# data[].attributes.body
The History Behind the Debate Over Paying NCAA Athletes. The Aspen Institute. (2020, February 11).https://www.aspeninstitute.org/blog-posts/history-behind-debate-paying-ncaa-athletes/.

James, M. (2019, November 4). NCAA: Why College Athletes Should NOT be Paid. Medium. https://medium.com/@mjames11/ncaa-why-college-athletes-should-not-be-paid-dc92e73bccd8.
(n.d.).https://www.nfhs.org/media/886012/recruiting-fact-sheet-web.pdf.

NCAA.org - The Official Site of the NCAA. (n.d.). https://www.ncaa.org/.

Coleman, J. (2017, March10). Scholarships. Retrieved from http://www.ncaa.org/student-athletes/future/scholarships.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ex-college basketball player: NCAA shouldn't pay players

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Putting_money_into_a_piggybank.jpg

The main revenue generating sports, Division 1 basketball and football, are on a list known as "head count sports." These athletes are allowed to receive a full scholarship. This means tuition, room and board, books, and other necessary expenses are paid for in return for playing the sport you love. This is one point that should be taken into consideration when discussing this topic. The average college student graduates from undergraduate school with $29,000 in student loans. These athletes do not have to worry about these expenses.

Athletes also do not have to go through the same application process. While some students have to maintain a high GPA and SAT score, student athletes apply with below average grades and scores. Recruited athletes can get into some of the most prestigious institutions based on their athletic ability only. This may not be money, but these are great benefits that I believe are very valuable.

There are also several benefits that come with being a college athlete which include:
- nutritional advice
- health care
- personal trainers
- daily tutoring
- non uniform clothing

Legal Complications

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3295/3293465641_b6c5081e87.jpg

The argument for paying college athletes is solely for revenue generating sports. This excludes all sports besides football and basketball. It makes sense that only the revenue generating sports should get paid, but because of Title IX if one athletic team is paid then all athletic teams must be paid. If all athletic teams are not paid this could lead to several lawsuits, or the title IX law would need to changed.

If college athletes receive wages, I worry that they would then be considered employees. This would allow them to unionize, organize working hours and conditions, and are allowed to receive unemployment. This means any injured or cut athletes can receive unemployment payments. Not only could this lead to lawsuits, but it could also be very expensive.

Click below to find out more about possible legal complications.

A College Education

https://www.flickr.com/photos/dewfall/1041780973/

I fear if college athletes are paid it will cause them to put academics second to athletics. Intercollegiate sports are supposed to be extracurricular activities. This is why the NCAA considers their athletes to be amateurs, so they can ensure that academics are the first priority. If they are paid based on their athletic ability how can we expect that they will put equal or higher focus on their academics.

It is also important that the athletes take advantage of their college education. Football and basketball players have a 1-2% chance of making it to the pros this is why it is important that they are focused on an alternate career.

Students should be going college to learn the necessary skills that prepare them for the real world. Some of those skills include:
- responsibility
- prioritizing
- time management
- note taking skills

These are all great skills that college students gain when they graduate. If college athletes are paid it could serve as a distraction, preventing them from taking in these necessary skills.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Putting_money_into_a_piggybank.jpg The main revenue generating sports, Division 1 basketball and football, are on a list known as "head count sports." These athletes are allowed to receive a full scholarship. This means tuition, room and board, books, and other necessary expenses are paid for in return for playing the sport you love.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Crossfire: Should college athletes be paid?

# data[].attributes.headline
What’s Next? Brief overview/recommendations on how this issue should/needs to be addressed in the future

# data[].attributes.subject
What’s Next? Brief overview/recommendations on how this issue should/needs to be addressed in the future

# data[].attributes.body
This issue needs to be addressed as soon as possible to eliminate any poor behavior or public relation stunts from current student-athletes while performing.  A recommendation to show why college athletes should not be paid is creating a graphic of the money the athletic department has, but also creating a graphic of all of the money going out. Another idea is to compare student athletes debt to a normal college student's  debt. This issue also needs to be addressed immediately to communicate to kids that academics are just as important as sports. The NCAA states, "Fewer than 2 percent of NCAA student-athletes go on to be professional athletes. In reality, most student-athletes depend on academics to prepare them for life after college." This shows you the statistics on why we need to be preparing our athletes for their future and not just sports and payments throughout their collegiate career.

# data[].attributes.headline
Historical background of the issue (How has this issue developed over time?)

# data[].attributes.subject
Historical background of the issue (How has this issue developed over time?)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A TIMELINE OF COLLEGE SPORTS INFLECTION POINTS

This timeline is inspired in part (in both format and substance) by a number of sources that I found particularly illuminating on the themes of this blog. Two are by sports historian Ronald Smith: Sports and Freedom: The Rise of Big-Time College Athletics (Oxford University Press, 1988) and Pay for Play A History of Big-Time College Athletic Reform (University of Illinois Press, 2011). In Pay for Play, Smith includes a detailed timeline of college athletic reform milestones from 1852 to 2010.

Smith's timeline is prefaced with a quote spun from scripture: "Speak to the past and it shall teach thee." Timelines are a story unto their own. They connect dots that are not always apparent in narrative discussions. They have the simplicity of chronology and the power of suggesting cause and effect. They also speak to the enduring nature of normative principles that drive complex enterprises such as American college athletics. These principles reveal themselves most clearly by the way they are reconstituted and reasserted over the years.

Timelines are also subjective. What is consequential or relevant to one observer may not be to another. Smith's timeline is directed to the many college sports reform efforts that have attempted to reconcile the competing interests and motives that define college athletics. Mine emphasizes the delegitimization of contemporary revenue-producing athletes and its historical underpinnings, which necessitates a discussion of race.

Another book I found particularly helpful is John R. Thelin's Games Colleges Play: Scandal and Reform in Intercollegiate Athletics (The John's Hopkins University Press, 1994). I spent quite a bit of time reading and digesting the notorious 1929 Carnegie Report on American College Athletics and its nearly 400 pages (including exhibits and tables) in the early stages of my research for this blog. It is a beast of a document and a tough read-but essential because it has become a liturgy for reformists and big-time sports critics over the last ninety years.

Thelin's book is the only source I have found that analyzes (rather than merely mentions) the Carnegie Report. He puts the report into historical context and at least acknowledges the relevance of American society at the time: "Using the standard landmark national reports [beginning with the Carnegie Report] as key documents, my aim is to connect the history of college sports to American social history and to the study of higher education." (emphasis added)

Thelin's acknowledgment of the Report's biases helped trace the values underlying these biases from the early 20th century to the present. Smith's Sports and Freedom makes similar observations. The Carnegie Report was as much hyperbolic advocacy against big-time sports (football) as analytical research. Its intent was to define and fix anti-big-time sports narratives in the academy, the media, and broader society.

For direct, frontal analyses of race in American sports, I was influenced primarily by Harry Edwards' The Revolt of the Black Athlete (The Free Press, 1970) and William Rhoden's Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete (Three Rivers Press, 2006). Edwards views of the black athlete's circumstance and relevance through the lens of the Civil Rights movement, while Rhoden focuses on the practical, structural forces that invisibly create the conditions for the exploitation of black revenue-producing athletes.

In a similar vein, I found helpful a series of legal studies papers and journal articles by Michigan State University law professors Amy McCormick and Robert McCormick, including, for example, their paper Race and Interest Convergence in NCAA Sports (2012).

To enhance my framing of race issues in America at their most fundamental historical and definitional level for this blog, I found useful Tim Delaney and Tim Madigan's The Sociology of Sports (McFarland & Company, Inc, 2015). Additionally, I was influenced by my participation in 2019 in a workshop held by the Racial Equity Institute (REI) titled "Foundations in Historical and Institutional Racism."

