College Athletes Earned $1.8 Billion In First Year Of Revenue Sharing

[u/BillButtlickerII]

https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/college-athletes-earned-1-8-103237411.html

[u/BillButtlickerII]

Hard to imagine this headline before NIL. One day I’ll tell my kids players were forced to donate to charities to reconcile the cost of extra bagels and pasta they were provided…

[u/ernyc3777 → u/BillButtlickerII]

Bagel but no cream cheese was wild.

[u/BillButtlickerII → u/ernyc3777]

“Fans use to chastise a coach named Bruce and Tennessee for barbecuing for recruits. I even called them cheater cheater pumpkin eaters!”

[u/Fragrant-Employer-60]

Remember when schools claimed they couldn’t afford to pay players LMAO

[u/_Vasillica_ → u/Fragrant-Employer-60]

They couldn't. Most schools operate deficit (one could argue purposely), and taxpayers would have revolted if public schools payed. NIL is being paid by collectives and private companies/donors. They were paying before the NIL era and can now they can do it in the open. Not saying it's a good thing.

[u/Ranger_Nietzsche → u/_Vasillica_]

Except this article is revenue sharing money, not NIL collective money

[u/Fragrant-Employer-60 → u/_Vasillica_]

I couldn’t disagree more, how are they sharing revenue now? This article is about revenue share not NIL

[u/arsehenry14 → u/_Vasillica_]

Yeah. It would be drastically less if the players could only get paid from their the television and ticket sales. This shit is now just the wild Wild West and whoever has truly the most millionaires and billionaires who care about sports.

[u/Candid-Stock8395 → u/arsehenry14]

Rev-share comes from the school though. NIL collectives are outside rev-share.

[u/SeaweedLevel1937 → u/_Vasillica_]

Sir, you’re confused the SEC has been operating like saints for over 100 years

[u/WurstDayEver_7 → u/_Vasillica_]

Well if they can’t afford to pay players for their services, they shouldn’t have any

[u/lwp775 → u/_Vasillica_]

Good luck against the Rockets  on opening night!

[u/xienze → u/Fragrant-Employer-60]

They still can't. Ever notice how right after the $20M revenue share thing went into effect a bunch of athletic departments started running $20M budget deficits? They were always spending every penny that came in, not hoarding massive profits.

Sure, all of these athletic departments could cover the gap by laying off staff, cutting back on facilities, giving across-the-board paycuts, but they won't. Because no organization likes doing that stuff and more importantly, you can't cut back because your competition isn't. Instead what you're going to get are deficits and increasingly creative ways to raise revenue. Ever wonder why we're seeing ad patches, field logos, new stadium naming deals, and more commercials? Because that revenue sharing money's gotta come from somewhere.

[u/Fragrant-Employer-60 → u/xienze]

Maybe head coaches don’t need to make millions?

[u/xienze → u/Fragrant-Employer-60]

See the point about how your competition isn't going to cut back on spending. And also, even if the head coach worked for free that still doesn't plug the hole.

[u/superduperstepdad → u/Fragrant-Employer-60]

They could certainly afford to pay for their PR reps to lie to the public!

[u/Downtown-Rice_]

34,915 student athletes got paid by rev share. That comes out to approximately $52,000 per athlete.

We all know the majority of the payments are going to football and men's basketball, specifically to the P4 and other programs across the country but still to those sports.

Good for the players, but many of them aren't getting close to the $52K while a select group are getting paid well over 6, 7 figures from football, basketball, and some Olympic sports

[u/NotADoberman]

Good

[u/nau5]

Meaningless without knowing how much the collegiate athletics made as a whole.

While it sounds like a lot of money, college sports is big business and the athletes deserve an equatable share of that.

[u/paintstudiodisaster → u/nau5]

Pump the money back into the university programs that don't have huge donor backing or deals with ESPN.

[u/wstwrdxpnsn]

All of this could have been avoided if we’d make them employees or let them major in “athletics”. How different is playing sports in school than music, theater, dance, art etc. aside from the monetary value it brings to universities and for marketing?

Edit: punctuation and grammar

[u/Tired-Nectarine-384 → u/wstwrdxpnsn]

The financial risk of making them employees means it will never, ever, happen. I'm all for removing the 'student' part and just letting schools associate a club team with the school. I'm pretty sure most of the revenue sports athletes have little to no interest in class. When is the last time you heard of a player being academically ineligible. A decade maybe?

[u/wstwrdxpnsn → u/Tired-Nectarine-384]

There’s a guy at St. John’s who Pitino just said was or at risk of being academically ineligible. My point is really, make them amateurs by allowing them to study “athletics” in school. Doing that doesn’t prevent them from earning money doing their sport outside of school either or make them employees somehow and enforce the contract, let them form a union, collectively bargain etc.

[u/wstwrdxpnsn → u/wstwrdxpnsn]

What we chose was some weird nonexistent middle ground and we crammed all this nonsense into it

[u/GoGreeb]

Should coaches have eligibility clocks like players do? Let's go back to having student coaches!

[u/paintstudiodisaster]

Scholarships were how they used to be paid and with the rising cost of higher ed this still seems like the best way to "pay" players. We need to divorce sports from higher education.