Why College Athletes Should Be Paid — And Why the NCAA Will Never Allow It

In 2021, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled against the NCAA in NCAA v. Alston, holding that the association's restrictions on education-related benefits violated antitrust law. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, in a concurring opinion, went further: "The NCAA's business model would be flatly illegal in almost any other industry in America."

The Supreme Court. Unanimously. Said the NCAA's model is effectively illegal.

Two years later, the NCAA was still the NCAA.

The Numbers Are Embarrassing

The NCAA generated $1.14 billion in revenue in the 2021–22 academic year. Approximately 96% of that revenue came from a single source: the March Madness television contract with CBS and Turner Sports.

The Power Five conferences generated billions more separately — the SEC's media rights deal alone is worth $300 million per year.

Coaches in these programs earn salaries ranging from $3 million to $10 million per year. Athletic directors earn in the $1–3 million range. Support staff, recruiting coordinators, and strength coaches earn six-figure salaries.

The athletes who play in the games that generate this revenue? Until NIL, they received scholarships that did not cover the full cost of attendance at most institutions, and were prohibited from earning money from their athletic talent in any form.

The "Student-Athlete" Fiction

The term "student-athlete" was coined by the NCAA in the 1950s specifically in response to a workers' compensation claim by the widow of a college football player who died from injuries sustained in a game.

The NCAA coined the phrase to establish that college athletes are students who play sports, not employees who perform labor — and therefore not covered by workers' compensation.

This is documented. The NCAA's own former executive director, Walter Byers, wrote about it in his memoir. The term was not invented to honor the scholar-athlete ideal. It was invented to avoid paying insurance claims.

This is the foundation of the entire amateur athletics construct.

What The Objections Actually Are

The arguments against paying college athletes typically fall into a few categories:

"It will kill small programs." Title IX requires gender equity in athletic programs. If football and basketball athletes are paid, schools argue they'll have to cut other sports to maintain equity. This is an argument about how to distribute money, not about whether athletes deserve to be paid.

"It will ruin the purity of college sports." The purity is a myth. Boosters have been illegally paying athletes for decades. Coaches earn NFL-level salaries. The "purity" that allegedly exists is a selective fiction applied only to the athletes.

"They're already being compensated with a scholarship." The average Power Five scholarship is worth approximately $50,000 per year. The average Power Five football program generates $50–80 million in annual revenue. The math does not work.

NIL Was a Workaround, Not a Solution

NIL allowed athletes to earn money from their name, image, and likeness — from endorsements, autograph signings, social media — but not directly from their schools for their athletic performance. It's a meaningful step that still maintains the legal fiction that schools don't employ their athletes.

The real reform — employment status, revenue sharing, union representation — remains blocked by the NCAA's lobbying of state legislatures and Congress.

Why Nothing Changes

The NCAA and its member institutions employ thousands of people who have built careers on the current system. Conference commissioners, athletic directors, compliance officers, the entire apparatus of college sports administration exists in its current form because the labor costs of the core product are externalized onto scholarships.

This is not an accident. It is a structurally maintained feature.

The Supreme Court called it effectively illegal. Congress has not acted. The athletes are still waiting.

Somewhere, a third-string offensive lineman is practicing 40 hours a week, generating revenue for a program he'll leave in four years with a degree and nothing else — while the coach who recruited him just signed a six-year, $35 million contract extension.

Call that whatever you want. Just don't call it fair.