I was also influenced by Allen J. Sack's and Ellen J. Staurowsky's book College Athletes for Hire (Preager, 1998). The authors provide one of the clearest discussions of amateurism I have found; they do so in an informative historical context. They thoroughly address the NCAA's 1956/57 capitulation to open professionalism through the grant of true athletics scholarships-a defining moment in big-time college sports that receives little attention. Finally, they detail the NCAA's opposition to Title IX and its cynical embrace of gender equity as it brought women's collegiate athletics under its control.

Several other books that informed my thinking on the Timeline are Andrew Zimbalist's Unpaid Professionals: Commercialism and Conflict in Big-Time College Sports (Princeton University Press, 1999), Charles T. Clotfelter's Big-Time Sports in America (Cambridge University Press, 2011; released in paperback with additions in 2019) and Gerald Gurney's, Donna A. Lopiano's and Andrew Zimbalist's Unwinding Madness: What Went Wrong with College Sports and How to Fix It (Brookings Institution Press, 2017).

The sources referenced above are written by accomplished scholars and authors concentrating mostly in history, economics, and sociology. The vantage point is mostly the upper echelons of higher education. While these resources provide a wealth of historical information and economic/sociological data, some of the views expressed in certain of these books tend to reinforce to one extent or another the narrative that revenue-producing athletes are not legitimate members of the university community and that big-time sports operate outside a university's primary intellectual mission. Moreover, some deal with race in only a cursory way.

For perspectives on the actual business of college sports, the Timeline was influenced principally by Walter Byers's 1995 book-in the nature of an expose- Unsportsmanlike Conduct: Exploiting College Athletes. Byers was the NCAA's first CEO and served from 1951-1987, the longest tenure of any NCAA chief executive. Byers retired from the NCAA in 1987 after the NCAA lost control of its football empire in 1984. Byers explains the NCAA business model and its ulterior motivations. He dismantles the NCAA's core principles including the "student-athlete" (which Byers invented to skirt workers' compensation liability) and "amateurism."

Byers' book went largely unnoticed when it was first published. Some thought Byers was bitter because the NCAA lost the Board of Regents case in 1984. The book made a comeback during the California wave of antitrust litigation between 2006 and 2020. Byers' had his deposition taken in the White v NCAA case in 2006. His testimony was devastating for the NCAA.

In subsequent high-profile antitrust cases, the athletes have attempted to enter into evidence both the book and Byers's deposition testimony. Unsurprisingly, the NCAA fought to exclude that evidence.

I also rely upon Dan Wetzel's and Don Yeager's Sole Influence: Basketball, Corporate Greed, and the Corruption of America's Youth (Warner Books, 2000). I read the book when it came out in 2000 and was mesmerized by its spot-on accuracy. Wetzel lays bare major shoe and apparel companies' insinuation into youth, college, and professional basketball and the perverse incentives and exploitative racial dynamics that drive this massive market. Sole Influence is one of those books you rarely hear about, but many grassroots insiders know it well (as exemplified by the interesting endorsement it received in the March 2020 HBO documentary "The Scheme" which addresses the 2017 college basketball-related indictments in New York).

The other is Keith Dunnivant's The 50 Year Seduction: How Television Manipulated College Football, from the Birth of the Modern NCAA to the Creation of the BCS ( Thomas Dunne Books, 2004). The subtitle speaks to the book's content-a must-read on the evolution of college football in the television era.

A syllabus for a course on college sports should include all of these resources. However, as you can see from the Timeline, many entries cover events that occurred well after these books and articles were published. As I finished the Timeline and reviewed it, it occurred to me that some of the most important events in college sports history may be playing out in real-time right now.

With foundational documents, I rely on original sources, rather than characterizations of them. I have read the full 1929 Carnegie Report, the five Knight Commission Reports, the Report of the Commission on College Basketball, each report of the NCAA NIL working group, transcripts of congressional hearings, and the NCAA rules themselves, among other sources. I have chosen to rely on the existing written record rather than interviews.

Athletes' rights litigation over the last fifteen years (ex., White, O'Bannon, Alston and McCants) has provided an important fund of material. I have spent substantial time and effort culling court filings, documentary evidence, testimony, expert reports, court orders, and media coverage.

The athletes' rights litigation era, conference realignment, ever-increasing revenue streams, state-based athletes' rights legislation, and the unconscionable arrogance and greed of the NCAA national office under Mark Emmert's leadership are all in play right now and some crucial events are likely to unfold in the next few months.

These resources offer a window into the true nature of the NCAA as an organization, the relationships among the various stakeholders, the extraordinary power of the sports-entertainment industry in college sports, the indifference of stakeholders to the interests, needs, and rights of the athletes whose talents fund the entire enterprise, and the shocking duplicity of the NCAA national office and its hired guns.

If there is one thing I have come to believe absolutely in my deep dive into the NCAA underworld, no word or deed originating from the NCAA national office is trustworthy.

My last Timeline entry was March 9, the day the 9th Circuit heard oral arguments in the Alston antitrust suit discussed at length in other posts.

Just two days later, the sports world (and the rest of the world) slammed on its brakes and braced for a seemingly invulnerable opponent: Covid19. I suspended my posting (but not my writing) soon thereafter as far more pressing issues than college sports had our attention. I have several Covid19-inspired themes that are relevant to the issues in this blog. I will pick up with those when it seems appropriate to do so.
Timeline
1852 - First intercollegiate sporting contest; Harvard-Yale rowing.

1860s - 1900 - Harvard, Yale, and Princeton dominate intercollegiate sports; college sports are mostly student-run; Yale's Walter Camp "invents" American football; baseball becomes an intercollegiate sport; basketball invented by James Naismith in 1891; Congress passes Morrill Acts (1862, 1890) which spur growth of land grant public colleges and universities; tension evolves between egalitarian American values and British aristocratic values in college sports, particularly with regards to amateurism/professionalism; Harvard, Yale, and Princeton profess amateurism but practice professionalism (gate receipts, professional coaches, compensation-cash and prizes- for winning, recruiting athletes and prospective athletes, free tuition and board for athletes, outside employment based on athletic ability).

1900-1930 - National college athletic governance begins in 1906 with what would become the NCAA (1910); national regulation driven by football-related safety concerns following spate of serious injuries and deaths; initial regulatory structure is weak; conferences and individual schools agree to rules governing competition, known as "home rule"; NCAA first formulates statements on amateurism in 1916 and 1922; NCAA has no enforcement authority; amateurism rules largely ignored; popularity of football blossoms; first wave of construction of permanent football stadiums; Harvard builds first such stadium in 1903 (40,000), Yale follows suit in 1914 (75,000), Midwest land grant schools do the same, and Stanford follows (90,000); capital investments in sports-related facilities leads universities to assume institutional control of sports; first reform movement takes shape through the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching; movement begins as part of coordinated effort by academic elitists such as Abraham Flexner, Henry Pritchett, and Howard Savage; they argue for the adoption of a European model for American higher education and a rejection of college athletics; Flexner, Pritchett and Savage come to share a common disdain for college athletics and endeavor to include it in their critiques of the American education system; their writings over the next twenty-five years reinforce each other on this central narrative; their combined work becomes a template for college athletics criticisms and reform efforts for the nearly a century.

1916 - College sports stakeholders, including the NCAA, ask the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching to conduct a study of American college athletics.

1920 - Congress ratifies the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution guaranteeing to women the right to vote.

1920 - Former semi-pro basketball player Chuck Taylor approaches the Converse shoe company with a proposal to conduct basketball clinics and promote Converse shoes at the same time; this is one of the first athletic shoe marketing campaigns; Converse comes to dominate the athletic shoe market until the 1970s; Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West, Julius "Dr. J" Erving, Magic Johnson, and Larry Bird all wear Converse; the original, ubiquitous white canvass basketball shoe later becomes known (and trademarked) as the "Chuck Taylor."

