The players can be paid.
The day of reckoning has finally come for the National Collegiate Athletic Association. The Supreme Court of the United States has said players can be paid. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the court’s opinion upholding a district court judge’s decision that the NCAA was violating antitrust law by placing limits on the education-related benefits that schools can provide to athletes. The court’s decision allows schools to provide athletes with unlimited compensation as long as it is connected with their education.
The NCAA doesn’t want to share any of its money with the stars of the show. The so-called “student-athletes” and has been fighting states in an effort to derail a movement that will see the athletes, the stars of the show, get paid for their likenesses. The term “student-athlete” did not exist when Walter Byers took the job at the helm of the NCAA in 1951. It would first appear a number of years later following the death of a college football player on the field. A Fort Lewis A & M student, Ray Dennison, died from injuries suffered in a game in 1955. Dennison’s widow sued for workman’s compensation in Colorado. She lost. Dennison was a student not an employee. The college sports business should be paying players. The Supreme Court of the United States took up the case involving a former West Virginia University football player Shawne Alston sued the NCAA in 2014, and claimed the organization violated the Sherman Antitrust Act by placing limits on what each school is allowed to give its athletes in exchange for their athletic ability which caps an athlete’s ability to make money off of his or her likeness. The NCAA was aghast at such a notion because paying players would ruin the image of athletes playing for the love of the game.
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UConn guard Paige Bueckers (5) celebrates the team’s win as Baylor guard DiJonai Carrington (21) walks off the court after a college basketball game in the Elite Eight round of the women’s NCAA tournament at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Monday, March 29, 2021. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)