05-25-2024, 08:47 AM
Just my opinion, but Title IX is NOT going to kill this settlement.
The letter of the law is about equitable opportunities, not equal.
Universities routinely flout the spirit of Title IX with massively overinflated women's rowing rosters and extremely disparate travel/recruiting budgets for comparable sports (women's bb vs. men's bb). I expect more of the same to occur with revenue sharing.
And because the settlement explicitly ties the revenue sharing with athletes to a percentage of university athletic program revenue, the pathway is clear to shortchange all athletes whose sports are not on ESPN and/or do not draw paying customers. Sorry men's gym and women's golf, among others.
(Yes, there could/should be a lawsuit on behalf of those students not getting much of the revenue-sharing, but this settlement, I think, frames college athletics as a business venture. Tough to see the business case for men's gym to get revenue sharing that exceeds the revenue they bring in. Actually, I think it slightly more likely that football players could sue to get an even greater percentage of revenue sharing than what they're probably going to get, as football is the lever for the massive conference media rights deals. Without football, would the ACC have a deal to get their softball games on ESPN?)
The letter of the law is about equitable opportunities, not equal.
Universities routinely flout the spirit of Title IX with massively overinflated women's rowing rosters and extremely disparate travel/recruiting budgets for comparable sports (women's bb vs. men's bb). I expect more of the same to occur with revenue sharing.
And because the settlement explicitly ties the revenue sharing with athletes to a percentage of university athletic program revenue, the pathway is clear to shortchange all athletes whose sports are not on ESPN and/or do not draw paying customers. Sorry men's gym and women's golf, among others.
(Yes, there could/should be a lawsuit on behalf of those students not getting much of the revenue-sharing, but this settlement, I think, frames college athletics as a business venture. Tough to see the business case for men's gym to get revenue sharing that exceeds the revenue they bring in. Actually, I think it slightly more likely that football players could sue to get an even greater percentage of revenue sharing than what they're probably going to get, as football is the lever for the massive conference media rights deals. Without football, would the ACC have a deal to get their softball games on ESPN?)