Student Athletes Are One Step Closer To Benefitting From The $14 Billion Industry They Drive

On Tuesday (October 29), the National College Athletics Association's board of governors voted on whether to let student-athletes to be compensated for their names, images, and likeness while they play at the collegiate level, CNBC reports. Nevertheless the result is more complicated than an eas "yes" or "no."


The board determined in a unanimous vote that colleges could permit student-athletes to be compensated for their names, images, and likeness, which sounds like a wonderful thing for athletes who don't currently make any cash from their craft... Right? Maybe. The trick here's that the board asked colleges to consider making a change — they didn't actually make a change to NCAA bylaws, nor did they make sure that athletes can get paid for playing the particular game. Alternatively, as The Guardian reports, they've tasked every one of the NCAA's three divisions to establish new rules, which should be in place by 2021.


"In the Association’s continuing efforts to support college athletes, the NCAA’s top governing board voted unanimously to permit students participating in athletics the possibility to benefit from the use of their name, image and likeness in a manner consistent with the collegiate model," the NCAA mentioned in a statement. "The Board of Governors’ action directs each of the NCAA’s three divisions to immediately imagine updates to relevant bylaws and policies for the 21st century."


In a statement supplied to CNBC about the vote, Board of Governors chairman and president of Ohio State University Michael V. Drake said: "We must embrace change to offer the ideal possible experience for college athletes. Extra flexibility in this area can and must continue to support college sports as a segment of higher education. This modernization for the future is an organic extension of the countless steps NCAA members have taken in recent years to improve support for student-athletes, including full cost of attendance and guaranteed scholarships."


While this vote could be seen as a step in the correct direction, it doesn't amount to much without further action by the divisions themselves. USA Today's FTW! Points out that "the collegiate model" as it stands is that students... Do not get paid. And while the vote urges NCAA to "immediately consider" changing its rules, the board of governors also issued a bunch of ideas for those changes, up to and including one that "make[s] clear that compensation for athletics efficiency or participation is impermissible." In other words, student-athletes would not be allowed to get purchased showing up for or playing a game, the way professional athletes do at their jobs.


Whichever the divisions determine will impact the more than 460,000 student-athletes who play sports for American colleges every year. And there's a lot of cash on the line if the NCAA does determine to update its rules: Per ESPN, the association generated over $1 billion in income throughout the 2016-2017 school year, and the college sports industry is estimated at $14 billion per year, which is higher than the GDP of several countries. While some of that industry-wide net is cycled back to scholarships and other resources for students if they are at school, students have rarely been the direct recipients of the cash they help generate. Students have also been barred from using agents, and past student-athletes have had to give up outdoors earnings or income related to their sport sort in attempt to be eligible for a scholarship. In 2010, Reggie Bush gave back the Heisman trophy he earned for playing at the University of Southern California because it was decided that he had gotten "improper advantages while playing for the Trojans.


Students and their families have protested the rules for years, and the fight came to a peak any time California governor Gavin Newsom signed the Fair Pay to Play Act in September. That month, the NCAA came out against the bill, joining universities and colleges in its opposition. While the bill did not stipulate that schools had to pay athletes, it protected students who chose to hire agents, and allowed them to sign endorsement and sponsorship deals the way professional athletes do, so long as those deals did not contradict any deals the school had with immediate competitors. It was not set to go into effect up until 2023, nevertheless several people hoped that its signage would force the association to update its rules before then.


Plenty of professional athletes have spoken out in support of letting students benefit from their hard work while they're still in school. Among them is LeBron James, the star Lakers player who expressed support for the Fair Pay to Play Act earlier this year. James was the number one draft pick in 2003, and scored a spot on the Cleveland Cavaliers directly right after finishing his senior year at St. Vincent-St.Mary High School in Akron, Ohio.


"That No. 23 jersey would have gotten sold all over the place without my name on the back, however everybody would have known the likeness. My body would have been on the 2004 NCAA basketball video game. And the Schottenstein Center [at Ohio State University] would have been sold out almost every night if I was there," he told reporters at a recent Lakers practice, per the Washington Post. "Me and my mom, we didn’t have anything. We wouldn’t have been able to benefit at all from it. The university would have been able to capitalize on everything."