1925 - Walter Camp, the "Father of American Football" and national advocate for the development of college football dies.

1926 - NBC airs first college football radio broadcast.

1926 - Carnegie Foundation agrees to conduct a study on American college athletics.

1929 - Carnegie Foundation publishes American College Athletics which achieves notoriety as a landmark study of sports in American colleges and universities; Henry Pritchett writes a preface condemning American college sports as a threat to the intellectual mission of American universities; Howard Savage is the principal author; the report is a stinging condemnation of commercialized college football; report delegitimizes college sports (football particularly) and athletes; report embraces amateurism without regard to the societal values from which it arose in Britain; for nearly a century, the report is used as a template-mostly by critics in the academic community-for anti-revenue-producing sports narratives.

1930 - Flexner publishes (through his Institute of Advanced Studies) a grand synthesis of his thinking on American higher education titled Universities: American, English, German; Flexner, drawing on the work of Pritchett and Savage (with whom he had become close friends), characterizes American college sports (football) as "...an athletic orgy in order to amuse and placate a populace."; neither Flexner's, Pritchett's, nor Savage's scholarship addresses the legitimacy of underlying value systems (elitist, racist, and sexist).

1939 - First televised football game; Fordham v Waynesboro State; NBC New York affiliate; televised football initially viewed skeptically by schools and NCAA as a threat to live football attendance and gate receipts.

1940 - NCAA concludes that radio broadcasts of college football do not harm live attendance; in fact, evidence supports an overall increase in demand.

1941 - NCAA adopts constitution.

1944 - Congress passes G.I. Bill of Rights which includes educational benefits; increases the demand for college seats and opens higher education to the American middle class.

1945 - Ivy Group lays the foundation for the formation of Ivy League; no athletic scholarships.

1948 - NCAA passes Sanity Code which limits scholarships to tuition and fees only; athletes must be admitted under standards applicable to all students.

1950 - Sanity Code rescinded when members openly oppose it; vote to expel non-compliant members fails.

1950 - Belief that televised football decreases live attendance leads NCAA to ban televised football.

1951 - NCAA hires Walter Byers-a sports journalist-as its first full-time chief executive officer; Byers would serve in that role until 1987.

1951 - NCAA membership agrees to test whether live attendance is hurt by televised football games; NCAA enters into a contract with Westinghouse to televise a limited number of national and regional games with rotating regional blackouts on several Saturdays, and two Saturdays with no games at all; test also includes a detailed attendance survey; results of test lead NCAA to conclude that televised college games should be rationed; NCAA signs exclusive football broadcast contract with NBC for the 1952 season worth $1.14 million; NCAA prohibits other members from negotiating their own TV deals; University of Pennsylvania defies ban and enters into contract with ABC; NCAA declares Penn a member not in good standing and persuades teams on Penn's schedule to refuse to play; Penn capitulates and rescinds ABC contract; this lays the foundation for the NCAA's economic rule over football revenue for the next thirty years and its enforcement jurisdiction.

1950 - 1952 - Several serious football injuries lead to lawsuits by injured players claiming they are university employees for purposes of workers' compensation laws; after two inconsistent rulings in Colorado, the NCAA and Byers invent the term "student-athlete" as a litigation and public relations ploy to support their arguments that athletes are students, not employees.

1951 - 1952 - Basketball point-shaving scandals at City College of New York, West Point, and Kentucky rock college sports; NCAA, for the first time, uses its newly acquired enforcement authority to issue a one-year ban from competition to Kentucky; other conferences and schools support the ban; NCAA soon thereafter begins to enhance its enforcement authority and jurisdiction; enforcement action against Kentucky, combined with disciplinary action against Penn football, establishes NCAA as a credible enforcement agency.

1954 - US Supreme Court issues landmark civil rights decision Brown v Board of Education.

1950s/60s - Southern football schools begin to play northern and midwestern schools that have black players on their roster; southern schools motivated primarily by financial concerns; inter-regional games rise in popularity and market value; the southern bowls (Cotton, Sugar, and Orange) begin losing revenue and prestige by limiting participation to schools who ban black athletes; this, in part, lays the foundation for southern schools to consider recruiting black athletes.

1964 - Congress passes the Civil Rights Act.

1966 - Texas Western University defeats Kentucky in NCAA basketball championship game; Texas Western started five black players against Adolph Rupp's all-white Kentucky team; this was the first time an all-black starting five played an all-white starting five in a championship game; inspired the 2006 movie "Glory Road."

1960s/70s - Southern schools begin aggressively recruiting black athletes; the motives were mixed; southern schools believe they were at a competitive disadvantage without black players; the signing of black players was also hailed as a civil rights milestone; many universities and colleges begin adopting affirmative action admissions programs to boost enrollment of black students who had been denied access to many institutions of higher education; affirmative action was rooted in pro-democratic ideals of equality of opportunity; programs also had a remedial component that acknowledged systemic, historical discrimination against black Americans.

1960s/70s - As civil rights movement incorporates gender equity issues, women's athletics and educational groups begin to discuss the possibility of broad-based national standards for the conduct of women's intercollegiate sports; the NCAA is male-only and until the lates 1960s has expressed little interest in incorporating women's athletics; the Division of Girls' and Women's Sports (DGWS) in collaboration with the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Association of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation (AAHPER) approve the creation of the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW); the AIAW's initial charge is to set up national championships for women's sports; in the ramp-up to Title IX, AIAW philosophy begins to take shape and expands to include a complete framework for intercollegiate athletics that resembles many aspects of the home-rule philosophies in men's sports in the early 20th century and those suggested by the Carnegie Report in 1929; AIAW's model is completely at odds with the NCAA's commercialized, professionalized model; AIAW's model is student based-students are to be integral in the decision-making and rule-making processes; AIAW initially prohibits athletics scholarships as fundamentally inconsistent with an education-based model; there was to be little, if any national regulation of academic standards-those would be left to the institutions; there would be no penalties for athletes who transferred schools; in the mid-60's NCAA leadership appears to support an AIAW-like national regulatory association for women despite its different philosophy because neither the AIAW nor women's sports threaten the NCAA's business model; at the same time, the NCAA explores through studies and committees bringing women's sports under the NCAA umbrella.

1968 - NCAA creates first divisional structure: "University" and "College" divisions.

1970s (football) - Big-time football schools begin to see NCAA's exclusive claim of right to enter into contracts for televised football games as a restriction on their economic and publicity interests; expansion of cable technology opens new television markets for college sports; Ted Turner launches super-station concept through WTBS with multiple delivery systems (over the air and cable combo) which accelerates reach of cable.

1970s (basketball) - Rises in popularity; Byers begins to see basketball as a potential source of major revenue; NCAA lays the foundation for commercial exploitation of NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament; adidas, a West German company, overtakes Converse as leading shoe and athletic apparel company; adidas began promoting its brand with Olympic athletes; in 1968 Olympic games in Mexico City, a majority of medalists compete wearing adidas shoes.

1971 - The Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) is officially created; AIAW welcomes increased access to intercollegiate athletics opportunities and joins with the National Organization for Women (NOW) and the Women's Equity Action League (WEAL) to lobby in favor of the law.

1972 - Title IX enacted by Congress; set to be phased in with first compliance year in 1978; NCAA aggressively lobbies against its application to intercollegiate athletics; AIAW's student-based, non-professionalized philosophy comes under fire immediately; in 1973 the AIAW, the NEA and the AAHPER are sued by female athletes under Title IX; athletes claim that the AIAW's prohibition of athletics scholarships denies equal rights of access to education based on sex; NEA and AAHPER choose not to support the AIAW's ban, largely for political reasons; soon thereafter, the AIAW votes to permit athletics scholarships; passage of Title IX leads NCAA to accelerate its aspirations to control and govern women's college sports.

