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    Trump Considers Executive Order on College Athlete Payments

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    College athletes have signed deals worth millions of dollars since the N.C.A.A. allowed student-athletes to become paid endorsers.President Trump is considering an executive order to examine payments made to college athletes and whether they have created an unfair system, two people briefed on the matter said Friday.Mr. Trump’s focus on the issue — which he’s talked about in the past, one of the people briefed on the matter noted — was renewed after he spoke with Nick Saban, the famed former University of Alabama football coach, backstage at an event Thursday night in Tuscaloosa, where Mr. Trump delivered an address to graduates.The Wall Street Journal first reported on Mr. Trump’s consideration. The two people who were briefed on it were not authorized to speak publicly.The executive order would address newly expanded opportunities for student-athletes to monetize their athletic careers. Last year, the N.C.A.A., the organization that governs much of college sports, agreed to settle a class-action antitrust lawsuit that had accused it and its member schools of exploiting student-athletes while hoarding the profits of the lucrative college sports industry.The $2.8 billion settlement, which is nearing approval, created a revenue-sharing plan for college athletics in which schools would start directly paying their athletes, a major shake-up of the college sports landscape. The N.C.A.A. has already removed restrictions on athletes monetizing their athletic careers through endorsements and sponsorships — known as “name, image and likeness” payments.The changes initiated an arms race in college athletics, as wealthy teams offered larger and larger compensation packages to lure top talent into their programs. Star players have since signed deals worth millions of dollars.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Judge Rejects Key Part of N.C.A.A. Settlement of Antitrust Suit With Athletes

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      The concern over restrictions on some payments raises uncertainty on whether a landmark agreement on compensating athletes can be reached and approved.A federal judge on Thursday rejected a key element of a proposed $2.8 billion settlement of an antitrust lawsuit against the N.C.A.A. and the major athletic conferences, throwing into uncertainty an agreement that had been largely seen as ushering in a new era in college sports.The judge, Claudia A. Wilken, said in a hearing that she was troubled by a provision that would restrict payments to athletes from booster-run collectives, groups of donors that funnel millions of dollars to athletes at schools they support. Although the proposed agreement would allow schools to pay their athletes up to about $20 million per year, she thought some athletes would make less money under the new deal.“Some people getting large amounts will no longer be able to get them,” she told lawyers for the N.C.A.A. and the plaintiffs, essentially a group of thousands of athletes, who had come to an agreement in the lawsuit House v. N.C.A.A. “That’s my concern.”But Rakesh Kilaru, the N.C.A.A. lawyer, said there would be no deal without a provision that allowed the N.C.A.A. to prohibit third-party payments that they saw as pay-for-play compensation under the guise of fair-market endorsement deals.“For us, it’s an essential part of the deal,” he said.Judge Wilken also expressed reservations about another key component of the deal: capping the amount that schools could pay athletes. She also told Mr. Kilaru and the plaintiffs’ lawyers, Jeffrey Kessler and Steve Berman, to report back to her in three weeks with a revised agreement. If they could not, she would be prepared to set a trial date in the case, which charges that the N.C.A.A. and the five major conferences withheld name, image and license revenue.This is a developing story. Check back for updates. More

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      N.C.A.A. Athletes’ Pay Deal Raises Questions About Future of College Sports

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      The landmark settlement made many wonder what the reality — and impact — of revenue-sharing plans with college athletes would look like.Brent Jacquette knows a thing or two about college sports. A former collegiate soccer player and coach in Pennsylvania who is now an executive at a consulting firm for athletic recruiting, he’s well aware of issues surrounding pay for college athletes.But even for an industry veteran like Mr. Jacquette, the news of the N.C.A.A.’s staggering settlement in a class-action antitrust lawsuit on Thursday came as a surprise, with more than a little anxiety. The first words that came to mind, he said, were “trepidation” and “confusion.”And he was not alone in feeling unsettled. Interviews, statements and social media posts mere hours after the settlement was announced showed that many were uncertain and concerned about what the future of collegiate sports holds. “These are unprecedented times, and these decisions will have a seismic effect on the permanent landscape of collegiate athletics,” Phil DiStefano, chancellor of the University of Colorado Boulder, and Rick George, the school’s athletic director, said in a statement. If the $2.8 billion settlement is approved by a judge, it would allow for a revenue-sharing plan through which Division I athletes can be paid directly by their schools for playing sports — a first in the nearly 120-year history of the N.C.A.A. Division 1 schools would be allowed to use about $20 million a year to pay their athletes as soon as the 2025 football season.Mr. Jacquette thought of the word “trepidation” because of the impact that the settlement, shaped by the biggest and wealthiest universities with robust football programs, could have on coaches and athletes at smaller institutions and in low-profile sports.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What Would Paying Student Athletes Look Like?

