One of the two dozen hopefuls for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 2020 has made his feelings on the NCAA known. Andrew Yang has stated that he believes college athletes should be paid by their schools, but while many are lauding his proposal, there are some issues with what he has in mind.
Instead of putting arbitrary requirements on agents, the NCAA should pay Division I athletes who generate millions in revenue for their schools. Coaches and athletic directors make millions while the kids pretend to be amateurs and scrounge for meal money. https://t.co/2yuBMikpOa
— Andrew Yang (@AndrewYang) August 7, 2019
SB Nation’s Richard Johnson highlighted some of them when he talked to Yang about his plan four months ago. Yang’s plan calls for only around 30 teams to pay players by setting their athletic programs up as taxable organizations. Currently, athletic programs are set up as non-profit organizations, allowing universities to reap all the rewards of an unfair system. This would allow the most elite athletes in the country to be paid for their services.
Of course, there are a lot of potential pitfalls with the plan. While Yang states that he could potentially make schools accept these changes by taking away their federal funding, that seems like a lawsuit that would be very difficult to win. The argument to take away federal funding simply because athletics programs are profitable would be a hard one to win.
Additionally, although there is already a sizeable gap between the haves and have-nots, the schools currently in the former group that are cut out of Yang’s plan will not be happy about this idea either. The talks of a potential Champions League system have been shot down in all corners of the country, and this would not be a popular move at most universities.
We talkin about Andrew Yang’s proposal to pay NCAA athletes? The same one I interviewed him about 4 months ago?
You’ll be shocked to know it’s not terribly well thought out… https://t.co/3fwVYY3RlP
— Richard🇬🇾Johnson (@RJ_Writes) August 7, 2019
However, there are some that are in favor of the idea. Clearly something needs to be done to share the wealth with players given the amount of money these schools make, and at least this is a step in that direction. It will be interesting to see what the NCAA has to say about Yang’s idea.
This is as bold and rational player compensation model as I've seen from @AndrewYang. If NCAA can have "student-athlete", there can be "performer-athletes" who become a for-profit, taxable entity through which corporate sponsorships and salaries flow. https://t.co/cWAYB0sQB1
— Dennis Dodd (@dennisdoddcbs) August 7, 2019
