< College Athletes Cash In on Endorsements, but Playing Field Is Still Uneven

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DECOLDEST CRAWFORD: Hey, this is Decoldest Crawford, wide receiver from Louisiana. Now, I'm playing at Lincoln. When your AC isn't the coldest, you call SOS Heating and Cooling.

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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: What does NCAA basketball star Buddy Boeheim eat for breakfast?

BUDDY BOEHEIM: Try Three Swisher cereal.

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UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT ATHLETE #1: We want to show you guys how we make our perfect cup of coffee.

UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT ATHLETE #2: OK, so we are about to go to practice. And this creamer from Bulletproof gives us the perfect energizer because of the MCT oils.

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Until last summer, a college athlete could certainly call a particular company to fix the AC or enjoy a certain cereal or creamer for breakfast, but he or she had better not tell anybody about it - at least not get paid to tell people about it. That's because the NCAA, the group that sets guidelines for college sports, banned college athletes from profiting from their status as college athletes, even as the top-level programs and coaches made millions from selling posters with their faces and jerseys and T-shirts with their names. Last year, though, a Supreme Court ruling changed that, allowing athletes themselves to profit from the use of their names, images and likenesses or NIL.

MINORKA MIRANDA: It opens the doors for every athlete.

MARTIN: Minorka Miranda plays tennis for the University of Maryland Terrapins. To this point, the most lucrative endorsements seem to be going where they always have in the pros - to the highest-profile athletes and the traditional moneymakers like football and basketball, but players from less visible sports are also getting opportunities.

MIRANDA: Slowly, I saw more and more athletes sign deals immediately. It was kind of intimidating for a smaller sport because it's like, oh, should we be doing something? Everyone else is doing something, so where do we really start? And it did go really fast. And all of the sudden, deals were popping up left and right.

MARTIN: CONSIDER THIS - the NIL ruling gives college athletes a new opportunity to profit from their popularity and talent. But how does it work? And will it level the playing field for a broader range of student athletes? That's coming up. From NPR, I'm Michel Martin. It's Saturday, September 17.

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MIRANDA: It was kind of wild 'cause everything that I knew, up to that point, was, like, college athletes can't make anything off their sport, and only professionals were really doing deals. And so then when the opportunity opened for athletes, it was kind of like, whoa.

MARTIN: Minorka Miranda is the tennis player at the University of Maryland that we met earlier. Her school has introduced a new online platform called Maryland Marketplace to facilitate sponsorships for its athletes and even former athletes. Players who participate in everything from fencing to bowling can promote their profiles. Her school isn't the only one. At universities across the country, online platforms are emerging as one-stop shops, where fans can buy autographs, pay for shout-outs and even book paid appearances from their favorite college players. Athletes then decide whether or not to accept those offers, and if they do, they're paid directly on the site.

MIRANDA: I think it also prepares you for life 'cause, you know, when you're trying to get a job and stuff, you're going to have to talk to people about different options and stuff, so - I think that we have so much control over our deals and stuff and what we kind of put out. I think it's a very good move, overall, and I think it can be really good opportunity for all of us.

MARTIN: Minorka charges much less for appearances, product promotion and social media content than some of Maryland's high-profile football and basketball players, but she says it's still worth it, and the marketplace gives her and others a chance to get recognition they might not receive otherwise. She says that makes a difference for her because, as a first-generation American, tennis was her ticket to college.

MIRANDA: My parents sacrificed a lot to always be moving, always be traveling for tennis and stuff. So I definitely wanted to get that financial burden off of them when it came to college.

MARTIN: She also says being able to earn money directly from endorsements allows her and other college athletes to think about finances in a new way.

MIRANDA: I remember my teammates would give me, like, lessons at night being like, you know, this is how you budget, and this is how you're going to do it when you move out of the dorms and stuff. And you're going to have to take care of all your bills and everything. So it kind of shifted from that type of conversation to, oh, my gosh, I signed this deal, so now I can buy some Jordans that I wanted, you know? And it's kind of crazy because it's like - I saw that shift and it happened so fast that it's incredible to see how much these conversations have changed.

