NCAA rule changes and the effect on soccer

This looks an awful lot like the landscape in the mid 1960's, before the NCAA made the big grab to put all sports under their umbrella. By shedding sports, the big 5 won't have to provide equal treatment.
It is just as likely under this model that sports like Lacrosse and soccer will be run like div3.

I played 4 sports back then. None was ncaa.

 

One big problem with the increased costs of running athletic departments that is coming is that not even all the Power 5 schools can afford the increases. I'd guess that there are probably fewer than 30 schools that can afford the coming increases, and that's likely guessing too large a number. So, the majority of the Power 5 schools would probably be happy to regionalize every sports other than football because that would save money that could be spent on football costs and associated costs of complying with Title IX.

 

None of this will get schools out of meeting Title IX obligations.

 

My prediction: there is going to be a lot of differences of opinion about what's required to comply with Title IX with many schools taking what might be characterized as "aggressive" positions on compliance. Take for example the quickly passed NCAA rule that allowed parents of football players to be given transportation/housing benefits to attend the championship game in football and that will allow the same benefits for the Final Four in men's and women's basketball. Do you believe that every school will extend the same benefit to the non-revenue championships this year and next?

 

All the BCS schools but Boston College voted for the changes last week.

Whether or not they can afford the changes is beside the point. Even under the old regime, the last ncaa audit of college programs showed only 22 were In the black out of the 125 or so BCS schools. I think the audit before that was 17.

More schools at least broke even in div1AA, div 1AAA( no football), div2, and Div3.

And the percentage of schools who at least broke even went up in about that order.

 

For schools that used the rule, I would expect that if you calculate the percentage of male athletes whose parents' were entitled to receive benefits (i.e., the number of football players and basketball players as a percentage of all males playing sports for the college), you'll find the same percentage of female athletes parents' being entitled to benefits.

While one might thing schools would be "aggressive" and not do this, the history with schools is that they are afraid to be aggressive, and all the talk I saw when the new rules were under discussion was that the schools were intending to be sure female athletes got equal treatment with the males.

 

All of these changes I fear will fall under the law of unintended consequences. The idea is that these schools use some of the inflated coaches' salaries on the actual student-athletes experience. Fair enough. But does anyone think nick Saban or john calipari will take a pay cut so a women's volleyball's player parent can come to their NCAA game? Come on.

So where will this money come from? I'm really curious. I can see Olympic sports losing coaching positions, academic advisors being let go, equipment budgets shrinking...all the stuff that enhances the kids college experience. We are just trading one reality for another without impacting the 7 schools who make outrageous money.

I think the NCAA should enact a profit sharing model like the nfl. So Alabama makes a gagillion dollars, then contribute a higher % than North Dakota st. If these ad's are truly concerned about the welfare and treatment of the collegiate student athlete, then how could they complain?

But they aren't. They want to control their own money and ensure that the to dogs remain the top dogs and the lower schools have no conceivable way to compete.

It's laughable that a school like Arizona st or Utah or Pitt or Mississippi st will now be paying 4 year cost of tuition scholarships for all their scholarship athletes, flying parents around the country and whatever else the costs will be.

Where is this money coming from?? From the budgets of the non revenue sports. Well done.

 

For a 3-exhibition-game, 7-day basketball trip to the Bahamas, Kentucky spent $792K:

http://www.courier-journal.com/stor...dollars-face-national-teams-bahamas/21806935/

Portland State did a similar trip for $37K.

 

The problem with that analysis is that the people who ultimately decide title IX compliance aren't the NCAA or the BCS schools. There are the Feds and the courts who ultimately decide.

And recent history shows they are just about done with giving schools the benefit of the doubt and using standards for prosecution that are less than the law dictates.

Until now, as long as a school showed progress towards compliance on some level, the Feds didn't prosecute, but that doesn't mean they won't or can't.

 

We saw different talk, then. I saw talk of 'allowing" women's sports, specifically women's lacrosse, to compete across divisions. If that included making competition equal, it's a downgrading of the status quo ante.

