NCAA’s warnings about U.S. Olympic teams just ‘sportspocalypse’ threats | GUEST COMMENTARY

College athletes recently have won legal and policy battles that get them closer than ever to having rights they have long been denied as part of the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) so-called “amateurism” model. With each advance, however, the NCAA has warned that the games we love are sure to be destroyed. 

The claim that the end of sports is near is not new. In my research, I call this the “sportspocalypse” argument, and it has a long history of success in defeating or weakening athletes’ claims to greater equality, fairness and inclusivity.

The latest iteration of the NCAA’s sportspocalypting threatens the end of the United States’ dominance in the Olympic Games, if revenue-sport athletes are permitted to earn a share of the millions that their labor generates. This is because, the argument goes, sports such as swimming, and track and field are supported by the revenue generated by football and men’s basketball. With about 75 to 80% of our Olympic athletes coming from college programs, allowing any of that revenue to be diverted to the athletes who earn it would, it is asserted, kill Olympic sports. The CEO of the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee has joined the doom chorus, stating that she is “super uncomfortable” with what is happening in college sports.

Leaving aside the fact that most revenue-generating sports programs do not actually pay for themselves, much less for other sports, it is striking that the concern over the destruction of our Olympic pipeline is never raised when coaches sign multimillion-dollar deals or claim tens of millions in buyouts. Instead, the threat of the sportspocalypse only arises when athletes seek greater rights.

The sportspocalypse argument goes back at least a century, when Major League Baseball argued to the Supreme Court that applying antitrust law to the league would doom the game. MLB gained special legal and policy treatment through sportspocalypting for decades, and it was players who suffered — the league used its monopoly power to depress player salaries while keeping its revenues robust. 

Similarly, in the 1970s, when Congress enacted Title IX, the law that prohibits discrimination against girls and women in education-based sports, the NCAA  argued that the law would destroy college athletics. The sportspocalypting around Title IX continued into the 2000s, and has had a notable effect: Women and girls still do not enjoy the full measure of equality that the law requires. More than 50 years of Title IX has, however, not ended college sports.

Yet the failure of the sportspocalypse to materialize has not dampened its utility. For decades, the NCAA successfully argued to courts that its “amateurism” model, defined by its limits on athletes — including no compensation beyond the minimum scholarship and no right to earn any endorsement or other income related to their sport — were crucial to the very existence of college athletics. The result was that the NCAA built a multibillion-dollar industry that a 2019 congressional investigation concluded benefitted everyone but the players.

The NCAA’s predictions of doom have not stopped, and in fact have become particularly pronounced over the past three years. In 2021, the NCAA argued to the Supreme Court, in an antitrust case brought by athletes, that applying the law to college sports would destroy the entire enterprise. The Court unanimously ruled for the players, and three years later, college sports are more popular than ever.

The NCAA also took the sportspocalypse argument to state legislatures in an attempt to defeat measures that would give athletes the right to earn endorsement income by marketing their names, images and likenesses (NIL) to third parties, arguing that such NIL rights would particularly threaten women’s sports. When states rebuffed these doomsday predictions and enacted NIL laws, the NCAA brought its sportspocalypting to Congress. Congress has not acted, and the recent March Madness tournament shows that college sports, for women and men, are very much alive. 

Sports regulators regularly invoke the threat of sportspocalypse when athletes seek greater rights and protections. The predicted harm never comes to pass. This does not mean, however, that the argument is without merit. 

Initiatives that seek greater rights for athletes do threaten sports. Or, more specifically, they threaten the traditional economic and power arrangements that privilege those who control sports, often at the expense of the athletes who make the games possible. The transcendent activity that is sport, however, does not rely on these arrangements for its enduring beauty, excitement and appeal. Therefore, the next time the NCAA raises the specter of the end of sports, courts and policymakers should not be cowed. In the face of a threatened sportspocalypse, they should instead respond: Bring it on. 

Dionne Koller (dkoller@ubalt.edu) is a professor of law and director of the Center for Sport and the Law at the University of Baltimore School of Law.