The NCAA’s greed has finally caught up with the organization as they find themselves losing in court more often than Drake trying to match wits and bars with Kendrick Lamar.
The bigger problem, however, is their greed will hurt everyone else in the short and long term.
According to a report from Ross Dellenger of Yahoo! Sports, the NCAA faces a $20 billion (with a “B”, y’all) back damage judgment that could end in bankruptcy if it doesn’t accept a proposed $2.8 billion settlement.
The NCAA will have to pay that total over a 10-year period, which is $277 million a year if you’re keeping score at home.
How would the NCAA accomplish this?
By cutting school distribution funds by 20 percent, or $160 million, each year during the settlement.
That adds up to $1.6 billion of lost funding for athletic programs across the country.
That, of course, means smaller conferences, such as the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference and the Southwestern Athletic Conference, will lose out on valuable funding and resources to make their programs competitive.
Gregg Doyel of the Indianapolis Star sounded the alarm for this clandestine settlement most recently and loudly in his Monday column, stating, “If there’s one thing we know about the largest schools in college sports, it’s this: They’re not interested in being financially crushed. Lucky for them, the NCAA isn’t interested in being fair.”
Doyel claims that in order to pay off 90% of that $2.8 billion, the NCAA would force anyone outside of the Power 5 to pay $1 billion of that bill.
The NCAA has 32 Division I conferences, which means 27 schools responsible for that much judgment would be taxed at $37 million per conference.
If you think any of these conferences outside of the Power 5 have a spare eight figures lying around to pay for someone else’s incompetence, you are sadly mistaken.
“Just know this: If the NCAA and Power 5 aren’t stopped,” Doyel writes, “that miscarriage of justice will happen in the next few days.”
The NCAA’s desperation to rein in the Name, Image and Likeness revolution has cost them billions of dollars in recent years as student-athletes have finally earned the right to make some money for themselves. It is still very much peanuts in comparison to what the NCAA has made off of them over the past 40 or so years, thanks to the TV contract explosion.
There’s no real reason to believe that the NCAA and the Power 5 will ever have a change of heart and fairly share the pie with the other conferences because, as has been stated before, there’s no such thing as an ethical billionaire.
The MEAC and SWAC losing out on whatever percentage of that $160 million distribution means that football and basketball teams would be forced to take on more “guarantee games” and not only risk the health and safety of their athletes, but the well-being of their institutions to keep athletics going.
Maybe we’ve been there already, but this feels like a kill shot by the powers that be, eager to end the legal and publicity nightmare that has been House vs. NCAA.
With that case nearing its end, it appears that the Power 5 will continue to rob the poor and give to the rich.
