be paid by their schools and so boosters and third parties paid them under the table, to a system where athletes can be paid $20.5 million, but they're still going to be paid under the table from boosters and third parties who think that they need to pay more and that we're going to be in the same position we were before, except it's just gotten more expensive for the schools.
- [31:37]
Mike Pesca
Okay, so this last question, you know, treads the line between descriptive and normative. But have we gone from an area of injustice to justice, or have we just traded injustices?
- [31:53]
Gabe Feldman
That's a. That's an interesting question. I would say we've gone from injustice to more justice, but other injustices remain. I don't think this solves all the injustices because.
- [32:03]
Mike Pesca
But I call that progress, by the way. Yeah, that is progress. If you solve some of the problem, it's progress.
- [32:08]
Gabe Feldman
Yes. No question. It's not a complete solution. And that's why NCAA is still going to Congress for help, because this only solves part of their problem and also justice. I think this is an expression. Justice is in the eye of the beholder, or I'll know it when I see it. I'm just going to spit out as many. But the justice for the football player may be different than justice for the volleyball player. And depending on how you view college sports, if you view it as a public good where everybody should be able to share in the benefits and we value all of it, regardless of whether it's generating significant revenue, then maybe this is unfair if volleyball players are losing spots or losing scholarships. But if we view it more as you should get what you earn, then yeah, this certainly seems to be like a more fair system. And I don't know that we've. You've said that college sports seem to be more professional than anything else. I think that's true for football and basketball at the top levels, but I don't think it's true for most of Division 1 and certainly not Division 2 and Division 3 sports.
- [33:12]
Mike Pesca
Right. Although then there is the. There is the argument put forward, I think I read a book by Derek Bock once, that if you really zoom back, should this be how we're prioritizing our educational subsidies? And you can't make a case for yes, just from the blank slate, but since we've been doing this for 100 years, it would disappoint a great many people were we to go to an England or Canada method of sports are a fun hobby to have but aren't tied to college scholarships or anything else or training for future professional lism.
- [33:54]
Gabe Feldman
Yeah, we might be headed there though. I mean, it's not out of the realm of possibilities that in 10 years or less 40 of the top football programs will have spun off from the university and will be a for profit. That is licensing the right to use the school's jersey and their athletes don't play, their athletes don't go to school, they're not students. But they have Clemson on their jersey. We might be headed there. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. It's definitely a different thing. But I agree we're not. I don't think we're going to completely get rid of of college sports. And even if we had a blank slate, I'm not sure that's what we choose. But who knows.
- [34:34]
Mike Pesca
Gabe Feldman is the director of the Sports Law program at Tulane University and he is the host of the sometimes well miked Sports Wise podcast about sports and law, almost always well hosted when he's not in the Aegean peninsula. Thank you so much, Gabe.
- [34:50]
Gabe Feldman
Thanks, Mike. Good to be on.
- [34:57]
Mike Pesca
That's it for today's show. Cory Wara produces the Gist. I assembled the Gist list alongside Kathleen Sykes. I mean, not really alongside. She's in Utah. I'm here. But we collaborate as do Astrid Greene and the team. She runs our socials and Ashley Khan is our production coordinator. Who's in charge. It's Michelle Pesca. As I'll tell you, she is loathe to say and thanks for listening.