Some cash is healthier than no cash till you understand how way more cash you ought to be getting.
2023 has been good for Caitlin Clark. After a March Insanity run that took her to the Nationwide Championship Recreation, making her America’s newest sweetheart, she’s began the 2023-2024 season on hearth (29.5 points,7.4 assists, and 6.9 rebounds per game) and seems to be a lock to the Indiana Fever, who’ve the No. 1 choose within the 2024 WNBA Draft.
However most significantly, Clark is getting paid. In line with a report from Front Office Sports, her NIL portfolio has solidified her as “probably the most marketable school athletes.” Clark is the primary school athlete to signal with State Farm and has offers with Nike, Buick, Topps, and H&R Block. She additionally joins UConn’s Paige Bueckers, Penn State’s Nick Singleton, and Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders as the one 4 school youngsters with Gatorade offers. The corporate is donating $22,000 to the Caitlin Clark Basis.
“This partnership is particular as a result of not solely does Gatorade gasoline one of the best athletes within the recreation, however they’re additionally dedicated to main by instance and giving again, which is what I try to do daily,” she mentioned in a press release. “I’m honored to affix such an iconic model that has a number of the most elite athletes in sport on their roster and may’t await what’s forward.”
That is the half the place you might be blissful {that a} lady in sports activities is getting compensated simply pretty much as good, or higher, than the lads, however nonetheless be upset that she, and different men and women, aren’t getting something near what they deserve.
“NIL, the much-ballyhooed acronym that permits school athletes to show their identify, picture and likeness into money and presents, was by no means a treatment for faculty sports activities’ inequity. Its promotion, nonetheless, confused many into believing as a lot. But it surely’s just a few court docket decision-inspired patchwork aid for athletes from the NCAA’s long-onerous management of their fame, which the affiliation become gobs of dough via commercialization that helped make multimillionaires out of coaches, athletic administrators, convention commissioners, and NCAA honchos,” wrote the Washington Put up’s Kevin B. Blackistone in a latest column titled, “Players still don’t get paid. That’s the real college football scandal,” as he highlighted a latest lawsuit in California about school athletes being prevented from being paid. “The motion afoot now will pressure faculties and universities handy over a share of the loot they make off the blood and sweat of these athletes, disproportionately Black males in soccer and basketball — similar to skilled sports activities leagues cut price with their athletes. In any case, it has been a few generations since there was a discernible distinction between how the professionals thrive and the way main school sports activities work,” he wrote.
It’s as if anyone outdoors of journalists and media members with some energy ought to say or do one thing.
“I’d take much less cash for the gamers to be compensated. I’d take much less cash for the gamers to have a share. I hope different coaches would use their voices to precise the identical factor,” said Michigan head football coach Jim Harbaugh a few weeks ago.
Harbaugh is within the minority, and that’s simply one of many many points round this factor. For example, lately fired head coach Jimbo Fisher ($77 million) and newly employed head coach Mike Elko ($42 million) are owed $119 by Texas A&M. Being a fired college football head coach has become the best job in America as they make hundreds of thousands whereas gamers are preventing to get scraps. Indiana’s Tom Allen ($15.5 million), Houston’s Dana Holgorsen ($14.8 million), Mississippi State’s Zach Arnett ($4.5 million), Syracuse’s Dino Babers ($4 million, estimate; personal college), Boise State’s Andy Avalos ($3 million) and New Mexico’s Danny Gonzales ($400,000) are all getting paid handsomely to not work anymore, whereas we’re presupposed to be blissful that the face of Iowa’s athletic division is getting $22,000 despatched to her basis from Gatorade.
The sport is rigged.
Final week, NCAA President Charlie Baker called for a new system that will create a gaggle requiring colleges to pay no less than half their athletes $30,000 per yr via a belief fund. The semantics nonetheless haven’t been flushed out and nobody is aware of what this is able to appear to be moreover HBCUs, mid-majors, and the have-nots all being utterly screwed. Like NIL, this new system could be one other Band-Help on a severely damaged and bleeding arm. Sadly sufficient, it appears sure to proceed. As a result of whereas Caitlin Clark and the likes are getting some cash, school athletes received’t see “actual cash” till they’re acknowledged for what they are surely — pupil staff.