06-21-2021, 07:18 PM
The issue is you need a victory worth achieving to pursue legal relief. No member of a school band is going to go through all the expense of filing lawsuits to get compensated when there is hardly any money to pay them.
These law suits weren't pursued with much vigor until the money generated by college sports started to become conspicuous.
"Football and basketball, which attract many players from lower-income backgrounds, subsidize money-losing sports which are often played by more affluent athletes." - National Bureau of Economic Research (2020)
So effectively what you see is a system that refuses to pay the labor that produces the majority of its revenue (football and basketball players) so that money generated on their backs can subsidize other people. It's so wrong I can't believe it has been allowed to continue as long as it has. Only when the money generated led to explosions of facilities and coach salaries did the athletes take issue and decide to fight agains the system that exploits them.
For those who say the education is so valuable, etc., that is not the point. The point is the labor is forced to accept limited compensation without its blessing, and every employer in the market has colluded to refuse to pay the athlete who plays a sport anything more than an education. This is a prima facie example of an anti-trust violation and why the SCOTUS ruled 9-0 on the matter.
These law suits weren't pursued with much vigor until the money generated by college sports started to become conspicuous.
"Football and basketball, which attract many players from lower-income backgrounds, subsidize money-losing sports which are often played by more affluent athletes." - National Bureau of Economic Research (2020)
So effectively what you see is a system that refuses to pay the labor that produces the majority of its revenue (football and basketball players) so that money generated on their backs can subsidize other people. It's so wrong I can't believe it has been allowed to continue as long as it has. Only when the money generated led to explosions of facilities and coach salaries did the athletes take issue and decide to fight agains the system that exploits them.
For those who say the education is so valuable, etc., that is not the point. The point is the labor is forced to accept limited compensation without its blessing, and every employer in the market has colluded to refuse to pay the athlete who plays a sport anything more than an education. This is a prima facie example of an anti-trust violation and why the SCOTUS ruled 9-0 on the matter.