I think the BCS is floating a trial balloon around the theory that if they allow equal numbers of men and women competing, they can circumvent title IX's provisions about equal opportunity.

In that respect, the recent ruling on revenue sports only being subject to revenue sharing in the Obannion decision helps their case.

 

Question: What female athletes/parents are you referring to? There is no women's sport with 85 roster spots and parents wanting to fly to an NCAA Championship. (it is ironic that the football parents complained and wanted the travel money because they suddenly had another game to go to the next week. Isn't that what parents do in every other sport that follow their kids in NCAA Tournaments? Geesh, now conference tournaments are a burden in these nationwide conferences!)

Points: The money for the football parents transportation stipend I believe was from the new money from the new football playoff title game so school budgets not really affected (maybe they took that much less new money home to OSU and Oregon)

Revenue Sharing has already been in place on the conference level for years. The big bowl money becomes a conference "distribution" so every school in the BCS benefits, even schools that don't play a bowl game. Clearly, the formula favors the successful teams and is probably the subject of serious discussion each year. The NCAA pays for championships all the way down to the minor sports in d3 so that revenue has to come from somewhere.

Title IX implications are interesting. I'm pretty sure you can't systematically provide benefits to male athletes not provided to female athletes regardless of where the revenue comes from. These changes should have a net positive affect on female sports like soccer and others. The non-revenue male sports are the nervous ones. I just spoke with a cousin who was offered a 4-year full-cost scholarship to play softball in the Big10. She's a 2017. That's new.

 

I'm not sure if I understand what you're saying. O'Bannon applied only to FBS football and Division I basketball. It did not say that only revenue sports are subject to revenue sharing. In fact, it said nothing about any sports other than FBS football and Division I basketball. It was an antitrust case, so whether or how antitrust laws would apply to other sports is left for attorneys and courts still to figure out.

The big question, however, so far as women's sports are concerned, may not be how antitrust laws apply but rather whether and how Title IX will come into effect if (yes) and when (now) male college athletes start receiving more benefits than they did in the pre-O'Bannon days. That remains to be seen and most likely will involve a lot of legal questions, some related to historic systematic discrimination against female athletes and its still lasting effects.

 

I'll save upprv from having to defend the position. I think you are quoting me.

The whole landscape of athletes being "student athletes" has been blown apart by the Northwestern case, especially by the observation by the judge in that case that athletes spend more time in their sport than they do as students.

And that ruling was folded into the Obannon case by that judge.

http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2014/03/northwestern_union_ruling_gets.html
http://www.espn.go.com/pdf/2014/0326/espn_uniondecision.PDF

So I think to say it is an antitrust issue is behind the times of where the courts have already gone. It's not antitrust, it is employee rights. The ncaa schools don't meet the standards for categorizing athletes as volunteers, as part timers, or as students not meeting the standards of any other university employee.

And while the obannon case restricted the ruling to revenue sport athletes, the Northwestern case didn't.

 

First of all, Holy Guacamole, I just read the Northwestern decision and notwithstanding my pre-existing skepticism about FBS football, I am stunned. For all those of you interested in this subject who haven't read it, it is an absolute must. It gives tremendous insight into what goes into being an FBS scholarship football player and it is absolutely stunning. Really, use the decision link that CW provided and read at least the first 2/3 of the decision. It's long, but it will be an eye opener.

But .... Second of all, the Northwestern decision, so far, is not a court decision. It is a decision of a regional director of the National Labor Relations Board. And, it is on appeal.

According to the news report CW cites, the Northwestern decision was "blended" into the O'Bannon decision, but I haven't seen any documents about that from the O'Bannon case so I have no idea what that means. At this point, it probably only means that the judge in the O'Bannon case was made aware of the Northwestern decision and issues related to the Northwestern decision became involved in a mediation that was occurring in the O'Bannon case at the time the Northwestern decision was made. I don't know, myself, what the status is of those mediation discussions or whether they even still are occurring. I assume that if anyone else posting here knew, they would have posted something about the case status by now.

