National Labor Relations Board ruling
- Thread starter Snave
- Start date
There are lots of things you can blame on the current administration, but this is not one of them. This is happening because the Supreme Court said the way things have always been done violates the antitrust laws. Believe it was a unanimous decision. Would take an amendment to the antitrust laws and I have not heard anybody of either party suggest one. Any amendment that would result in college athletes being treated differently from everyone else might have some Constitutional problems
The butch woman with the purple hair on the US National soccer team would disagree.
Tax debt? I mean, I'm no tax attorney, but educational expenses are deductible. So are business travel expenses (perks received on road games). About the only thing athletes currently receive from schools that might be taxable income is their meals, the value of which probably exceed the deductible limit. If they get additional money directly from the school they would be taxed on it, but they wouldn't be in debt.
Maybe they receive other benefits that would be taxable....but unless they are earning additional money their income would probably be at or below the taxable threshhold.
Maybe they receive other benefits that would be taxable....but unless they are earning additional money their income would probably be at or below the taxable threshhold.
I'm not sure it takes an amendment if the market is properly defined. The NCAA conceded the market to be "college sports", which doesn't appear to make a lot of sense and more or less ensured they were going to lose on the antitrust issues. I'm sure there was a reason they did that (maybe they were hoping for an exception that would just put the issue to bed since they were dealing with such a minor issue that they could afford to lose on). It seems like they should have been arguing to define the market as professional sports (since the athletes are claiming they are professional athletes). The athletes could at least make the argument that the NCAA effectively has a monopoly for pro sports under the age of 21, but I'm not sure it's legally the NCAA's fault that the NFL bans those players or that there is not a market for minor league professional football without the universities providing the fans.
I think this will be highly entertaining....assuming you like business, employment, and legal issues.
I'm conflicted. I'm as big a fan of college sports as you will find, but I have always recognized the system was unfair to the athletes. The inequity has only been magnified as the money has increased.
I've been predicting the collapse of this system for decades, too. College athletics is a terrible business model, that relies in large part on donations from wealthy alums, combined with substantially unpaid labor. (The athletes receive compensation, but it doesn't match the level of effort required of them).
I don't think the NLRB memo is law, but it does allow the athletes to unionize. This will get challenged in court.....where the NCAAs track record is abysmal. The twists and turns are going to be surprising and long lasting.
I don't think this is the end of college athletics, but there will be fundamental changes. My guess is we will see the development of a minor league for the NFL, and that college football will serve athletes with little hope of a professional athletic career. I would continue to support that sport, even if it is less popular over all.
This has always been my take on things. I don't blame the NCAA for trying to keep amateurism. If an 18-year old high school graduate wants to make money playing sports, it's likely pro sports with rules that says they can't.
In my perfect world, college sports would continue to be completely amateur and anyone who wanted to (and was able to), could go pro in a sport right out of high school. Basically make the pro league handle their own youth development for kids who might not be good enough at 18 (or 19 or even 21) but who could develop into a pro athlete.
Probably not much they could do. They could have been even handed and not corrupt, but while that would help their reputation, at the end of the day, it wouldn't resolve the problem that coaches and administrators are making millions and players are subject to a compensation cap.
They could have been more proactive in negotiating with pro leagues to make sure people are eligible right out of high school or try to negotiate deals with leagues where high schoolers and underclassmen can get drafted and paid while in college, but not sure what their leverage would be or what incentive pro leagues would have to do it. But the fact that the NBA set up a developmental league rather than force the NCAA to act as farm league shows maybe there would be some appetite for it.
Scholarship money for tuition is not taxable income. But when it is instead compensation for playing, it is presumably taxable. The IRS might ignore the issue, but if they are consistent, it is income. I guess if they have to be in classes to get the compensation they can treat it as a reimbursed business expense.
Agreed, it's common sense. The NFL has always been the problem here, but obviously the NCAA wasn't complaining, because they were benefitting from getting all the best players age 18-21. Many people say, "well you won't like the result if all the good players go to a minor league" or whatever. Uhh, yeah we would. College fans love their university, not just the 'game'. It would probably become even more competitive. And even if it did dip in popularity, I'd make that trade all day instead of seeing college sports become pro sports.
The downside will not be missing out on the best athletes, it will be a decline in quality of play as players make a name for themselves after one year of playing time and leave for the pros. That's what has made basketball so ******.
That said, I completely agree with you. I'd gladly have the norm be for players to go pro as soon as they get offered to get paid and to absolutely hammer schools with boosters making payments. Be much more enjoyable in the long run I think.
How it it unfair? It seems like college athletes have it as good or better than most minor league baseball players. Not as sure about the G League or whatever teh NBA minor league is. I can agree the NFL locking young players out of the league to force them to develop elsewhere so they save the expense of development is unfair, but that's not the NCAA's fault.
