Obama Didn’t Want NCAA Athletes To Be Paid: U.S. Supreme Court Just Ruled Practices Are Illegal. In this photo, President Barack Obama cheers at the Princeton game against Wisconsin-Green Bay women's college basketball game in the first round of the NCAA tournament in College Park, Md., Saturday, March 21, 2015. Obama's niece Leslie Robinson, plays for Princeton.(AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) President Barack Obama cheers at the Princeton game against Wisconsin-Green Bay women's college basketball game in the first round of the NCAA tournament in College Park, Md., Saturday, March 21, 2015. Obama's niece Leslie Robinson, plays for Princeton.(AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
In 2015, President Barack Obama said he didn’t think NCAA athletes should be paid. At the time, there wasn’t such a growing sentiment to the contrary. Now, the U.S. Supreme Court has empowered advocates for college athletes, ruling that some restrictive National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) practices related to athlete compensation are unlawful.
On Monday, June 21, in a unanimous decision written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, the SCOTUS ruled that the NCAA “unlawfully limited schools from competing for player talent by offering better benefits, to the detriment of college athletes,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
While the ruling does not give NCAA athletes the ability to receive direct, unlimited pay, it does allow for an increase in other types of benefits and compensation. They include limited cash rewards, additional scholarships, funding to pay for grad school, internships, computer equipment and study abroad programs. The cash rewards can be as much as $6,000.
The decision comes after an outcry from both athletes and advocates railing against the NCAA system, which makes billions of dollars off the backs of student athletes – many of whom are Black and come from low-income households – without offering them adequate compensation.
Gorsuch said the NCAA shouldn’t have de facto immunity to the Sherman Act – an antitrust law dating back to 1890 that prescribes the rule of free competition among those engaged in commerce – because its restrictive practices “happen to fall at the intersection of higher education, sports, and money.”
“This court has regularly refused materially identical requests from litigants seeking special dispensation from the Sherman Act on the ground that their restraints of trade serve uniquely important social objectives beyond enhancing competition,” Gorsuch wrote.
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Fellow Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed and added a separate concurring opinion. “Traditions alone cannot justify the NCAA’s decision to build a massive money-raising enterprise on the backs of student athletes who are not fairly compensated,” Kavanaugh wrote. “Nowhere else in America can businesses get away with agreeing not to pay their workers a fair market rate on the theory that their product is defined by not paying their workers a fair market rate.”
Kavanaugh also addressed the imbalance of colleges making billions off players’ talent, while players receive nothing. He noted how the players’ racial and economic background was relative to his opinion to further illustrate his point.
“The bottom line is that the NCAA and its member colleges are suppressing the pay of student athletes who collectively generate billions of dollars in revenues for colleges every year. Those enormous sums of money flow to seemingly everyone except the student athletes,” Kavanuagh wrote. “College presidents, athletic directors, coaches, conference commissioners, and NCAA executives take in six- and seven-figure salaries. Colleges build lavish new facilities. But the student athletes who generate the revenues, many of whom are African American and from lower-income backgounds, end up with little or nothing.”
This is a far cry from the 44th Commander-In-Chief initially saying he didn’t think financial compensation for NCAA athletes would be a good idea.
“In terms of compensation, I think the challenge would just then start being, do we really want to just create a situation where there are bidding wars?” Obama asked in 2015 during an interview with the Huffington Post. “How much does a Anthony Davis get paid as opposed to somebody else? And that I do think would ruin the sense of college sports.”
Obama changed his tune in 2020 during an appearance on the Bill Simmons podcast. When Bakari Sellers, who was also on the podcast, asked him if he thought college athletes should get paid, Obama replied “Yes.”
“I think that the amount of money that is being made at the college level, the risks that let’s say college football players are being subjected to and the fact that for many of these colleges, what these young people are doing are subsidizing athletic director salaries, coach salaries. All of that argues for a better economic arrangement for them, and I think there is a way of doing that that doesn’t completely eliminate the traditions and the love we all have for college sports,” Obama said, deviating from his prior position.
Ramogi Huma, executive director of the National College Players Association, praised the high court’s ruling.
“NCAA rules prohibiting athlete compensation are illegal and robbed college athletes of billions of dollars. This ruling is a major step toward ending NCAA sports’ racially exploitative rules that transfer billions of dollars per year away from predominantly Black athletes to white coaches and administrators,” Huma said.