Further, the Northwestern decision was very fact specific. It applied only to an attempt by Northwestern University athletic scholarship football players to form a union and was based on extremely detailed evidence about the how the NU football program was run in relation to athletic scholarship players, including as distinguished from walk on players. It applied not only to no other sports, but also did not apply to walk on football players. That doesn't mean it might not serve as precedent for some future NLRB decisions (if the decision is upheld on appeal), but at this point it is limited to the specific facts of how the Northwestern University football team is run.

So, back to my point, at this stage of things, so far as women's soccer is concerned, I think the critical issue related to the current changes going on with FBS football and Division I basketball with the FBS conferences is if and how Title IX will require schools from those conferences to give women's sports (even if non-revenue) the same treatment that the football and basketball players receive.

 

I think the Northwestern case is specific to Northwestern only in that it is a private school. State schools would be covered in the public employee law specific to each state. I don't see much indication that state schools would have any better luck demonstrating those athletes aren't employees by the same standards the NLRB has used for decades in all labor cases and the IRS also uses to determine if a person is employee or subcontractor.

But it does set the precedent that the Athletes are employees as determined by the hours they put in, the level of daily direction. The management of their schedules, the dress codes, etc. the decision blows the NCAA's student-athlete model ( coined originally to avoid having to pay workmans comp claims in serious injuries) out of the water.
One key point was that the athletes spent more hours on football than on studies.

Women's soccer has the same demands on time and supervision, so a challenge in that sport would be hard to overcome.
That might be the most immediate consequence, that students won't have to provide their own insurance anymore.

That the students gained their decision from Northwestern is largely due to the United Steelworker's Union getting involved with their legal teams. These were experienced labor lawyers. If state school student-employees want help, it would most likely be through state employee unions.

Here are the briefs filed on both sides to the NLRB. They make pretty interesting reading, and you can see how much of each argument was accepted.

For the players:
http://www.espn.go.com/pdf/2014/0326/espn_otl_nwuniondoc.pdf

For the University:
http://i.usatoday.net/sports/college/2014-03-17-NU-Brief-to-RD.PDF


And an article about the impact:
http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_...rthwestern-quarterback-kain-colter-legal-team

You are right that it isn't settled. The University can appeal in Washington. But the burden is on the University to show that the Reasoning of the local NLRB director was wrong, and what I read from labor lawyers seems to point to that not being likely. There aren't any precedent rulings that support there position.

At that point it will be precedent for all other such challenges.

 

Is the effect of all this that schools will have to start providing much more to their athletes (students/clients/employees) and those benefits by law would have to be provided to females proportionately? So, net benefit to women's soccer athletes and likely negative outcome for minor men's sports who will get pinched in the budget. Perhaps some schools would drop men's AND women's sports proportionately to comply with Title IX while balancing budgets and that could possibly hurt women's soccer. If this ruling gets applied broadly, isn't it more likely that lots of mid-majors will just drop pointy football? Certainly, schools looking to invest in football are having significant second thoughts.

 

Well, mid majors ( sometimes called Div 1AAA) by definition already don't have pointy football. None of the royalty stuff applys to them at all, except perhaps for 13 basketball players. I think the ruling applys to revenue sports, including women's basketball. There are 15 scholarships there. And there are very few mid majors that actually make endorsement or broadcast money.
Studies have shown that basketball players almost alway accept a BCS offer if they also get a mid-major offer, so the reality is they don't compete for the same players now.

The only thing I see is that women's soccer will give 4 year scholarships in mid major to compete with the BCS. Many mid major schools I know have been functionally doing that for decades anyway, even if a player has a career ending injury. They generally don't recruit over players. They will step up with increases to full cost of attendance also.
The couple AD's I asked saw no problem there.

It would seem to me the real effect is on BCS schools to provide equity for men and women. Those 85 football scholarships ( actually more like 108 with redshirts) are pretty hard to balance out, and it will be harder if the males get an extra 5 grand. How the Feds see royalty benefits fitting in with equity will be interesting. I really don't see BCS soccer programs making a big upgrade in spending. It's not in their nature so far and they could have been doing it all along. My guess is they will try to test the Feds to see what the minimum for compliance is, if they stick to form. The task there is harder now.

