With College Football Playoff expansion and NCAA men’s basketball tournament rights totaling $2.4 billion annually and women’s basketball’s most marketable player in history — Iowa’s Caitlin Clark — launching her sport to unprecedented television viewership, collegiate sports appear healthy, vibrant and lucrative. That goes for everyone except the participants.
Questions are brewing from college officials to legal scholars about whether athletes should receive a piece of the postseason revenue. Those discussions have spilled over to athlete rights and employment status, both of which likely will be determined in federal court.
NCAA president Charlie Baker, who spoke briefly before Sunday’s women’s championship game, said he wants “to make some changes to how support for student-athletes works in Division I.”
“We’ve done a number of things that are ready to deal with that, but I’m not going to get ahead of the membership on that sort of thing,” Baker said. “I’m sure it’s a conversation we’ll be having.”
But where does the membership stand on paying players? Judging from a recent panel discussion at the University of Iowa, legal scholars and experts are all over the place. With lawsuits threatening to blow apart the current amateur model and…
