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It has been so long since most of us, for god or even knew

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how and why the National Collegiate Athletic Association ever came to be the NCAA well

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over a century ago, and college football was so dangerous players were dying on

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the field, there was a public outcry to ban the sport. President Theodore

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Roosevelt, a great sportsman himself, intervened called upon schools to form a club,

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set rules ensuring safety first. It was under that premise that college athletes

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survived and then grew and thrived. Protect the kids. But soon it wasn't

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about safety on the field, as the popularity sword the game needed protection.

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Amateurism must be preserved, after all, these are college kids first, and

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then athletes. Right. College sports as we know it today was born pure

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Americana. It was about competition, tribal loyalty, good exercise, promotion and

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entertainment. All rolled into Saturday afternoons. We built on campus cathedrals housing the

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games. Traditions were born, Rivalries grew. Even a depression and a World

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war couldn't stop it. Then television elbowed its way onto the field, and

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suddenly the coaches, the players, the schools became national celebrities, but the

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rules never changed. The kids still had to be protected. School coffers jammed

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with cash, a winning program motivated donors and politicians. Elite facilities rose overnight,

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wooing the best student athletes, all to protect them. The question then

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started out as a whisper, but got louder. Protecting them from what?

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The answer became uncomfortable. The game was protecting the athletes from themselves. The

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NCAA had limited their ability to transfer, restricted any freedom to profit from their

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celebrity. Anybody who tried was declared ineligible. The athletes never had to say,

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and the rules supposedly protecting them. One week from today, they finally

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will. They will be free. The NCAA of twenty twenty four, defending

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itself and its own version of the reserve clause in multiple lawsuits, is on

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the verge of a billion dollar settlement. On May twenty third, a proposal

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then a vote to reimburse former athletes nearly three billion dollars in lost earnings to

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be paid out over ten years, will take place, including a plan to

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share billions with current and future athletes, But this is far from done.

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Major issues remain, like how does the NCAA protect itself from future lawsuits.

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The players would have to agree not to sue. What about future players?

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One of the ideas is to allow individual players of binding arbitration hearing if they

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don't like the terms. Who pays for that? What if two thousand athletes

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request hearings? Who negotiates this? A union? Who organizes, operates and

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staffs the union? A college athlete's career is only four years? Problem?

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Each state has different labour laws. Nebraska is a right to work state.

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Here you don't have to be in a union to enjoy union benefits. The

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Feds would have to amend national labor laws. Is this proposal contention on congressional

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action? How much would they get? The number in this settlement is twenty

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two percent of all Power Conference revenues, media rights, ticket sales, sponsorship

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money. Will that be above or below the expense lines such as tuition fees,

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medical care, insurance, housing, equipment? Who gets the money?

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There is nothing in the Title nine law for gender equity that speaks to money.

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Does it only go to football and men's basketball players? And how long

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will women tolerate that? Will this be the end of the nil collectives?

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No? But It might actually give the ns DOAA some muscle to enforce rules

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they have essentially ignored over the last two years, like restricting name, image

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and likeness deals to just advertising and public endorsements funneled through approved agencies, theoretically

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ending the pay to transfer, pay to visit practice going on now the end

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of the five thousand dollars phone call to some booster's grandson. What about the

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non football schools like Creighton in the Big East. They might apply the same

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twenty two percent revenue share. It'll just be a lot less. Right now,

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the top Big East schools are paying their guys seven to ten million a

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year in nil money. It means the schools will have to spend more money

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supporting their sports programs, freeing the boosters to provide anil compensation. But at

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least now the players can start looking out for themselves.