University of Michigan regent looking out for "student athletes"

Mr. Acker is an elected regent of the University of Michigan and served as chair from 2021 to 2022. He is a partner at the Goodman Acker law firm, and a consultant on college athletics and governance.

"The steps that universities like mine large institutions with prominent athletic departments and football programs should take are clear: First, they should meet to consider how a revenue-sharing model would work within the current structure of the N.C.A.A., and release their plan for how to grant players employee or quasi-employee status. Second, if the N.C.A.A. is unwilling or unable to help schools through this dramatic transition, they should leave and found their own organization, similar to how the English Premier League broke away from the rest of English soccer in 1992. They can create a more efficient model with a sustainable infrastructure to protect the interests of student athletes."

(If you don't subscribe, they will all disappear, not that anything but fox is allowed on the Wyoming ranch.)

golden sloth said:

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I used to support paying players, but with the NIL combined with scholarships, I kind of feel that is good enough for players. I dont see logic in the having scholarships, NIL payments, AND a paycheck from the school

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1) I think that what occurs at that point is that "NIL but not NIL" dries up. By this I mean the stuff that isn't REALLY NIL (but the collective $$). By way of example, what Olivia Dunn gets is NIL. NO ONE really cares about LSU Gymnastics and she actually is "meh" in respect to the sport. But she is markatable and her NIL has value. She should be able to get $$$ for it.

2) Probably also we reduce the number of "horror" stories about promised NIL that dry up or NIL deals on contracts that very one sided to the advantage of the collective.

3) But the biggest issue is the liability. I would love to hear from others how NFL, Hockey, and other contact sports protect themselves from the liability associated with having employees play a brutally violent sport where inuries are common. I assume the NFL is self insured? Maybe require players to take a cut of their $ toward long term disability? TO me this is the core problem - because the universities are prospectively exposing themselves to serious long term liabilities with players that are here for a limited period of time.

A personal injury and car accident lawyer is saying that universities should "plan for how to grant players employee or quasi-employee status". Is he also an expert in labor law?

Bearspot said:

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A personal injury and car accident lawyer is saying that universities should "plan for how to grant players employee or quasi-employee status". Is he also an expert in labor law?

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Fight it, run from it, the inevitable is going to arrive.

I think football players, as employees, is coming for a lot of legal or legislative reasons. The current system is not sustainable and the D1 schools need a collective bargaining agreement to level the playing field among themselves and for greater roster stability. I don't know what you do in the states that don't allow public employee unions - so there needs to be federal legislation. Just my two cents.

socaltownie said:

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golden sloth said:

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I used to support paying players, but with the NIL combined with scholarships, I kind of feel that is good enough for players. I dont see logic in the having scholarships, NIL payments, AND a paycheck from the school

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1) I think that what occurs at that point is that "NIL but not NIL" dries up. By this I mean the stuff that isn't REALLY NIL (but the collective $$). By way of example, what Olivia Dunn gets is NIL. NO ONE really cares about LSU Gymnastics and she actually is "meh" in respect to the sport. But she is markatable and her NIL has value. She should be able to get $$$ for it.

2) Probably also we reduce the number of "horror" stories about promised NIL that dry up or NIL deals on contracts that very one sided to the advantage of the collective.

3) But the biggest issue is the liability. I would love to hear from others how NFL, Hockey, and other contact sports protect themselves from the liability associated with having employees play a brutally violent sport where inuries are common. I assume the NFL is self insured? Maybe require players to take a cut of their $ toward long term disability? TO me this is the core problem - because the universities are prospectively exposing themselves to serious long term liabilities with players that are here for a limited period of time.

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The same way that employers do it - workers comp. Limited liability and no fault.

Oski87 said:

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socaltownie said:

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golden sloth said:

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I used to support paying players, but with the NIL combined with scholarships, I kind of feel that is good enough for players. I dont see logic in the having scholarships, NIL payments, AND a paycheck from the school

---

1) I think that what occurs at that point is that "NIL but not NIL" dries up. By this I mean the stuff that isn't REALLY NIL (but the collective $$). By way of example, what Olivia Dunn gets is NIL. NO ONE really cares about LSU Gymnastics and she actually is "meh" in respect to the sport. But she is markatable and her NIL has value. She should be able to get $$$ for it.

2) Probably also we reduce the number of "horror" stories about promised NIL that dry up or NIL deals on contracts that very one sided to the advantage of the collective.

3) But the biggest issue is the liability. I would love to hear from others how NFL, Hockey, and other contact sports protect themselves from the liability associated with having employees play a brutally violent sport where inuries are common. I assume the NFL is self insured? Maybe require players to take a cut of their $ toward long term disability? TO me this is the core problem - because the universities are prospectively exposing themselves to serious long term liabilities with players that are here for a limited period of time.

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The same way that employers do it - workers comp. Limited liability and no fault.

