Why doesn't the NY Times interview any of the 99.9% of student athletes who participate in non-revenue generating sports who will be harmed by this law? Why doesn't the Times ask how they're going to feel when their program is defunded and the money goes to "endorse" a couple basketball and football players who are going to make millions in less than a year anyway?
Ohashi's assertion that she is entitled to some of the billions in revenue the NCAA receives "on the backs of athletes" is such b.s. Even ignoring that "revenue" is not profit, UCLA and the NCAA lose a fortune on gymnastics and her personally, and it's ludicrous to think otherwise. If anyone has been exploited with respect to her participation in college gymnastics, it is taxpayers. The actual cost of a UCLA education is roughly $70k a year. About half of that is subsidized by taxpayers. The other half - for her anyway - was also probably subsidized by taxpayers to the extent she received a full ride, or at least by athletic department boosters who probably would have preferred if the money went to the woeful football and basketball programs. Taxpayers funded her acceptance and education at UCLA and allowed her to prance around on the mat like she's important for four years doing something that has absolutely no future. If she thinks she's so valuable, why doesn't she just pay for all of the infrastructure she takes for granted and rent out Pauley, pay for her own coaching and equipment and marketing, pay for event staff, and sell 10,000 tickets to cover the costs, and then pay her own tuition? Seriously, can someone please tell me exactly how much someone like Ohashi would made in endorsements if she could? She had approximately 2 gymnastics meets left in her entire life when she has her two minutes of fame by scoring her "perfect 10". In the end, Ohashi's "viral" video has virtually no value. It is the type of performance that might be shown for a minute as filler on Sports Center, but that's all it's worth. Ohashi has never been good enough to make an Olympic team and her "perfect 10", although kinda fun to watch for the few people who are into that sort of thing, was purely the result of NCAA created hype from the watered down scoring used in college compared to what you see from the real elite national team gymnasts. Ohashi is a very good college gymnast, but she's mostly just ungrateful about UCLA's and the NCAA's role in providing her with the tools and exposure to generate 10 million hits on YouTube. She has unrealistic expectations about what this law might do for someone like her.
The Times also ignores that apparel companies will start offering HS seniors cheap, long-term endorsement deals because they know signing 100 HS seniors to long term deals on the cheap is far more likely to pay dividends than paying someone like Zion alone $75 million after he proves he's legit in college and then goes pro. Think about that. After his freshman year, Nike reportedly signed Zion to a 7-year $75 million deal. There are maybe 10 HS senior basketball players every year with legit future endorsement potential. Nike probably could have signed all of them, including Zion, to deals right out of HS for less than half what it paid Zion alone a year later. The new law will allow them to exploit 18 year old kids on the cheap, whereas currently things are harder and more expensive after they've already drafted no. 1 and have millions from their first pro contract. In other words, the great irony of this law is that it harms many of those who can "benefit" from endorsements in college, as well as real student athletes whose non-revenue generating programs will collapse or turn into glorified inter-mural sports with no scholarships as money gets shifted from college programs to a few individual players in revenue generating sports. The law also "benefits" an even higher percentage of affluent families who can afford to pay tuition after scholarship opportunities vaporize, to the detriment of the poor. The law also harms the universities, given that few of them make money from sports, and some of the money they desperately need to fund non-revenue generators will go instead to go to a handful of players, instead of the schools that incur the massive infrastructure costs that these selfish kiddos take for granted. At the same time, the ones who win are apparel companies and boosters, plus a very small handful of basketball and football players who got deals out of HS but didn't pan out professionally. We should call this the official Law of Unintended Consequences. Overall, the law hurts the student athletes it is intended to help, but it helps rich apparel companies, boosters and affluent families that can pay tuition once scholarships go away in non-revenue sports. Nice.