MARTIN: The NIL ruling has been in effect for more than a year now, but some say college athletes still aren't getting their fair share of the money they generate for their schools. So what could be next in the fight over compensation? That's coming up.

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RAMOGI HUMA: For years and years, we've seen professional athletes endorse various products and services as pretty commonplace, but in college, college athletes were never allowed to do that, and from our perspective, is a way the NCAA and their colleges were able to monopolize every commercial dollar from the players.

MARTIN: Ramogi Huma is the founder and president of the National College Players Association, a nonprofit that's been pushing for college athletes rights more broadly and compensation, in particular. When I talked with him recently, I asked him about whether NIL rights are what he had in mind when he started the group.

HUMA: Yes and no. You know, this was definitely one of the freedoms we wanted college athletes to have. But no, in the fact - it's taken a long time. I started this organization back in 1997 as a student group - had no idea it would take this long to make sure college athletes have the same rights and freedoms as other Americans. So in some ways, it's not what I've expected, but things are heading in the right direction.

MARTIN: So let's talk about the pros and cons from your perspective. The pros are obvious. I mean, the advantages are, as you've made clear, that college athletes are essentially the labor force for collegiate sports, and everybody else is profiting - the coaches, the staffs, certainly the universities - but are there any negatives as far as you see?

HUMA: Not much in the NIL space. I think the one negative part, in the big scheme of things, really, is that some people have felt, well, this is enough. But from our perspective, it's absolutely not enough. You know, the players in other multibillion dollar industries - they revenue share. If you look at the NFL, the NBA, WNBA, hockey, baseball - they share actual revenues that they help produce, and it's about 50%. NIL is about third-party endorsements. So it has, really, nothing to do with the schools paying the players a fair share of what they should be earning.

So it's kind of like going to work, not getting paid by your employer, and your employer telling you, well, if you really want some money, you have to go get a second job - go do something else, but we're not paying you. So it definitely has not equated to economic equity, but again, it's a step in the right direction.

MARTIN: What about the whole question of the disparities between the traditional revenue-generating sports and sports with less flexibility? I mean, you're most associated with football because that was your sport and also because I think people understand the potential for a very short career in that sport. You know, what about those disparities? On the one hand, some people say - well, you know what? - this offers people in less-visible sports the opportunity to participate in this, but other people feel that it basically amplifies the inequities that already exist. Have you thought about that? And what do you think about that?

HUMA: Well, there are definitely disparities in college sports, and they're really created and - to a large degree by the schools and the NCAA themselves. The schools have chosen which sports are valuable, and that's primarily football and men's basketball. There's been a lot of awareness about the fact that women's basketball, for instance, has been utterly shut out of any real opportunity to commercialize - be commercialized in good ways - the ways they can grow the sport. And in this case, when your sport is more commercial, you end up having more commercial deals. You know, that's kind of how it goes. And even the revenues to sustain the sports - the facilities and things like that. So really, a lot of it has been because the schools and the NCAA have chosen to do so.

So I think there's a lot of potential. But I think NIL can actually help in those ways because now these athletes have another way - another platform to be able to get their sport out there - get themselves out there, which can help grow the sports, even outside, you know, the interest outside of what the colleges are trying to generate. If someone's on a billboard in your hometown, and you're looking up and you see a women's volleyball player, you might be that much more interested to go to the games.

MARTIN: So your organization supports something called the College Athletes Bill of Rights. As briefly as you can, could you tell us what this bill of rights does and why you think it's important?