Maybe the Feds will say BCS schools will have to provide more revenue sport scholarships for women....I don't know. But it seems clear the BCS will have to get more creative than they have so far. And even if they did, it's a pretty limited number of soccer scholarships which wouldn't break any mid major if they had to compete.

On rumor I saw floated was that Women's soccer and a couple others will become full scholarship sports with maybe 20-24 slots. I think that would redistribute players.

 

That's an interesting thought. Aside from the fact that they're not about women's sports at all, probably the biggest uncertainty coming out of these rulings/decisions is that they've been about players with full scholarships, not about walk-ons or players in the equivalence sports (such as soccer) who have less than full scholarships. If that distinction winds-up having no relevance and, for example, transportation costs have to be provided for all varsity players including walk-ons, there probably is no reason to adjust the number of athletes getting full scholarships. However, if that is a distinction that becomes meaningful and, for example, only full scholarship athletes get the additional O'Bannon (and associated) benefits, it might be that the Power 5 schools decide to give exactly as many full scholarships to women as are needed to offset the number given to men.

 

If the NLRB ruling is upheld (and no Congressional or State exceptions created thereafter), as I understand it (and I could be wrong), the scholarship athlete will be no different than any other part-time employee of the school. If so, at what point do the schools spin-off the revenue sports into separate companies? Further, I have no idea how much (if any) Title IX and state labor laws would be in conflict and which would carry the day. Basically, vast amounts of stuff I've got no idea about!

 

I think it's important to think distinguish among the different sets of laws involved in these cases. Capsulizing and therefore maybe over-simplifying a little:

The O'Bannon case is an antitrust case. It accuses the NCAA, for Division I football and basketball, of having monopoly power and using that power to price fix. What they were fixing was the amount they would pay players for services. Typically, price fixing involves the supplier fixing prices, but in this case it involves the buyer (of player services) price fixing. The court found the the NCAA indeed did have monopoly power and indeed did fix prices. The court's remedy is to require what the court has determined to be a fair price. From what I read, I didn't see distinctions between scholarship players and walk ons, although that may be because of the stage of the case at the time the judge made the decision. As I read the case, I think it's possible there might be a future distinction between scholarship and walk on players, but that looks to me like a future detail.

The Northwestern case is a labor relations case. In it, the NLRB regional administrator determined that the scholarship football players at Northwestern are employees of the school and are entitled under federal law to organize as a union and collectively bargain. The administrator's remedy was to establish the process for an election to determine whether the scholarship players in fact wanted to form a union. The administrator specifically distinguished between scholarship players and walk ons, ruling that walk ons were not employees of the school and did not have the right to be part of the bargaining unit. (It remains to be seen whether this ruling will apply to public schools, as that involves issues of state v federal sovereignty.) The case did not award any benefits to the football players, other than the right to unionize and collectively bargain.

Title IX is a law that applies in all situations. Among other things, it requires that women receive equal treatment with men. One interesting question about the confluence of O'Bannon, Northwestern, and Title IX is if, or how, they will relate to each other. For example, even if the price fixing of O'Bannon is not something that occurs in non-revenue sports or in women's sports, if O'Bannon provides certain economic benefits to males will Title IX then require the same benefits for females. And, for example, if unionized male athletes at a school collectively bargain and achieve certain benefits, then even if the female athletes aren't unionized, will Title IX require that they receive the same benefits as the males.

I'm sure there are lots of discussions going on within the legal community sectors that specialize in these fields, trying to figure out how all the pieces of the puzzle fit together. From what I've seen previously, when it comes to Title IX the legal community tends to be pretty risk averse, in other words they urge schools to err on the side of not violating Title IX. Whether that will carry over in what appears to be a "new era" for schools with big time football and basketball remains to be seen.

My guess is that the fall out from all of this won't hurt college women's soccer other than that it may increase even more the already existing divide among the FBS conferences and other conferences; and it may help college women's soccer via Title IX linkages to any benefits male football and basketball athletes can get out of the changes. For non-revenue men's sports, however, it may be a different picture, resulting in schools shedding even more men's sports than they previously have.