1972 - Freshman for first time are eligible to play on varsity rosters in football and men's basketball.

1972 - Phil Knight, a former college runner from Oregon, starts his own company under the name Nike; Knight markets the company as an edgy, counter-culture alternative to the more conservative adidas.

1973 - NCAA adopts new divisional structure: Divisions I, II, and III; big-time football interests prominent in NCAA regulatory structure.

1974 - The NCAA intensifies its coordinated effort to oppose Title IX; Texas Republican senator John Tower offers an NCAA-friendly amendment to Title IX which would exclude all intercollegiate athletics from Title IX jurisdiction; the Tower Amendment fails; New York Democrat senator Jacob Javits offers another NCAA-friendly amendment that if athletics departments did not use federal funding (even if their institutions did), then Title IX would not apply to athletics generally, or to a particular sport (big-time men's football and basketball); the Javits amendment becomes part of initial Title IX regulations; though the NCAA's lobbying efforts ultimately do not defeat Title IX or its applicability to all athletics and sports, the NCAA demonstrates that its political influence runs deep into America's political leadership, including the White House (for a detailed analysis of these efforts by the NCAA, see Sack and Staurowsky, College Athletes for Hire, chapter 7 "Athletic Scholarships for Women: The Complexities of Intercollegiate Athletic Equality", pages 111-126).

1974 - NC State beats UCLA in national championship semi-final game that marks the beginning of the end of the UCLA dynasty in college basketball; Maryland, one of top teams in the country, fails to make NCAA tournament after losing classic ACC championship game in overtime to NC State; NCAA only accepts conference champions.

1975 - NCAA expands men's basketball tournament field from twenty-five to thirty-two; includes first-ever "at-large" invitations (schools that did not win their conference championship); tournament field would rapidly expand over the next ten years; expansion driven by increasing popularity and economic value of college basketball and proliferation of cable TV outlets.

1976 - NCAA ends ban on dunking (the "Lew Alcindor Rule"); enhances entertainment value.

1976 - Women's basketball becomes an official Olympic sport.

1976 - NCAA eliminates "laundry money" stipend as cost-cutting measure; now deems modest expense stipends as impermissible "pay for play."

1977 - Major football schools from the SEC, ACC, SWC, Big Eight, WAC-plus Notre Dame, Penn State, West Virginia, Pittsburgh, and the service academies as independents-band together to form the College Football Association (CFA); purpose of CFA is to pursue economic interests of big-time football; Big Ten and Pac-10 do not join the CFA; tension between the CFA and NCAA over the rights to contract for the broadcast of college football games intensifies; conflict is primarily about money and power.

1977 - Dallas office of the IRS investigates Texas universities' football and men's basketball revenues; IRS threatens to tax these revenue streams as "unrelated business income" to the schools' claimed educational non-profit mission; Texas congressmen and the NCAA mobilize their lobbyists and big-time college sports political partners across the nation to shut down investigation; House majority leader Jim Wright of Texas leans on Treasury Secretary Michael Blumenthal: "were the IRS to prevail, it would obviously mean the death knell of intercollegiate sports as we know it." (see, College Athletes for Hire, Sack and Staurowsky 1998, pgs. 105-109); NCAA seeks assistance from high-profile politicians such as Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, Rep. "Tip" O'Neill of Massachusetts (Speaker of the House), and Sen Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts; IRS national office convinces Dallas office to stand down.

1977-1979 - Nike begins paying individual college basketball coaches nominal sums ($10 - $15 thousand) to have their teams wear Nike shoes and apparel.

1978 - The CFA threatens to leave the NCAA if its economic interests are not protected and separated from rest of the membership; in response, NCAA further subdivides Division I football into I-A and I-AA; Division I-A would later be known as the Football Bowl Series (FBS) division comprised of the ten biggest football conferences; division I-AA would come to be known as the Football Championship Series (FCS) made up of the remaining Division I conferences and teams that field football teams.

1978 - NCAA first uses "Final Four" in NCAA tournament program and later obtains trademark rights.

1979 - NCAA further expands men's basketball tournament field to forty teams.

1979 - Michigan State and Indiana State meet in NCAA men's basketball final featuring Magic Johnson and Larry Bird; game attracts one of the largest television audiences in the history of televised sports in America and provides a window into the commercial possibilities of big-time college basketball.

1979 - Bill and Scott Rasmussen launch the first-ever sports-oriented cable network- Entertainment and Sports Programming Network-commonly known as "ESPN".

1979 - Dept of Health, Education, and Welfare promulgates final policy determination under Title IX; schools given three ways to presumptively comply with gender equity requirements, including scholarship proportionality; U.S. Supreme Court rules in Cannon v. University of Chicago that individuals have the right to sue under Title IX.

1980 - NCAA expands men's basketball tournament field to forty-eight teams; CBS airs first NCAA "Selection Sunday" show following "60 Minutes."

1981 - First NCAA women's championships played; these championships are offered as a competing product to the AIAW's championships; by the late 1970s, the AIAW governed approximately 75,000 female athletes at over 800 colleges and universities and offered 17 national championships; the NCAA quickly overpowers AIAW schools with incentives such as free trips to championship venues, free memberships for women's programs if the men's program was already an NCAA member; and in what has been described as the knock-out punch (see, Zimbalist, Unpaid Professionals, p. 60), the NCAA added the women's basketball national championship to its national championship television package and scheduled the NCAA women's basketball national championship game at the same time as the AIAW game.

1981 - CFA sues NCAA in district court in Oklahoma in what would become landmark US Supreme Court decision NCAA v Board of Regents; name plaintiffs are the University of Oklahoma Board of Regents and the University of Georgia Athletic Association; at issue is the NCAA's 1982-1985 exclusive contract with ABC, CBS, and Turner Broadcasting for the broadcast of NCAA football games; the CFA claims the contract violates federal antitrust laws because it monopolizes the intercollegiate football broadcasting market; the district court agrees with the CFA and holds the NCAA exclusive contract is an unlawful restraint on trade under the Sherman federal antitrust act.

1982 - AIAW disbands.

1983 - Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals upholds-in a 2-1 vote- district court's Board of Regents ruling that NCAA contract violates federal antitrust laws; dissenting judge argues that NCAA television contract should be upheld because it is consistent with the NCAA's claimed goals of preserving the NCAA's core values, including amateurism and the integration of academics and athletics; views of dissenting judge become basis for NCAA legal arguments in future athletes' rights cases.

1983 - NCAA expands men's basketball tournament field to fifty-two teams.

1984 - NCAA aggressively markets and brands NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament; seeks to acquire and protect basketball-related intellectual property; all tournament revenue goes to NCAA; nearly entire NCAA budget funded by men's basketball tournament revenue.

1984 - Nike signs Michael Jordan to deal worth $500 thousand plus a percentage of proceeds from the sale of his personal line of basketball shoes; first shoe deal in which player receives percentage of sales.

1984 - ABC purchases controlling interest in ESPN.

1985 - NCAA expands men's basketball tournament field to sixty-four teams; NCAA and media partners push "Cinderella" narratives; tournament doubles in size from 1975.

1985 - 1986 NCAA adopts a 19' 9" three-point line and forty-five-second shot clock in men's basketball to enhance entertainment value; rules are criticized by legendary coaches Dean Smith, Bob Knight, and Mike Krzyzewski.

