March Madness Ends, But College Athlete Pay Fights Rage On
Irwin Kishner, co-chair of Herrick's Sports Law Group and co-chair of Herrick's Corporate Department, was quoted in Law360 in an article discussing how college sports is sorting out player compensation questions as well as issues with collective bargaining agreements in the wake of March Madness. The article notes that in the years since it has become legal to compensate college athletes for their names, images and likenesses, the player compensation industry has grown into a multi-billion-dollar behemoth.
The article notes that there are a lot of moving pieces, and that "[o]ne of the biggest challenges when it comes to unionization, or finding any blanket resolution to the question of college athlete compensation, is the vast disparities between the Power 4 schools and everyone else." This would make a single model challenging across all of Division 1.
Irwin said he is skeptical that the run of pro-player developments — from the revenue sharing settlement, to NIL deals, to a transfer portal that lets athletes jump from school to school — is enough to press the biggest schools into embracing unions.
He also said the shift in the landscape could be looked at as the playing field leveling after decades of the schools holding the cards. But if the union push does reemerge, Irwin said it would likely be beneficial for student-athletes, since only a select few typically receive big-dollar NIL contracts or slices of the revenue-sharing pie.
"Let's assume for a moment that all athletes joined a union, I would suspect those athletes would be doing better than if they were alone," Irwin said. "Unionized employers, over the long term, typically do better than non-unionized."
The article further notes that all of the outstanding issues may be resolved in the courts, with a patchwork of different issues being addressed. Irwin predicted that "these issues will take shape in courts, legislatures and the NLRB for the next 10 to 15 years."
"We are a little past birth if you will, with our proverbial baby," he said.
By the time the issues are resolved, he added, "That baby will be a $10 million recruit."
Read the full article in Law360 here. Access may require a subscription.