Another possible change is that there will be a change in the NCAA's divisional structure, which already appears to be underway via the FBS schools' ability now to adopt their own regulations on certain subjects. In that respect, perhaps it's possible that the FBS schools will have their own division for all sports -- or that non-FBS conferences will have the option to stay with the FBS schools or to go with a different division.

I'm betting it's going be quite a while before it all shakes out.

 

I imagine we'll see more of this (Kent State hires consultant to assess athletic department with all options on the table):

http://www.ohio.com/news/local/kent...nsultant-to-assess-athletics-program-1.559799

 

Are these consultants taking resumes??
It could become a cottage industry these next few years as schools will find ways to blame others for the difficult decisions they will have to make. Isn't that the definition of "consultant"?

Why would anyone want to compete in the Football FBS with the Big5 under these new rules? The Kent State article says 1.1 million will be required to move scholarship athletes to the "full cost" amount. Aren't we about to see an exodus from the FBS to the FCS (I-AA) for lots of schools, perhaps even conferences?
Again, women's sports are likely to benefit from increases in resources to men's teams. But I bet folks on the mens' soccer forum are more nervous than we are. ask the Towson and Richmond soccer alums. Has anyone dropped women's soccer in the name of cost savings in recent years?

 

Men's soccer will be one of the 1st sports to go in athletic departments. There are 100 or so less men's soccer programs than women's in the country. I could see more and more school getting rid of men's soccer or adding women's lacrosse to help the equity in athletic departments.

 

1) Title IX never, ever mentions "sports" once. The law is about educational opportunities and not outcomes either. If the NCAA would agree that big time division 1 FBS football has little educational value than in theory title IX would not apply. The NCAA keeps boxing itself into a smaller corner as it tries to keep and maximize revenue while giving as little back as possible to the "student-athlete". It is basically a lot of PR and threats by the NCAA to try to keep some amount of public opinion on their side to have the people generating the revenue not get any of it. This has been discussed in the O'bannon case but all the "extra" money goes into escalating college coach salaries in revenue sports and "gold plating" facilities. Kentucky basketball personal chefs, waterfalls and hyperbarric chambers alabama football and the ohio state university football dorms being described as the "four seasons" in the main cleveland newspaper. (at least 2 college football coaches get paid as much or more than all NFL coaches!)

point: if kids playing men's football and basketball were "employees" of the university or playing college football had no "educational" value, title IX could be argued wouldn't even apply.

2) there is no evidence that if revenue generating participants got paid that, that would mean women (or men) in money losing sports by law would have to get paid too. (the O'bannon case for a reason only included men's basketball and football.). In every state the highest paid public employee is either the men's basketball coach or men's football coach. Never is there a women's coach in a revenue sport that is paid as much as the man. Also, I am not aware that the Kentucky women's basketball team has nearly the same ammenties as the men's team. So there in practice is not guarantee that women and men must be treated exactly the same, only have the same opportunities. While the men's team has personal chefs the women's does not. Nor does Coach Callie at Duke make the same salary as coach K. You can go down the line but you can see that the amenities available to male student athletes and salaries to men's teams' coaches exceed the female ones. The latest example was the NCAA paying for travel for all parents going to the Oregon/Ohio state championship football game. To my knowledge this has never been done for women.

true the NCAA may claim they will go broke if they have to pay all "student athletes" it doesn't mean by law they have to. In the university, professors in many fields have their pay tied to how much external money they bring to the university so the thought that all students by law would be required to be paid the same in a money losing sport as in a money generating sport is nuts.

3) no doubt the NCAA would prefer not to pay anyone, but it seems like that game is up unless they can convince congress to intervene (which I think unlikely). Yes the NCAA will cry poverty that they have to pay student athletes but in reality they can make clear divisions between profit generating sports and money losing sports and treat them differently OR say playing football has no education value OR say student athletes that must spend XX hours per week on their sport will be considered university employees and not violate title IX which never mentions "sports" once.