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Yup, at the cost of expensive WC insurance. I wouldn't be surprised if the NFL owners took part in a captive program to share the risk amongst each member institution instead of being individually insured with different carriers, especially with so much player movement, but maybe the owners are too provincial for that. It would make sense to me however that the NFL would want to try to keep them all under the same umbrella. It's an interesting question.

Not sure if they have a medical provider network, but I assume they do as part of the collective bargaining agreement to ensure that the medical care post football is great and that the owners/carriers retain as much control over treatment as they can.

This guy advocates for "quasi-employee" status, which frankly is a unicorn. They are either employees or they are not. I think under pretty much any test, they are or should be considered employees and I suspect that's where this will end up. The tougher question then becomes whether all "student athletes" are considered employees, or just those in the revenue generating sports. Fun times.

Vandalus said:

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Oski87 said:

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socaltownie said:

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golden sloth said:

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I used to support paying players, but with the NIL combined with scholarships, I kind of feel that is good enough for players. I dont see logic in the having scholarships, NIL payments, AND a paycheck from the school

---

1) I think that what occurs at that point is that "NIL but not NIL" dries up. By this I mean the stuff that isn't REALLY NIL (but the collective $$). By way of example, what Olivia Dunn gets is NIL. NO ONE really cares about LSU Gymnastics and she actually is "meh" in respect to the sport. But she is markatable and her NIL has value. She should be able to get $$$ for it.

2) Probably also we reduce the number of "horror" stories about promised NIL that dry up or NIL deals on contracts that very one sided to the advantage of the collective.

3) But the biggest issue is the liability. I would love to hear from others how NFL, Hockey, and other contact sports protect themselves from the liability associated with having employees play a brutally violent sport where inuries are common. I assume the NFL is self insured? Maybe require players to take a cut of their $ toward long term disability? TO me this is the core problem - because the universities are prospectively exposing themselves to serious long term liabilities with players that are here for a limited period of time.

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The same way that employers do it - workers comp. Limited liability and no fault.

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Yup, at the cost of expensive WC insurance. I wouldn't be surprised if the NFL owners took part in a captive program to share the risk amongst each member institution instead of being individually insured with different carriers, especially with so much player movement, but maybe the owners are too provincial for that. It would make sense to me however that the NFL would want to try to keep them all under the same umbrella. It's an interesting question.

Not sure if they have a medical provider network, but I assume they do as part of the collective bargaining agreement to ensure that the medical care post football is great and that the owners/carriers retain as much control over treatment as they can.

This guy advocates for "quasi-employee" status, which frankly is a unicorn. They are either employees or they are not. I think under pretty much any test, they are or should be considered employees and I suspect that's where this will end up. The tougher question then becomes whether all "student athletes" are considered employees, or just those in the revenue generating sports. Fun times.

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This is one reason I think the revenue sports should be outsourced to an alumni run organization that would collect the revenues and pay the players as employees of that organization. The Olympic sports could continue with the quasi-amateur model plus true NIL.

Alternatively all student athletes could be "employees" paid the greater of the value of their scholarship or the prevailing minimum wage plus a share of the net revenues brought in by their sport and whatever NIL they can get.

Deon Sanders has shown us the future of college football (and to a lesser degree basketball). Scholarship athletes constantly being replaced by better portal players, with rosters changing from year to year. No loyalty to or from players........all aimed at the bottom line of winning and more bucks. Just sad.

golden sloth said:

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I used to support paying players, but with the NIL combined with scholarships, I kind of feel that is good enough for players. I dont see logic in the having scholarships, NIL payments, AND a paycheck from the school

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No doubt the power conference universities concur because this way they get away with sharing only a small fraction of the football revenue with the players.

Through collective bargaining, NFL players get 48% of all football-related revenue the NFL teams gain which includes all media deals, ticket sales, concessions, sponsorships and even gambling revenue. That percentage is in line with what NBA players (50%) and MLB players (45%) receive.

From their media revenue alone, the P5 conferences distributed $3.3 billion in revenue to their members in 2022. A Cal scholarship is worth about $35,000 and that's probably a little higher than most flagship universities, much higher than most state schools, and maybe half of most private schools. There are 68 universities in the power conference, each with 85 scholarship players for a total of $202 million (taken Cal as a very conservative average). So before NIL is included, the players receive only about 6% of what the teams make from their conferences alone.

There are no official figures on total NIL money but NIL platform Opendorse estimated the total given to all athletes was $917 million with about 30%, or $275 million, going to football. Let's pretend that all of that $275 million went to power conference players; that would make their total compensation approximately $475 million which is 14.4% of what power conference universities made just from their media deals. Then factor in tickets, concessions and sponsorships and player compensation as a percentage of football-related revenue probably falls into the single digits for power conference teams.

All of the component figures -- media revenue, ticket/concession/sponsorship, scholarship value and NIL payments -- are much smaller for G5 teams, especially media revenue. I don't know exactly how it shakes out because I'm not going to go hunting for all of the data but though I'm sure the G5 football players receive a larger percentage of their school's revenue than P5 players, it is still a small percentage relative to the splits achieved by professional athletes.