Why would they be the one group of people in the US paid based on the level of effort required?
Unless there is something in that memo forcing the NFL to open up the league to 18 year olds, I'm not sure this does anything to the NFL's incentives.
Tuition is an educational expense. If your job requires you to temporarily relocate, then room and board is a business expense, within limits. Most of their income would be deductible.
Minor league baseball is unfair as well, and I believe is facing a few lawsuits over it. College sports has always been a sham, requiring athletes to maintain "amateur" status while the University benefits both tangibly and intangibly. Opening up the NIL payments does a lot to address the inequities. Forcing the Universities to recognize the students as employees will also help.
I never said any of this would affect the NFL directly. I just don't think the Universities can afford to pay the athletes what they are worth, so that a lower professional league will develop. Probably owned by the NFL, but maybe not. It has a chance of being successful if the top high school athletes prefer to play there instead of colleges.
No sport should be paid the same men or women. Obviously football makes the money from the SEC.
If these "Players at Academic Institutions" are considered employees could they also be subject to non compete clauses? Meaning an athlete can't use the transfer portal to go to certain schools and play the same sport. I dont see it coming to that yet, but when I consider the long term implications of rulings like this as the relationship of university and athlete/employee start to evolve, I would think its possible. Maybe the student athletes have buyouts.??????
Eventually, no. That’s the next domino to fall. And it probably should fall, at this point. Some kid rolls in with $1.5 million in NIL money, which is more than 95% any engineering / STEM grads will make in their first 10 years combined after graduating, what is even the point of them spending one waking second on any university related function that doesn’t help them get better at the skill that got them that $1.5 million? Why waste time in Intro to Theater or whatever the 17 other classes are out there?
Where I think its inevitably going is that football (or whatever sport) playing / coaching becomes a full degree program in and of itself. You get credit hours for film review. You get credit hours for practice. You get credit hours for workouts. You get credit hours for specialized classes like Financial Planning for Athletes, Officiating / Umpiring, Intro to Sports Agency / Representation, Coaching, Sports Administration, Strength and Conditioning, Sports Nutrition, NIL, etc. What it will come down to is as long as you stay in the good graces of your coaches and the football staff, you are eligible. For any athletes that also want to be a student in the more conventional sense? They can pursue another degree program as part of their scholarship, and its still basically like it is now….except for they are now a double major.
It sounds silly, but guys like Chad Bumphis, Aaron Feld, Joe Judge, and D.J. Looney (RIP) were all able to craft very nice careers for themselves in the football world (WITHOUT becoming professional athletes) due to their exposure to our football program. They didn’t learn a damn thing in a normal college classroom that got them to those positions.
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Yeah it's an expense when you are writing a check
Some education related expense is deductible.
In this example, you play a sport and the college compensates you with an education and living expenses. You aren't in a cash out the door position, therefore no expense incurred. You are in an income position. You very well would owe taxes on the fair value of your compensation just like you would if they wrote you a check, unless they want to specially exempt income earned from providing services of an athlete to a university.
Some education related expense is deductible.
In this example, you play a sport and the college compensates you with an education and living expenses. You aren't in a cash out the door position, therefore no expense incurred. You are in an income position. You very well would owe taxes on the fair value of your compensation just like you would if they wrote you a check, unless they want to specially exempt income earned from providing services of an athlete to a university.
I don't know about their compensation not matching the value of the effort required of them, but it's clear that their current compensation doesn't match their market value for many of them. Hence the under the table payments. The market has been manipulated and a black market has taken its place.
Noncompete agreements are frowned upon by the courts, because they are restraints on trade. They are generally only enforceable if the employee's leaving to work for a competitor would or could cause real financial harm to the employer's business. The two situations where they are usually enforced by the courts are against sales people who are the company's sole contact with customers in a region and could take a substantial part or all of that business to a competitor, and where A sells B a business and agrees not to open a competing business in proximity to the one being sold. A player transferring from one college to another isn't going to be able to take any of the university's "customers' with him, so I don't think the courts would enforce one.
No, you are not looking at this the right way at all.
The financial value of the scholarship could be considered taxable income, but since the cost of the tuition is deductible it is a wash. No tax liability. The lodging and meals would likely be deductible business expenses, although as I have said the school's probably provide more than would be deductible.
When I was in grad school, I had a scholarship and a job at the University. I was a professor's assistant and taught labs to undergrads. It was a package deal...I didn't get an academic scholarship and also get a job. I was an employee of the school, and part of my compensation was free tuition to attend grad school. There was no tax liability for my tuition, although that was 35 years ago.
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