NCAA president wants colleges to directly pay some student athletes
NCAA 總裁想要大學直接發薪水給學生運動員
In a letter sent to more than 350 Division I schools Tuesday, NCAA President
Charlie Baker said he wants to create a new tier of NCAA Division I sports.
在信中，NCAA 總裁查理貝克今天在訪談中說
他想要創造新的層級的聯盟
LAS VEGAS — NCAA President Charlie Baker is asking members to make one of
the most dramatic shifts in the history of college sports by allowing highly
resourced schools to pay some of their athletes.
可能是大學運動史上最大的轉折
In a letter sent to more than 350 Division I schools Tuesday, Baker said he
wants the association to create a new tier of NCAA Division I sports where
schools would be required to offer at least half their athletes a payment of
at least $30,000 per year through a trust fund.
Baker also proposed allowing all Division I schools to offer unlimited
educational benefits and enter into name, image and likeness licensing deals
with athletes.
He said the disparity in resources between the wealthiest schools in the top
tier of Division I called the Football Bowl Subdivision and other D-I members
— along with the hundreds of Division II and III schools — is creating “a
new series of challenges.”
“The challenges are competitive as well as financial and are complicated
further by the intersection of name, image and likeness opportunities for
student-athletes and the arrival of the Transfer Portal,” wrote Baker, the
former Massachusetts governor who took over at the NCAA in March.
Division I is currently divided for football into the FBS, which has 133
schools, and FCS (Football Championship Subdivision).
Baker’s proposal is aimed at creating a new subdivision, covering all
sports, where the richest athletic departments in the so-called Power Five
conferences — the Big Ten, Southeastern Conference, Big 12, Atlantic Coast
Conference and Pac-12 — can operate differently than the rest.
Conference realignment starting in 2024 will move the Pac-12 out of that
group.
The proposed shift would not require all members of a conference to be part
of the new subdivision. Schools would be allowed to make that determination
individually.
Baker noted athletic budgets in Division I range from $5 million and $250
million annually, with 59 schools spending over $100 million annually and
another 32 spending over $50 million. He said 259 Division I schools,
however, spend less than $50 million on their athletic programs.
Baker said the difference in the way schools that participate in
revenue-generating college sports such as major college football and
basketball operate and the vast majority of college sports is complicating
attempts to modernize the entire enterprise.
“The contextual environment is equally challenging, as the courts and other
public entities continue to debate reform measures that in many cases would
seriously damage parts or all of college athletics,” he wrote.
Baker and college sports leaders have been pleading with Congress to help the
NCAA with a federal law to regulate the way athletes can be paid for NIL
deals.
“I am 100% supportive of your efforts. Intercollegiate Athletics needs the
proactive and forward thinking you are providing,” Ohio State athletic
director Gene Smith said in a post on social media platform X.
Smith oversees one of the largest athletic departments in the country with
operating expenses of above $225 million annually.
The NCAA is also facing a new round of legal threats that could force its
members to share some of the billions in revenue generated by major college
football and basketball, along with giving athletes employees status. One
antitrust case working its way through federal court could cost the NCAA
billions in damages.
Baker called on NCAA member schools to create a new framework to make what he
called “fundamental changes.”
“First, we should make it possible for all Division I colleges and
universities to offer student-athletes any level of enhanced educational
benefits they deem appropriate. Second, rules should change for any Division
I school, at their choice, to enter into name, image and likeness licensing
opportunities with their student-athletes,” he wrote. “These two changes
will enhance the financial opportunities available to all Division I
student-athletes.”
Currently, school are allowed — though not required — to provide athletes
$5,980 per year in educational benefits under NCAA rules.
Baker said the changes would help level the playing field between men’s and
women’s athletics by forcing schools to abide by gender equity regulations
as they invest.
He said schools in a new tier of Division I should be allowed, while staying
compliant with Title IX, to “invest at least $30,000 per year into an
enhanced educational trust fund for at least half of the institution’s
eligible student-athletes.”
A new D-I subdivision should also allow members to create rules unique rules
regarding “scholarship commitment and roster size, recruitment, transfers or
NIL,” he said.
原文連結
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/sports/ncaa-president-wants-colleges-directly-pay-student-athletes-rcna128213
明天有空再翻 但原文很清楚了