JP Acosta
Appearances
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
Do they have any other play here or is it just sort of rubber stamping? Are they quietly trying to fight this change in college sports?
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
So tell us what that would mean just in practical terms for college sports if they had an antitrust exemption, if they were allowed to be a monopoly.
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
So what impact would this monopolistic exception have on name, image, and likeness rights on these $10 million deals?
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
Okay. And do you think they'll be able to win over Congress? Is there bipartisan support for this antitrust exemption?
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
It's funny. These arguments that we're having over college sports end up replicating arguments we have politically more broadly in the United States. These arguments between free market and regulation. But what's interesting about the college sports version is that it sort of transcends the traditional political divide. You've got conservatives and progressives
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
Arguing the opposite positions in some cases, isn't that right?
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
College athletes are getting paid, at least some of them. At least some of them are getting huge paydays, but the money isn't coming directly from their schools. It's a kind of confusing situation, and it all boils down to something called name, image, and likeness, or NIL.
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
Do we know, ultimately... Which version of the future of college sports better protects college athletes? Is it just letting the free market reign, or is it having the NCAA there to step in when something goes too far?
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
Pablo Torre, he's got a podcast. I've heard it. It's pretty dang good. It's called Pablo Torre Finds Out. Listen wherever you listen. Hadi Mawagdi produced today's episode of Today Explained. Amina Alsadi edited. Patrick Boyd and Rob Byers mixed. And Laura Bullard is pretty sure Larry
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
Allison has been married five and not six times, like it says on Wikipedia, but holler at us if you've got any information to the contrary. The rest of the team includes Halima Shah, Amanda Llewellyn, Avishai Artsy, Miles Bryan, Andrea Christen's daughter, Victoria Chamberlain, and Peter Balanon-Rosen.
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
Matthew Collette is a supervising editor, Miranda Kennedy's executive producer, Breakmaster Cylinder has music, Noelle, Noelle, Noelle, Noelle, Noelle. Today Explained is distributed by WNYC. The show is a part of Vox. You can support our journalism by joining our membership program today. Go to vox.com slash members to sign up. And it's the season of giving.
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
It is a way for college football and college student athletes to make money off of their name, their image, or their likeness. An example of that would be the new video game that came out, EA College Football 25. Every player that was in that game that is currently an athlete in college football got $600 because their name, image, and likeness was used in the game.
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
But some athletes, the really good ones, are able to make way more money because of slush funds that college athletic programs have at their disposal. We reached out to JP Acosta from SB Nation to help us understand, and we started with the NCAA.
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
I think at the crux of it all, the main point behind this is that the NCAA and most of their respective universities did not want to call student athletes employees. calling them employees who require them being paid by the university. The idea of athletes being paid, do you think that will ever happen at the NCAA level?
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
They have spent years fighting the fact that college football and college student athletes are employees.
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
While they've been fighting this battle in court, name, image and likeness kind of slipped in through a loophole because it is a third party. So technically,
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
These boosters that provide the name, image, and likeness deals that you see a lot of, that comes from a booster who is not being paid by the university, but is affiliated with the university to help get this player to either go to their university or stay at their university. So it's kind of been a loophole around the, oh, student athletes aren't employees.
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
About a $2 million deal with Adidas. The biggest deal of the year was a whopping $10 million reportedly paid out to quarterback Bryce Underwood to change his commitment from LSU to Michigan. But what's kind of weird about these deals is that the schools aren't necessarily the ones paying out.
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
We're going to keep fighting this in court. but name, image, and likeness allows for a little bit of a side road to get to paying the players.
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
Okay, so now I think we have to explain where this money is coming from, this $10 million that went to a University of Michigan football player. It didn't come from the University of Michigan?
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
No, it technically does not come from the University of Michigan. The biggest example of this I would point to is the University of Arkansas. The University of Arkansas, their biggest donor and their biggest booster is the founder of Tyson's Chicken Nuggets.
