This weekend, sports fans from across the United States are gathering to watch the first two rounds of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, one of the most lucrative sporting events in the United States. Last year, the tournament generated more than $1 billion in revenue. This year, the tournament is expected to bring in even more money.
Revenue from hosting the NCAA men’s basketball tournament goes to many places. Among them, NCAA member colleges use part of the revenue to pay coaches’ salaries. For example, Duke University pays head basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski an annual salary of $8.9 million. Meanwhile, the University of Kentucky is paying head basketball coach John Calipari a salary of just under $8 million.
Additionally, colleges allocate a portion of NCAA men’s basketball tournament revenue to paid executives. Currently, member colleges pay NCAA President Mark Emmert an annual salary of nearly $2 million. Meanwhile, some power conference commissioners earn salaries closer to $3 million.
However, the NCAA’s internal rules continue to prevent member schools from using tournament revenue to pay their athletes. Instead, based on the NCAA’s long-standing “principle of amateurism“, college athletes remain about the only ones who haven’t brought home a big payday from March Madness.
Given the outdated nature of this system, which prevents a workforce of primarily low-income African-American college athletes from sharing in the fruits of their labor, perhaps it’s time for basketball tournament players -NCAA men’s ball to seriously consider forming a union.
From a financial perspective, unionizing elite Division I college basketball schools could lead to a much-needed reallocation of some of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament revenue away from coaches and administrators, and towards the players.
Union athletes in the four major U.S. sports leagues earn approximately 40 to 50 percent of all sports-related revenue. If we applied that same percentage of revenue to players in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, it would create a pool of $400 million to $500 million to distribute among players.
Of course, gaining the right to bargain collectively against a member college or group of colleges over mandatory terms of employment could become quite political. A few years ago, when college football players subsidized by Northwestern University attempted to form a union, the National Labor Relations Board used its discretion to decline competenceeven though a regional NLRB board recognized that these football players met the definition of employees under federal law.
There may be ways for NCAA college basketball players to overcome the same union pitfalls that Northwestern University’s football team faced, such as by proposing a composite bargaining unit many member colleges and not just one. Alternatively, men’s college basketball players might want to wait and hope for a favorable antitrust ruling in the lawsuit. Jenkins v. National Collegiate Athletic Association — an outcome that could prompt the NCAA to simply recognize a college basketball players’ union as a way to mitigate future antitrust risks.
Either way, though, it appears there’s something wrong with allowing the NCAA to pull college athletes from their classes to compete in a billion-dollar basketball tournament without sharing a portion of the revenues from the tournament featuring these athletes. Tangible change in the college basketball system is long overdue, whether that change comes from a players union or a different, similar means of reform. If properly counseled, college basketball players won’t wait too long before legally pushing for meaningful change.
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Marc Edelman ([email protected]) is a professor of law at the Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College and founder of Edelman Law. He is the author of “A short treatise on amateurism and antitrust law.“His article, “The Future of College Athlete Players’ Unions», published in volume 38 of Cardozo Law Review.