1986 - Nike revenues exceed the $1 billion mark for first time; sales driven almost exclusively by Air Jordan basketball shoes; Nike's success with Jordan leads other shoe companies to scour basketball talent pools in search of "The Next Jordan"; belief develops that a single star, such as Jordan, can be worth billions in sales; white-owned shoe companies come to understand that personal relationships with young basketball talent are necessary to win loyalty; shoe companies enlist black "grassroots" basketball figures to access predominately black, urban talent markets.

1986 - ESPN rolls out coverage of Division I men's basketball conference tournament and championship game programming; ESPN televises conference tournament and championship games as lead-in to CBS "Selection Sunday" show; ESPN later calls the lead-in week "Championship Week."

1987 - Walter Byers leaves NCAA with ill feelings towards big-time football schools; feels betrayed by some CFA members who privately pledged to support the NCAA's football television plan.

1988 - US Supreme Court issues opinion in Tarkanian v NCAA; suit by former UNLV basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian claiming that the NCAA violated his federal due process rights in investigation into UNLV basketball program; US Supreme Court rules against Tarkanian; in a 5-4 decision, it holds the NCAA is not a "state actor" for purposes of federal constitutional standards; decision has profound impact on the climate and culture of NCAA's administrative operations, particularly its enforcement actions and tactics; legalizes arbitrary application of eligibility rules; promotes culture of indifference within national office to impact of NCAA rules and enforcement actions; disadvantaged, black revenue-producing athletes disproportionately victimized by NCAA.

1989 - Knight Foundation creates the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics to study reform of big-time college sports; Commission led by former UNC President William Friday and Notre Dame President Theodore Hesburgh; Commission a "who's who" of major sports and cultural figures.

1990 - CFA begins to fracture when Penn State exits the association to join the Big 10.

1990s (Football) - First wave of football-driven conference realignments begins as conferences, not the CFA, become the primary power brokers in commercializing big-time football.

1990s (Basketball) - Shoe company wars intensify; Nike and Reebok are top competitors; by 1993, Nike has revenue of $4 billion, a substantial portion of which comes from sale of basketball shoes; revenues continue to soar; Nike completes the transition of its labor force to Asia; by beginning of decade there are no Nike factories in the US; by 1997, as Jordan's career begins to ebb, Nike generates nearly $10 billion in sales; shoe companies penetrate deeper into the urban, black basketball talent pool; shoe companies begin buying loyalty of AAU and other "grassroots" basketball influences with free shoes and apparel, substantial "stipends", and funding for world-wide tournament travel; this business model creates pipelines of players with shoe company affiliations, from youth basketball to college programs, to the NBA; AAU teams, college programs, and all-star basketball tournaments and camps identified by shoe company ("Nike team"; "adidas school"; "Reebok tournament"); criticism of shoe company influence begins to hit mainstream media; shoe companies and black professional athletes indirectly blamed for burgeoning shoe-related violence; value of shoe contracts with high-profile college coaches soars; incestuous financial relationships become commonplace among shoe companies, sports media mega-companies, sports commentators and analysts, USA Basketball, college coaches and athletic administrators; shoe companies perceived as influencing entire basketball industry from "grassroots" to professional basketball.

1991 - Notre Dame leaves the CFA to pursue its own TV deals; further weakens CFA.

1991 - First Knight Commission Report issued; titled Keeping Faith with the Student-Athlete: A New Model for Intercollegiate Athletics; explicitly channels the 1929 Carnegie Report's elitism and hostility towards commercialized college athletics; Commission recommends institutional control through presidential responsibility for college athletics; packaged as a "one plus three" model with the "one"-presidential control- directed towards the "three": academic integrity, financial integrity, and certification process for athletics departments; response to initial report was mixed; little enthusiasm among stakeholder-beneficiaries of the status quo.

1992 - First SEC football championship game; with twelve teams in conference, NCAA rules permit two conference divisions; two divisions allowed to compete for overall conference championship in final conference game between winner of each division; huge commercial success; SEC makes more money off this one game than in its entire season package with the CFA; drives acceleration of conference realignment as some conferences seek to expand to at least twelve teams.

1993 - 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issues decision in NCAA v Miller, finding that a Nevada state law requiring the NCAA to provide certain state-based due process protections in any NCAA enforcement actions in Nevada violates the dormant commerce clause of the US Constitution; NCAA argues, in part, that state statutes that conflict with NCAA rules result in a lack of uniformity that undermines the NCAA's ability to regulate at the national level; an important but little-discussed case; the NCAA may use this precedent to attack state name, image, and likeness laws such as California's SB 206.

1994 - Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act (EADA) is passed, requiring federally assisted, coeducational institutions of higher education to disclose information about the gender breakdown of their intercollegiate athletic programs; the requisite annual reports from these institutions allow for better monitoring of Title IX compliance; EADA requires information on athletics spending by gender and becomes a primary source for evaluating overall athletics spending; EADA data is used to promote narrative that athletics programs consistently lose money and must be subsidized with general university funds.

1994 - NCAA enters into first mega-contract with CBS for broadcast of the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament, now known as "March Madness" (which the NCAA trademarked after litigation with the Illinois State Athletic Association); contract covers eight years (1993 - 2002) for a total payout of $1.725 billion dollars; contract is escalating (more money each year); in 1995, the payout is $166 million; in 2002, the payout is to be $257 million; the long-term, escalating contract becomes standard practice in big-time college sports and guarantees increased NCAA profits each year; this leads to gradual, but massive growth of the NCAA administrative state.

1995 - SEC leaves CFA to negotiate its own TV deals; death knell for CFA.

1996 - Office of Civil Rights issues the"Clarification of Intercollegiate Athletics Policy Guidance: The Three-Part Test," explaining in detail how schools can comply with each prong of the three-part "effective accommodation test" first set forth in the 1979 Policy Interpretation; U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit upholds the lawfulness of the three-part test in Cohen v. Brown University; presumptive compliance may be achieved if the percentage of scholarships awarded to women approximates the percentage of women at the university; critics contend this amounts to a quota system.

1996 - The Walt Disney Company purchases ABC; ABC's holdings include ESPN; Disney now owns 80 percent interest in ESPN; Disney holdings would expand to include the A&E Network (fifty-fifty ownership with Hearst; History Channel and Lifetime), Lucasfilm, Marvel, Muppets Studio, Hulu, FX, and 21st Century Fox.

1997 - In response to threats from powerful conferences to leave the association, NCAA reformulates its revenue distribution formula to give more money to big-time conferences; NCAA Division I also does away with a one-school, one-vote governance model and replaces it with a federated system top-heavy with university presidents from power conference schools; this occurs as the presidential reform movement loses steam; football powers enhance their control of NCAA Executive Committee (later, Board of Governors) and Division I Board of Directors; Board of Directors is most powerful NCAA governance body.

1997 - CFA officially disbands.

1998 - Bowl Championship Series (BCS) begins; BCS is system of major bowl games with big-time conference tie-ins used to determine a national champion in football; champion determined by voting; imperfect method of determining champion; ultimately replaced with four-team football playoff in 2012.

1998 - 10th Circuit court of appeals issues opinion in Law v NCAA; plaintiffs are assistant basketball coaches who are subject to an NCAA salary cap of $16,000 per year; known as "restricted earnings coaches" (REC); these coaches sue the NCAA claiming the cap violates federal antitrust laws; district court summarily finds that the cap is a violation of the Sherman Act; the NCAA appeals to the 10th Circuit which upholds the district court's ruling.

1999 - NCAA extends 1994 March Madness TV deal with CBS; new deal covers an eleven year period (2003 - 2013) at a total contract price of $6 billion; the payments are escalating; in 2003, the NCAA receives $360 million; in the final year (2013), the payout is to be $765 million (contract was extended again in 2010); all contract revenue goes directly to NCAA and funds entire NCAA administrative state.