HUMA: Sure. So in addition to providing uniform NIL, freedoms and protections for college athletes and agents certification, it would enforce health and safety standards to prevent serious injury, sexual assault and death, which - right now, there are no enforcement of safety standards. None of those things are against NCAA rules. It would also end discriminatory treatment against female college athletes by the NCAA in conferences and heighten enforcement among the schools for Title IX. It would also make sure college athletes aren't stuck with medical bills, can't lose their scholarships when they're injured permanently - so our philosophy is that if Congress is going to act on NIL, it should not be ignoring the carnage that's going on in college sports. There are many more issues that are much more important to college athletes.

MARTIN: So what is the next step from here? You were once behind the Northwestern football players' attempts to unionize in 2014. Is that the next goal? Is it direct payments from schools? I guess that would be pay, right? Is it direct? Is it being paid to play?

HUMA: Yes, definitely. Both of those things. So my organization, the National College Players Association, we filed unfair labor practice charges against UCLA, USC, the Pac-12 and the NCAA to tee up the ability for the NLRB to determine whether or not college athletes are employees. We also sponsored another piece of legislation in California. It would be a revenue share bill, where college athletes of all sports are insured 50% of the revenue that their particular teams produce. Many players across sports already get that, or more, but obviously, in football, basketball, you know, baseball, some of the tennis teams - there's, you know, there's a number of teams that are not paying their players fairly in the form of a scholarship. So it passed some key committees last year. We're very hopeful that we can do here, in California, what we did with NIL, which was to start making sure players are properly compensated in some form, and we expect other states would follow suit.

MARTIN: Is this meant for, basically, the top tier of college athletes, who are going to go pro? For every kid who plays a college sport, it's not that serious. I mean, it's something to do. It builds camaraderie. It gives you a community. And as you've seen, there's been a retrenchment in some areas for some sports. And of course, there's all kinds of debate about why that is, you know, some people blaming Title IX, etc., you know. But there have been a number of sports that have been withdrawn from the college athletic scene because the universities say they just can't afford it. So is this your vision for the top tier, where people are generally assumed to be going into the pros? Or do you have, like, a general theory of everything about this?

HUMA: So there's a few things you mentioned. I'll try to take piece by piece here.

MARTIN: Sure.

HUMA: So first, we are not pushing for revenue share in high school, community college, NAIA Division II or III. Division I is a different kind of industry. It's definitely a highly commercialized industry, and we believe in that industry. Players of all sports should be receiving 50% of their revenue. And within those sports, you know, it's really for the rank and file athlete. You know, players on these teams who are the backups they can stream. They're the guys who - maybe they're a three-year starter, but they don't go pro, you know? Less than 2% of football and basketball players actually go pro. But they're the foundation of multibillion dollar industries, and they deserve to get a fair share. So this is actually for the average player - the 98% - who otherwise could receive generational wealth.

The other thing is, when people would talk about how money is linked to participation numbers, you know, it's really important to point to the data. So over the last 15 years or so, there's been an explosion - an absolute explosion in Division I revenues. It's about $5 billion. In that time, athlete participation went down by about 300 - 300 less athletes, but the number of coaches went up by about 1,500. So it's not about whether or not they can afford these things, it's their preferences. I remember talking to an AD at Oklahoma run a panel discussion, talking about how they had to cut a sport. And it was, you know, it was very heartbreaking, which I'm sure it was. But at the same time, they didn't have to cut the sport. They chose to. This is Oklahoma. They got all the money in the world. You know, they have over a hundred million dollars in revenue at that time, even. And they chose to.

So oftentimes, Title IX is used as an excuse of why people want to cut a sport when they just feel like cutting the sport. You know, but when they're hiring new coaches and giving pay raises to these head coaches, it's easy to see through the rhetoric to the truth. And the truth is that these sports have been paid for long ago, and the explosion of new money can be used to provide equitable compensation for college athletes across the board in Division I.

MARTIN: That was Ramogi Huma, founder and president of the National College Players Association. It's CONSIDER THIS FROM NPR. I'm Michel Martin.

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