It reads in part:
Congress, too, must act to resolve conflicting state regulations, clarify that our athletes are students, not employees, and give the N.C.A.A. the ability to enact and enforce rules for fair recruiting and compensation.
Professional athletics must play a role, too. Though baseball and hockey allow players to go pro right after high school, the N.B.A. age requirement for draft eligibility forces most of the highly talented players to attend one year of college. The N.F.L. offers no alternative to intercollegiate football until a player has been out of high school for at least three years. Both policies push talented young players to enroll in college regardless of whether they have any interest in the educational experience it offers.
To ensure that players arrive at college only after making an informed choice — and a real commitment to learning — we urge the N.F.L. to establish a minor league alternative for young players. Similarly, we hope that the N.B.A. and its Players’ Union, in accord with the 2018 Commission on College Basketball, use the upcoming contract negotiations to eliminate the “one and done” rule and allow 18-year-olds to proceed directly to the league.
To their credit The Athletic blasts the op ed:
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Instead of trying to find a way to pay revenue-sport athletes their market value as athletes, school administrators complain about the name, image and likeness system foisted upon them by state legislatures who grew tired of seeing schools break the Sherman Act in an effort to keep anyone from providing athletes anything beyond tuition, room and board. Swarbrick and Jenkins are correct that this did result in a sham system, but they conveniently leave out the reason.
The market wants to pay athletes for their value as athletes, and the schools — through the NCAA — forbid this. So the market, as it always does, has devised another way to provide that compensation.
Swarbrick and Jenkins want Congress to declare that athletes aren’t employees even though making athletes employees and then collectively bargaining with them would actually solve many of the problems that vex them so. Essentially, Swarbrick, Jenkins and their ilk would like someone else to fix the mess they themselves made. Neither Congress nor the NFL nor the NBA should let them off the hook. The people running the schools cashed the checks. They can, and should, figure it out on their own.
Congress, too, must act to resolve conflicting state regulations, clarify that our athletes are students, not employees, and give the N.C.A.A. the ability to enact and enforce rules for fair recruiting and compensation.
Professional athletics must play a role, too. Though baseball and hockey allow players to go pro right after high school, the N.B.A. age requirement for draft eligibility forces most of the highly talented players to attend one year of college. The N.F.L. offers no alternative to intercollegiate football until a player has been out of high school for at least three years. Both policies push talented young players to enroll in college regardless of whether they have any interest in the educational experience it offers.
To ensure that players arrive at college only after making an informed choice — and a real commitment to learning — we urge the N.F.L. to establish a minor league alternative for young players. Similarly, we hope that the N.B.A. and its Players’ Union, in accord with the 2018 Commission on College Basketball, use the upcoming contract negotiations to eliminate the “one and done” rule and allow 18-year-olds to proceed directly to the league.
To their credit The Athletic blasts the op ed:
—-
Instead of trying to find a way to pay revenue-sport athletes their market value as athletes, school administrators complain about the name, image and likeness system foisted upon them by state legislatures who grew tired of seeing schools break the Sherman Act in an effort to keep anyone from providing athletes anything beyond tuition, room and board. Swarbrick and Jenkins are correct that this did result in a sham system, but they conveniently leave out the reason.
The market wants to pay athletes for their value as athletes, and the schools — through the NCAA — forbid this. So the market, as it always does, has devised another way to provide that compensation.
Swarbrick and Jenkins want Congress to declare that athletes aren’t employees even though making athletes employees and then collectively bargaining with them would actually solve many of the problems that vex them so. Essentially, Swarbrick, Jenkins and their ilk would like someone else to fix the mess they themselves made. Neither Congress nor the NFL nor the NBA should let them off the hook. The people running the schools cashed the checks. They can, and should, figure it out on their own.