2000s - Conference realignment accelerates; motivation is consolidation of major football schools to enhance market share for the acquisition of favorable media-rights broadcast contracts; big-time basketball schools brought into major football conferences; market power of big-time basketball schools subordinated to football interests; resulting mega-conferences acquire "sub-cartel" market advantage in negotiation of lucrative media contracts; conference realignment example below (history of ACC acquisitions/departures); ACC doubles in size and loses its identity as a basketball conference.

2001 - After disbanding in the mid-1990s, the Knight Commission reconvenes and issues a report that concedes the ineffectiveness of the presidential reform era; the commercialization of big-time college sports had only gotten worse between 1991 and 2001; Commission nevertheless doubles down on presidential control.

2001 - US Supreme Court issues ruling in Brentwood Academy v Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association; Brentwood Academy sued the state association claiming a denial of federal due process in an investigation of the school; as in Tarkanian, the central legal issue is whether the state association is a "state actor" and therefore subject to federal constitutional standards; in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court holds that the association is a state actor and requires it to reconsider case in manner consistent with federal due process requirements; dissenting justices are concerned the decision is inconsistent with Tarkanian and could lead to a finding in a subsequent case against the NCAA that the NCAA is a state actor for purposes of federal constitutional law; the United States, through its Solicitor's General Office, intervenes in the appeal, files a brief and is permitted to participate in oral argument; the United States says its interest in the case is to preserve federal enforcement authority against athletic associations/entities that commit equal protection violations based on race or sex; the United States recognizes that athletic associations have extraordinary power over the schools and athletes they govern and without federal oversight and constitutional accountability, discrimination against women and racial minorities would go unchecked; United States argues that the Tennessee state association should be deemed a state actor for federal constitutional purposes; the Solicitor General at the time is Seth Waxman (a Clinton appointee); Waxman is currently in private practice with a prestigious law firm in Washington DC; Waxman now represents the NCAA; he argued the appeal in O'Bannon and is counsel of record in the Alston appeal; Waxman is arguing to defend the NCAA's compensation limits.

2003 - Reform groups propose reducing commercialization and focus on big-time football's monopoly through the Bowl Championship Series (BCS).

2003 - Myles Brand, former president of Indiana University, is named NCAA chief executive; Brand is first university president to hold the top NCAA office.

2003 - Brand sets out two issues for emphasis: increasing costs of college sports; and low graduation rates.

2003-2004 - In response to pressure from reform groups (and Congress) to address the growing commercialization of big-time sports, Brand and NCAA executive Wally Renfro devise the "collegiate model" which is used to simultaneously justify (1) the maximization of football and basketball revenue to underwrite the costs of college sports; and (2), the watering down of academic achievement and progress metrics through the invention of the "Graduation Success Rate" and "Academic Progress Rate"; repurposed conceptualization of big-time sports has the effect of blurring the distinction between unbridled commercial exploitation of FBS football and Division I men's basketball and noneconomic goals such as education and amateurism; Brand and Renfro insist that NCAA national office insinuate the phrase "collegiate model" into the lexicon of college sports; this is the same tactic used by Walter Byers in the 1950s with the term "student-athlete."

2005 - On the eve of the NCAA's centennial, Brand creates the NCAA Presidential Task Force on the Future of Division I Intercollegiate Athletics; task force composed of fifty-one members (see demographic chart below); billed as among the most significant NCAA task forces/committees in NCAA history.

2005 - ESPN's Championship Week programming expands to include ninety-nine men's and women's basketball games; it televises twenty-six of thirty-one games that determine bids to NCAA tournaments; Championship Week effectively extends March Madness to a month-long basketball sporting event.

2006 - In response to congressional inquiries, Brand uses "collegiate model" as rationale for NCAA's tax-exempt status.

2006 - Presidential Task Force releases its findings; institutional accountability is key theme; uses presidential responsibility model; focus on financial accountability; also calls for race and gender diversity in college sports hiring: " To attain and sustain diversity, institutions and athletics departments must make the transition from predominately monolithic cultures to a more inclusive environment. Leadership in diversity starts at the top-presidents must establish the appropriate sense of urgency and importance."

2006 - White v NCAA class-action suit initiated in federal court in California; first in a series of athletes' rights antitrust lawsuits; plaintiffs are Division I football and basketball players; plaintiffs claim that NCAA limits on athletic scholarships set below the full cost of attendance (COA) constitute an unlawful restraint on trade in violation of federal antitrust laws; NCAA vigorously opposes lawsuit and claims that any payments above the then-existing scholarship limit would amount to "pay for play" and convert "student-athletes" into professionals/employees; "cost of attendance" is a calculation under federal financial aid guidelines that includes expenses above tuition, room, board, and books; designed to reflect actual cost of college attendance; applicable to all students; amount varies school to to school reflecting differences in cost of living and other objective factors; difference between NCAA athletic scholarships without full cost of attendance included and scholarship with full cost of attendance is modest-ranging from approximately $2,000 per year to approximately $6,000 per year; adjusting for inflation and increased cost of living, full cost of attendance stipends in 2000's comparable to "laundry money" stipends in 1950's.

2006 - Brand articulates tripartite definition of NCAA as an institution; one component is the "association" which includes all stakeholders; the "membership" which includes all individual colleges and universities; and the "national office" which is the NCAA bureaucracy operating out of NCAA headquarters in Indianapolis; Brand suggests that the national office does nothing more than express and carry out the will of the membership.

2007 - Big Ten launches its own sports network in partnership with Fox Corporation and Fox Sports; Network is jointly owned; Fox has a 51 percent interest and the Big Ten conference has a 49 percent interest; Big Ten Network is the first big-time conference network; in FY 2010, Big Ten total revenue is $232 million; in FY 2018, Big Ten total revenue is $758 million; Network revenue is in addition to other contracts the Big Ten has with sports media outlets; salary of Big Ten Commissioner goes from $1.2 million in FY 2010 to $5.5 million in FY 2018.

2008 - NCAA settles White litigation; continues to insist that COA above existing scholarship violates NCAA amateurism rules.

2008-2009 - Big 12 1996 syndication relationship with ESPN converted to Big-12 Network for branding purposes; limited content and regional coverage; in 2014, Big 12 Network ceases operations and much Big-12 content reverts to ESPN; in FY 2010, Big 12 has total conference revenues of $148 million; in FY 2018 Big 12 total revenues are $373 million; commissioner's salary in FY 2010 is $997 thousand; in FY 2018, commissioner's salary is $4 million.

2009 - Myles Brand dies.

2010 - Mark Emmert hired to replace Brand; Emmert is university president (notably, LSU and University of Washington); while at LSU, Emmert makes Nick Saban highest-paid football coach in nation; Emmert one of highest-paid university presidents in nation.

2010 - NCAA again extends its March Madness contract; contract now includes Turner Broadcasting after CBS considers either selling remaining three years on 1999 contract to ESPN or partnering with ESPN; discussions driven by CBS losses on 1999 contract in high pay-out years of contract (2010-2013) due in part to financial crisis of 2008; CBS's inability to cover multiple games at once limits advertising revenue; ESPN backs away from deal and Turner steps in which allows coverage of complete games on CBS and all of Turner's broadcast outlets; serious consideration given to expanding tournament field to 96 to increase ad revenue; expansion to 96 teams dies and NCAA commits to expand field to 68 teams; new contract with CBS and Turner Broadcasting goes through 2024; fourteen-year deal is worth $10.8 billion dollars; escalating contract guarantees NCAA substantial annual increases; other terms not publicly disclosed; average per year is $770 million.