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
With playoffs kicking off Friday, it's a bigger than usual week for college football, but it's also been a huge year. College athletes have been getting paid. Arch Manning, 3.1 mil, I believe.
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
Tyson's Nuggets is an Arkansas alumni. Jerry Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, is an Arkansas alumni.
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
Every year, I think Arkansas plays a game in the Dallas Cowboys stadium because Jerry Jones wants to see his alma mater play in his stadium that he spent a billion dollars on. What this owner, founder of Tyson can do is with all the money that he has, he can help give a player money to either get him to come to Arkansas or he can get a player to stay at Arkansas through name, image, and likeness.
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
Huh. And is it, like, happening above board? Or are these happening, like, in dark, shadowy rooms with, like, you know, low lighting and, you know, grime or something?
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
It used to be the latter. It was very under the table.
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
How did this come about? Allegedly. Now with NIL being legal, everything is over the table. All the deals that were being made under the table can now be made over.
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
Now that people have figured this out, how do you think it's changing college sports? Or is it?
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
I think it's definitely changing college sports in multiple ways, both good and bad. I think NIL has worked with the transfer portal, which allows players to go to whatever school they would like as they please.
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
Bryce's millions apparently came at least partly from the tech billionaire Larry Ellison, all because his fifth wife went to the University of Michigan We're going to figure out what's going on in college sports on Today Explained.
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
Of course, the big schools with the most money are still going to be able to pay more players, but you're more likely to keep a good player around at your program if you have a good booster program, if you have a good NIL collective. A big example of that would be Ash and Jonte. Boise State's running back won the Doak Walker Award.
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
He had an option after his sophomore year to go to a bigger school and get more money from other big schools. But because Boise State's NIL was able to get him compensated well, he's able to stay.
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
and Boise State's in the college football playoff for the first time. So it's kind of those things where NIL has helped create a little bit of parity at the college level. And I think that is a very good thing. Now, the problem with NIL is there is no federal regulation on it. There is no NCA laws on NIL. Every state has their own separate laws.
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
So what might work in Florida won't work in Arizona, won't work in California. And what's happening is... With NIL, all these boosters and collectives, they can fundraise major amounts of money. If you have a strong enough and a big enough booster fan base, you can raise $20 million to go get yourself an entirely new roster filled with some of the best players.
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
All these big schools with these big, powerful alumni can use that money to pay for players to come to their school. And it kind of leaves the smaller schools to dry a little bit. We talked about Ash and John T. with Boise State. That is the good example.
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
The bad example is every other group of five, every other small school that doesn't have that big of an alumni base, that doesn't have a lot of money, are losing their good players to the portal every year.
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
Which makes... I guess college sports feel a little bit more like pro sports where the biggest teams like the New York Mets or the Yankees or the Dodgers get to buy up the best players.
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
Yes, exactly. It feels like there is no salary cap right now with name, image, and likeness, which is what baseball sees with the Mets and the Yankees and the Dodgers because they can give out that money compared to a team that's a little smaller. They really can't because while... Alabama might have $20, $30 million to hand out to a recruit.
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
A school like my alma mater, FAU, might only have $20 million, even less than that, to give out to the entire team. So you see kind of the economic imbalances that we see between the big schools and the small schools.
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
But where we're also seeing a change is this is an added level to what's happening with NIL is in 2025, college sports will begin revenue sharing, which means up to 20% of what a school brings in in revenue
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
has to be saved for players and it feels like the bigger schools are just going to keep getting more top heavy and being able to pay players a whole lot more so you just naturally get all the talent funneling into like 10 schools tops
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
JP Acosta, SBNation.com. When Today Explained returns, we're going to find out why we're letting college sports turn into something that looks a lot like professional sports.
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
This special series from The Verge is presented by Adobe Express.
Today, Explained
The price of paying college athletes
Pablo's covered name, image, and likeness about a half dozen times on his show. So we asked him over to ours to help us understand how college sports ended up looking so much like pro sports this year.