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      A college team’s vote to unionize adds pressure on the N.C.A.A. to abandon rules that forbid paying student athletes like employees.“Unions are tricky for college sports,” Jay Bilas, the ESPN college basketball analyst, said over the phone the other day, “because you’ve got public and private institutions and different state laws.”“It’s not impossible to have a union of college athletes,” he said, “but it would be difficult.”Bilas, who is a vocal critic of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, was referring, of course, to the news on Tuesday that the Dartmouth College men’s basketball team had voted 13 to 2 to form a union. He was skeptical that this latest shot across the N.C.A.A.’s bow would lead anywhere. Still, it was the latest example of the pressure the association is under to finally abandon “amateurism” — the N.C.A.A.’s long-held dogma that prevents college athletes from being paid. Of course over the past few years, many athletes have been able to put money in their pockets, thanks to so-called NIL payments (NIL stands for name, image and likeness). But that’s an ad hoc system, organized largely by supporters of the athletic department, that allows some athletes to bring in millions while others make nothing. It’s not the same as universities paying athletes they employ.Bilas said it was clear that schools would soon have to pay their athletes in sports that bring in a lot of money, like football and men’s basketball. And he’s not the only one. Jeffrey Kessler, the lawyer who won the big antitrust case against the N.C.A.A. before a unanimous Supreme Court in 2021, has another case against the organization that is scheduled to go to trial in January. The suit alleges that college athletes have been illegally deprived of any payment for having their names, images and likenesses used in promotional broadcasting that have earned millions for big athletic conferences like the Big Ten. If he were to win that case — and the odds are in his favor — the N.C.A.A. and the conferences could be liable for up to $4 billion.Although the N.C.A.A. remains stubbornly resistant to settling the antitrust cases against it, the prospect of paying billions in damages might finally bring the organization to the table. Either through a court victory or a settlement, the litigation could, Kessler said, lead to “the complete transformation of the current structure so that the athletes who generate all the revenue can receive fair compensation for what they are contributing.”But if a new structure arose to compensate players, what would it look like? Andy Schwarz, an economist deeply involved in the fight to transform the N.C.A.A., told me that he could very well see unions playing a part — but it would be a different kind of union from what the Dartmouth players were trying to do. “You would have conference-level unions to negotiate the terms of employment and to enshrine in contracts the rights and duties of an athlete,” he wrote in an email. “In my view, the schools would provide the education and the conferences would be employing the athletes to be participants on a television program.” In other words, each conference would agree to a kind of collective bargaining agreement with a players’ association, just like professional sports.Which still leaves the question of how individual players are paid under the umbrella of the collective bargaining agreement. Bilas told me that whenever he had been asked that question, he replied: “This is really simple. Just have a contract between the athlete and the school. Just like the rest of American business does.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Dartmouth Players Are Employees Who Can Unionize, U.S. Official Says

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      A regional director for the National Labor Relations Board cleared the way for the collegiate men’s basketball team to hold a vote.A federal official said Monday that members of the Dartmouth men’s basketball team were university employees, clearing a path for the team to take a vote that could make it the first unionized college sports program in the country.In a statement, the National Labor Relations Board’s regional director in Boston, Laura Sacks, said that because Dartmouth had “the right to control the work” of the team and because the team did that work “in exchange for compensation” like equipment and game tickets, the players were employees under the National Labor Relations Act.A date for the election on whether to unionize has not yet been set, and the result would need to be certified by the N.L.R.B. The university and the N.C.A.A. are expected to appeal the director’s decision.In September, all 15 players on the team’s varsity roster signed and filed a petition to the labor board to unionize with the Service Employees International Union. On Oct. 5, Dartmouth’s lawyers responded by arguing that the players did not have the right to collectively bargain because, as members of the Ivy League, they received no athletic scholarships and because the program lost money each year.The N.C.A.A. and its member schools have long resisted unionization attempts by college athletes, defending the student-athlete model that has come under fire by labor activists, judges and elected officials over the years.In 2014, the Northwestern football team led the highest-profile attempt by a college program to unionize, arguing that because the players were compensated through scholarships, they had the right to bargain collectively.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More