Moreover, NIL is not actually football revenue, at least not in principle. Formally it is money paid to the players in exchange for the use of their name, image or likeness. It is theirs by commercial right without reference to the amateur or professional status of the player. Using NIL as the source of funding de facto football salaries is paying players with their own money -- that is, if NIL is taken at face value, as payment by private persons to football players for service not directly related to their play.

In actuality NIL is compensation for playing for football for a particular team, just indirectly delivered. By rule this commerce is supposed to take place completely independently of the university. In practice the NIL collectives are in step with their coaches. It's another sham.

College football players are professionals in everything except name and compensation. Every candid observer must admit that. I wish the student-athlete amateur paradigm was economically equitable but it is not. I wish we lived in a world where protecting each individual's right to profiteer was recognized as the mutilated form of social progress that it is, where the median NFL player didn't make more than 25x the median American income and a scholarship plus room and board could be fair compensation for power conference football players, but that is not the world we live in. It is obviously inequitable to split football players into these two classes -- college and NFL -- and allow only one of these groups to negotiate their compensation. It is inequitable both in principle and in outcome.

This is beside the point but formal professionalization need not be harmful to student-athletics. There's no reason a student can't be employed by their university. A league structure to college football can plug scholarships into the compensation model. It could bring about some desperately needed stability in roster turnover, putting an end to the annual unrestricted free agency that currently exists. A single league could also put an end to conference realignment and restore Cal to a conference that makes geographic sense.

There should be two levels of college football. Level 1 for schools wanting football but requiring athletes to go to class. Athletes will get a scholarship for playing, which is free tuition and housing, and meals during the season and spring ball. There would be very limited practice during the week. They would be true student athletes and their conferences would play at their own level.

Level 2 would be the current FBS sh*t show and they would play highest level football, be paid and not be required to attend class.

ilovetogobear said:

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There should be two levels of college football. Level 1 for schools wanting football but requiring athletes to go to class. Athletes will get a scholarship for playing, which is free tuition and housing, and meals during the season and spring ball. There would be very limited practice during the week. They would be true student athletes and their conferences would play at their own level.

Level 2 would be the current FBS sh*t show and they would play highest level football, be paid and not be required to attend class.

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If the Level 1 schools continue to get paid industrial sums of money for the rights to televise their games, this plan will not solve the underlying problem which is that the players get such a small slice of the revenue which their labor creates that the system is grotesquely unequitable on its face.

Vandalus said:

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Oski87 said:

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socaltownie said:

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golden sloth said:

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I used to support paying players, but with the NIL combined with scholarships, I kind of feel that is good enough for players. I dont see logic in the having scholarships, NIL payments, AND a paycheck from the school

---

1) I think that what occurs at that point is that "NIL but not NIL" dries up. By this I mean the stuff that isn't REALLY NIL (but the collective $$). By way of example, what Olivia Dunn gets is NIL. NO ONE really cares about LSU Gymnastics and she actually is "meh" in respect to the sport. But she is markatable and her NIL has value. She should be able to get $$$ for it.

2) Probably also we reduce the number of "horror" stories about promised NIL that dry up or NIL deals on contracts that very one sided to the advantage of the collective.

3) But the biggest issue is the liability. I would love to hear from others how NFL, Hockey, and other contact sports protect themselves from the liability associated with having employees play a brutally violent sport where inuries are common. I assume the NFL is self insured? Maybe require players to take a cut of their $ toward long term disability? TO me this is the core problem - because the universities are prospectively exposing themselves to serious long term liabilities with players that are here for a limited period of time.

---

The same way that employers do it - workers comp. Limited liability and no fault.

---

Yup, at the cost of expensive WC insurance. I wouldn't be surprised if the NFL owners took part in a captive program to share the risk amongst each member institution instead of being individually insured with different carriers, especially with so much player movement, but maybe the owners are too provincial for that. It would make sense to me however that the NFL would want to try to keep them all under the same umbrella. It's an interesting question.

Not sure if they have a medical provider network, but I assume they do as part of the collective bargaining agreement to ensure that the medical care post football is great and that the owners/carriers retain as much control over treatment as they can.

This guy advocates for "quasi-employee" status, which frankly is a unicorn. They are either employees or they are not. I think under pretty much any test, they are or should be considered employees and I suspect that's where this will end up. The tougher question then becomes whether all "student athletes" are considered employees, or just those in the revenue generating sports. Fun times.

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Quasi probably referencing the whole getting a scholarship thing. There are limits on educational reimbursement for employers. Requiring education to be an employee is something else. If that is the case, the case could be made that the education is a business expense and then is deductible or non- taxable. That is what they are going to have to work around. Privates really need this to continue to offer sports. Or I guess they could simply say that tuition is waived for athletes and have a two tier tuition system - not sure of the legal or taxable ramifications of that.