2010 - Knight Commission releases fifth report, focusing on financial sustainability of big-time sports; emphasizes transparency in athletic spending reporting; universities and the NCAA urged to require reporting of shoe company deals and to make those reports public; NCAA demurs; shoe companies move to mega-contracts (up to tens of millions of dollars) with schools rather than only individual coaches and teams; entire athletics departments benefit; many high profile coaches in revenue-producing sports continue to have separate deals with shoe companies; these contracts are not subject to public disclosure and are reportedly worth millions of dollars; NCAA, universities, and coaches refuse to voluntarily disclose the terms of these deals.

2011 - NCAA expands men's basketball tournament field to sixty-eight; there are more "at-large" bids offered than automatic bids (winner of conference).

2012 - Conference realignments substantially complete; five super conferences-ACC, Big Ten, Big-12, Pac-12, and SEC- emerge; become known as the "Power 5"; total of sixty-five schools; five other conferences that are in the same FBS division-American Athletic Conference, Conference USA, Mid-American Conference, Mountain West Conference, Sun Belt Conference-become known as the "Group of 5"; Power 5 schools include thirty-four of the nation's flagship state universities.

2012 - Power 5 and Group of 5 form College Football Playoff (CFP); CFP operates a four-team national football playoff and has lucrative tie-ins with several major bowls; CFP enters into long-term escalating broadcast rights contract with ESPN worth $5.7 billion over twelve years (2014-2025); average annual payout estimated at $475 million; bowl tie-ins worth an additional $220 million per year; all revenue goes directly to CFP; NCAA receives nothing; CFP revenue-sharing agreement gives 80 percent to Power 5 and 20 percent to Group of 5; Power 5 receives nearly all additional bowl revenue. CFP is now operated by CFP Administration, LLC which is governed by a Board of Managers made up of the eleven FBS conference presidents or chancellors and a Management Committee made up of ten FBS conference commissioners (plus Notre Dame athletics director); CFPA is constituted as a limited liability company rather than an educational nonprofit; of the twenty-two governance and leadership position-holders in the CFP, 82 percent are white and 95 percent are male; a committee of thirteen members selects the four teams that compete in the CFP, 85 percent are white and 92 percent are male; eight of the thirteen selection committee members are athletics directors or former head coaches of Power 5 conference schools; every aspect of the CFP operates completely outside the control of the NCAA; as noted, the NCAA receives no revenue from the CFP.

2012 - Pac-12 Conference launches its own network; Pac-12 owns 100 percent of network and does not partner with sports media outlet; although Pac-12 keeps all revenue, it must invest in production facilities and infrastructure; Pac-12 total revenue is $101 million in FY 2010; in FY 2018, total revenue is $496 million; Pac-12 Commissioner salary is $735 thousand in FY 2010; in FY2018, commissioner's salary is $5.3 million.

2013 - O'Bannon accelerates; discovery complete; trial set.

2013 - Power 5 threatens to leave NCAA if it doesn't get special treatment in NCAA legislative process.

2014 - Northwestern University football players, led by quarterback Kain Coulter, file action to form a players union under federal labor laws; suit initiated by the College Athletes Players Association and its president Ramogi Huma; after a full hearing, the regional labor relations hearing officer finds that Northwestern football players meet the definition of "employee" within the meaning of federal labor laws and allow players to vote on whether to unionize; Northwestern appeals to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB); NLRB dismisses the case for lack of jurisdiction; labor laws inapplicable to state governments; because 85 percent of big-time football schools are public, NLRB would not hear the case.

2014 (June 9 - 27) - O'Bannon trial before Judge Claudia Wilken (bench trial, no jury) in federal court in California.

2014 (August 6) - NCAA Board of Directors votes 16-2 to create a separate governance classification for Power 5 schools; new classification called "Autonomy"; Power 5 granted authority to make its own rules in certain defined area without going through standard legislative process; this essentially makes the Power 5 its own association within the NCAA; Power 5 acquire even greater competitive advantage in recruiting.

2014 (August 8) - Judge Wilken issues her ruling in O'Bannon; finds that NCAA compensation limits are subject to federal antitrust laws; finds that NCAA violated antitrust laws; allows name, image, likeness trust funds for athletes; athletes may receive up to $5,000 per year to be accessible once athlete graduates or eligibility expires; also finds that scholarship cap below full COA violates antitrust laws; injunction order to go into effect one year later on August 1, 2015; both sides appeal to Ninth Circuit; ruling is historic as it is the first case in which the NCAA's limits on athletes' compensation are found to be subject to antitrust scrutiny.

2014 - SEC launches its own sports network; network is 100 percent owned by ESPN, which is 80 percent owned by The Walt Disney Company and 20 percent owned by Hearst Communications; initial contract extends to 2034; in FY 2010, total conference revenue is $244 million; in FY 2018, total revenue is $659 million; conference commissioner's salary in FY 2010 is $1 million; commissioner's salary in FY 2018 is $2 million (prior commissioner was making $4 million).

2014 - 2015 - New round of class action antitrust cases filed on behalf of athletes and consolidated in federal court in California; Judge Wilken is assigned cases; formal caption of consolidated cases is In Re: National Collegiate Athletic Association Athletic Grant-In-Aid Cap Antitrust Litigation; suits informally known as Alston or Jenkins; suits claim full COA awards for athletes not covered by the O'Bannon ruling and a challenge to NCAA compensation limits outside context of name, image, and likeness; because suits are in California, O'Bannon decisions are binding law on litigants.

2015 (January) - NCAA, through Power 5 conferences, "voluntarily" permits full COA scholarships; this is a stunning reversal of position after years of protracted litigation and hundreds of millions of dollars spent on legal fees and settlements in which NCAA claimed that full COA scholarships were "pay for play" and would end amateurism as we know it.

2015 - NCAA ordered to pay athletes' legal fees in O'Bannon; totals $45 million; paid from revenue generated exclusively by Division I men's basketball players.

2015 - First CFP playoff games are held; Alabama, Oregon, Florida State, and Ohio State receive berths; Ohio State defeats Oregon for national championship.

2015 - 9th Circuit issues opinion in O'Bannon; court reverses name, image, likeness trust fund remedy on grounds that it is inconsistent with principles of amateurism; court says that payments to athletes "untethered" to education would result in open market for athlete services; court upholds award of full COA; court says that even though NCAA claims to have "voluntarily" offered full COA scholarships, it could reverse that decision at any time; as a result, 9th Circuit permanently prohibits NCAA from setting an athletic scholarship cap below the full cost of attendance; both sides appeal to US Supreme Court.

2016 - US Supreme Court declines to hear O'Bannon appeals.

2016 - NCAA yet again extends March Madness contract; new extension adds eight years, through 2032; one of the longest sports contract terms in history (thirty-eight years); contract price over eight-year period is $8.8 billion; escalating contract guarantees NCAA increased profits each year; additional terms not disclosed; combined value of CBS/Turner multi-media contracts for March Madness is $19.6 billion; annual price terms are redacted from contract in Alston litigation, nevertheless, the district court's 2019 opinion finding (once again) that the NCAA's compensation limits violate federal antitrust laws says, in part: "The 2016 extension increased substantially the average annual fees owed to the NCAA relative to the prior iteration [2010] of the contract ."

Demographic Tables for NCAA Governing Bodies 2018-19 (my charts and numbers):

Demographic Tables for NCAA Governing Bodies 2019-2020:

Race and Gender of NCAA's Outside Expert Leadership Teams (outside lawyers, image/ branding/marketing consultants, and strategic planning consultants) Compared to Race and Gender of Athlete Cohorts:

2016 - NCAA boycotts state of North Carolina over passage of state law known as HB2-the "bathroom bill"; state law is response to Charlotte ordinance that permits access to bathrooms based on gender identity rather than biological sex; state law requires access to bathrooms based on biological sex; NCAA bans NC from hosting NCAA sponsored championship events; bathroom bill is central issue in NC for 2016 elections, particularly gubernatorial race between Democrat challenger Roy Cooper and Republican incumbent Pat McCrory; US Justice Department sues NC over bathroom bill; NBA moves 2017 all-star game set to be played in Charlotte to another venue in protest of the bathroom bill; critics accuse NCAA of engaging in overt political advocacy in violation of its nonprofit status; Cooper wins governor's race.

