DESTIN, Fla. — When SEC chairmen and chancellors met Wednesday for the first time this week at the conference's annual spring meetings, they emerged from the day-long session without further clarity on how federal regulation will be linked of Title IX with the distribution of revenues resulting from the historic agreement of House v. NCAA.
Title IX requires universities to provide equal opportunities for men and women to compete in collegiate sports and provide equitable benefits to those athletes. The law, written long before athletes earned money beyond their scholarships, does not clearly state how the federal government views direct payments to athletes.
Texas President Jay Hartzell told ESPN that league presidents and chancellors are still learning how money relates to the law. The NCAA will pay more than $2.7 billion in damages over 10 years to past and current athletes, and the Power 5 conferences also agreed to a revenue-sharing plan that allows each school to share up to about $20 million per year with their athletes.
“As I understand it, the law was not written from the point of view of this particular type of payment,” he said. “It's something new. What has been explained to us is that the judge in the main case has not opined or ruled in a way that gives much direction on how Title IX fits into the agreement. We have to chart the course that we think is best “That's why we talk about it so much.”
One of the main questions surrounding the law is whether equitable treatment will require schools to pay their male and female athletes the same under the new revenue-sharing model, or if the payments are instead considered a benefit that could be proportional to the money generated. of each sport.
First-year Texas A&M athletic director Trev Alberts advocated that it shouldn't be a school-by-school interpretation and application because that “would be totally unfair in a sense.”
“Just as Texas A&M has a very conservative view, school X, Y, Z has a very liberal view and suddenly it's disparate,” he told ESPN. “We can't do that. So I think it has to be a consistent application.”
Alberts also said he believes it should be “market-driven.”
“You think about proportionality, and you think in my simple farmer's mind, if the same number of student-athletes participate as student-athletes in some form of remuneration for their name, image and likeness, however it comes to me, that's it. the key,” he said. “So should the market dictate or impact what that percentage looks like? That would be my guidance, but I guess you could correct me.”
Oklahoma President Joseph Harroz Jr. said what differentiates college athletics from the professional level is that there are multiple sports on each campus, and most don't make money.
“Seventy-five percent of all Olympic athletes come from college sports and almost none of them make money,” Harroz told ESPN. “If you also look at the progress we've made over the last 52 years under Title IX and what that has done for women in sports and women in general and for society as a whole, it's a huge benefit. That's not something that applies to professional sports.
The complexity they face, he said, is paying players while preserving the “essence of college athletics.”
“To me, Title IX, women in sports, those sports that lose money and are part of our Olympic tradition and part of our collegiate tradition, I think that's what's happening in these SEC meetings and it's happening. across the country. How can we achieve that balance in a way that respects each of those objectives, some of which may seem contradictory?” he said. “But if we do this elegantly enough, I think it can actually be complementary, but that takes real work and thought.”
Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne said there is debate over whether the federal law in this case should be about money or opportunity and that “time will tell” where it will land. Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin said schools need legal guidance they haven't received.
“That's a big difference between us and the professional model,” Stricklin said. “We have to find out what the court says or some kind of legal authority, whether it's the Office [for] Civil Rights or judge, on how we should apply until we have that direction.”
One thing conference leaders seemed to agree on is that cutting sports would be a last resort to help find funding. Georgia athletic director Josh Brooks said the athletic department and SEC believe in “broad opportunities” and cutting sports is not at the top of their list of solutions.
“Before we get down that road, we'll be able to operate more efficiently,” he told ESPN. “That's the challenge. Before we talk about eliminating a sport, let's be smart about how we operate, how we travel, how we do things.”
While the Department of Education or Congress could proactively provide responses, neither has demonstrated urgency in doing so. Specific interpretations of Title IX often arise through litigation, and in this case, a group of athletes may need to file a lawsuit over how their school is handling these direct payments to establish clarity.
Alberts is already prepared for that.
“What I'm convinced is that there will probably be multiple things that will come out of this that, no matter what decision is made, will be legally challenged anyway,” Alberts said. “So all of this is going to be questioned and that's fine.”
