Lawsuit settlement will change college athletics. It may be time for UM to drop sports | Opinion

The University of Miami and many of America’s other institutions of higher education suddenly found themselves last month having to prepare to engage in a dubious new line of business: operating teams in professional sports leagues.

That’s the potential fallout from a pending $2.8 billion settlement of antitrust lawsuits brought by former players against the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA). The athletes had complained that they should’ve been paid in exchange for the schools’ use of their names, images and likenesses (NIL).

With the relaxation three years ago of the NCAA’s rules against college athletes profiting from their fame, many have already been paid thousands of dollars of NIL money for things such as endorsements and personal appearances. Moreover, beginning in 2025, college athletes will also be entitled to receive a salary as the schools initiate a revenue sharing plan that could cost them upwards of $20 million per year.

If the athletes become employees, the schools will need to navigate a thicket of federal and state labor laws. Among other potential impacts: as employees the athletes presumably would have the right to organize labor unions, collectively bargain, and even go out on strike.

The NCAA is aware of this unsettling scenario. President Charlies Baker, speaking in Las Vegas on Monday, told ESPN: “If the court blesses [the pending settlement], then it puts us in a position where we can go to Congress and say: ‘One of the three branches of the federal government blessed this as a model to create compensation without triggering employment.’”

Even if Congress does act as the NCAA wishes, the question for schools such as the University of Miami is whether this new arrangement is worth the trouble and expense. Granted, there was a time — back when UM football was competing for national titles and occasionally filling the rusty old Orange Bowl — when the publicity helped generate applications for enrollment, a must for a private university. The more applications for admission a university receives, the more selective it can be, thereby enhancing its rankings and prestige.

Fortunately, UM no longer needs athletics to spur enrollment. It has grown from a school once dismissively referred to as “Suntan U” into a school renowned for its academic excellence and research. Indeed, in May of 2023 UM was asked to join the invitation-only Association of American Universities, an organization of the nation’s leading research universities.

What would happen if UM decided to withdraw from intercollegiate athletics thanks to the huge sums of TV money going to the schools in major conferences other than the Atlantic Coast Conference, where UM is trapped at a huge financial disadvantage? How will UM compete for athletes when players are encouraged to sell their services to the highest bidder? How will UM keep up with the hyperinflation in the salaries of head coaches and their numerous assistants?

There are precedents for dropping sports. The University of Chicago was a founding member of the Big Ten Conference in 1896, but it dropped football in 1939 and withdrew from the Big Ten six years later. Then, there’s UM itself. In 1971, it dropped men’s basketball and got along without it for 14 years.

For some universities, dropping sports would leave them with a proverbial white elephant: huge on-campus stadiums. Not UM. And the on-campus basketball facility could be put to other uses.

Now, with intercollegiate athletics turning pro, becoming more expensive, and increasingly vulnerable to the pernicious influence of sports gambling, it would arguably be a plus for UM if the money that alumni and boosters now contribute to UM’s sports programs could be redirected to further enhancing the school’s primary mission: education.

Robert F. Sanchez, of Tallahassee, is a former member of the Miami Herald Editorial Board. He writes for the Herald’s conservative opinion newsletter, Right to the Point. It’s weekly, and it’s free. To subscribe, go to miamiherald.com/righttothepoint.