2016 - NCAA Board of Governors extends Mark Emmert's multi-million-dollar contract for five more years, through 2021.

2017 - NCAA settles damages component of Alston antitrust suit for $218 million; $42 million earmarked for opposing side's attorneys' fees; settlement and attorneys' fees paid exclusively with revenue generated by Division I men's basketball players.

2017 (September 26) - US Attorney for the Southern District of New York announces basketball-related indictments alleging bribery and wire fraud in scheme to steer high-value players to certain schools and sports agents; US Attorney holds national press conference to announce charges; several well-known assistant coaches arrested; all assistant coaches are black.

2017 (October 11) - NCAA announces formation of the Commission on College Basketball (CCB) chaired by Condoleezza Rice; NCAA characterizes CCB as an "independent" commission, but all members are selected by NCAA; CCB is charged to make "transformative" recommendations within five months.

2018 (April) - CCB releases its report; foundational framework within which the CCB operates is the "collegiate model"; CCB defines collegiate model to place responsibility for conduct of intercollegiate athletics on membership; shifts responsibility away from national office; yet, recommendations enhance NCAA enforcement jurisdiction and adjudication processes run by the NCAA national office; NCAA adds "importation" rule allowing NCAA to borrow evidence from other tribunals as established fact in NCAA enforcement actions; CCB calls for degree completion funds for revenue-producing athletes; NCAA adopts a pilot degree completion program with very limited coverage; CCB calls for end to "one-and-done" but has no power to change status quo; CCB calls for university presidents to certify annually that, after conducting due diligence, their athletics programs are in compliance with NCAA rules; NCAA omits due diligence requirement; rewords old representations language in which presidents state merely that they have read and understand the NCAA Constitution's aspirational statements on institutional control; shifts responsibility for certifications to athletics directors; this effectively ends presidential control theme echoed since the Carnegie Report; CCB recommends adding five "independent" members to Board of Governors.

2018-2019 - NCAA monitors criminal cases in New York; in a 2/24/2018 interview with CBS Sports (CBS owns rights to televise March Madness), Emmert suggests that NCAA has working relationship with DOJ ("We're trying really hard to get that information [wiretaps and surreptitious acquisition of other means of communications] from the federal investigators on a regular basis. We're in contact with them through our respective attorneys on a pretty constant basis. They have to protect information for their investigation. We have to respect the boundaries of that investigation."); NCAA files motion to intervene in Gatto case to access the information Emmert referred to in the CBS interview including sensitive, disparaging, and unreliable information relating to defendants (and others) that has been sealed by the court and ruled inadmissible; court denies NCAA's motion to intervene; DOJ appears to distance itself from any perception that DOJ is using federal law enforcement powers to further the private interests of the NCAA.

2018 - NCAA Board of Governors extends Emmert's contract again; term is through 2024; Emmert's salary in FY 2016 is $2.9 million; in FY 2017, it increases to $4 million; Emmert is among the highest-paid nonprofit CEOs in America.

2018 (September 4 - September 25) - Alston trial before judge Wilken; bench trial, no jury.

2019 (March 8) - Judge Wilken issues opinion in Alston; finds that NCAA's limits on education-related benefits violate federal antitrust laws; Judge Wilken issues an injunction that prohibits NCAA from limiting education-related benefits; injunction order shifts authority to the conferences to regulate these benefits; judge reasons that conferences are in best position to make these judgments; inter-conference competition in this area mitigates antitrust issues; the injunction-at least as to education-related benefits-reverts governance and regulatory authority model back to that which existed before 1950; Power 5 and Group of 5 seem well-equipped to manage this additional administrative responsibility; shift in power to conferences seems consistent with Power 5's acquisition of autonomy after threats to form their own association; injunction essentially places NCAA in limited judicial receivership as to educational benefits; court retains continuing oversight jurisdiction to monitor NCAA actions and compliance with terms of injunction; interestingly, Power 5 join NCAA in appeal of injunction to 9th Circuit.

2019 (January) - Mark Emmert delivers annual "state of the association" speech; uses iconic imagery to associate NCAA with civil rights milestones (Note: NCAA logo subtly incorporated into images). Emmert says, in part, "...the NCAA's leadership has consistently demonstrated the value of inclusion to our nation." (see entry below for December 2019)

2019 (April) - NCAA announces the formation of the NCAA Board of Governors Federal and State Working Group; working group tasked with exploring whether it is feasible for NCAA to adopt a name, image, and likeness (NIL) policy that would permit athletes to be compensated for their NIL; working group was a response to state legislatures that are considering laws that override NCAA restrictions on athletes' use of their NIL for profit; working group made clear that any such NIL policy must be consistent with the "collegiate model", must not permit athletes to make money from their athletic skill, performance, or notoriety, and must not convert athletes into employees.

2019 - Associated Press releases its fifteen player all America men's basketball teams (1st, 2nd, 3rd teams); thirteen, or 87%, are African American; 2017 and 2018 AP all America teams are 80% African American; over three year period thirty-seven of forty-five players (82%) are African American.

2019 (August) - ACC launches the ACC Network (ACCN); ACCN is 100 percent owned by ESPN; schools do not have to incur production costs; ACC and ESPN have pre-existing long-term contract for sports content on ESPN; ACC schools required to up-fit technological capabilities of athletics facilities to ESPN's specifications; value of contract(s) not made public; in FY 2010, conference revenue is $167 million; in FY 2018, conference revenue is $464 million; conference commissioner's salary in 2010 is $1.46 million; commissioner's 2018 salary is $3.5 million.

2019 (September)- California State Assembly passes SB 206, titled "Collegiate Athletics: Student-Athlete Compensation and Representation."; vote is unanimous; bill allows college athletes in California to make money from their NIL with few restrictions; bill would not go into effect until 2023; bill explicitly mentions NCAA working group and suggests that lawmakers are willing to work with the NCAA; NCAA threatens litigation in response.

2019 (December) - The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) issues its annual Race and Gender Report Card. Dr. Richard Lapchick, a world-renowned human rights advocate focusing on equity issues in sports, is the principle author of the Report which grades various sports-related entities on their race and gender hiring practices; Dr. Lapchick's Report Card has become the gold standard in assessing college sports commitment to diversity and inclusion; it looks specifically at race and gender inclusion rates at FBS conferences and schools ("big-time" college sports), with an emphasis on football; methodology is very forgiving of college athletics because it compares leadership cohorts to the demographic of the general population, rather than the demographics of NCAA athlete cohorts (for example, black men are seven percent of the general population, but over seventy percent of players on elite Division I men's basketball rosters, whose labor funds the entire NCAA administrative state); the report card analyzes the race and gender composition of university presidents/chancellors, athletics directors, faculty athletic representatives, conference commissioners, and football coaches; just eleven months after Mark Emmert's state of the association speech (see above), the TIDES Report Card for big-time Division I sports gave an overall grade of "D"; a grade of "C" for racial hiring; and a grade of "F" for gender hiring; the Report is issued under the headline "The Lack of Diversity within Collegiate Athletic Leadership Continues."; the first sentence of the first paragraph in the Report says " White men still dominate the positions of leadership in college sports." (emphasis in original); the Report further summarizes its 2019 findings: " According to a new study released by The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) at the University of Central Florida, positions of influence within Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) schools and conferences remain overwhelmingly controlled by white men. This year's report once again showed a drastic underrepresentation of women and people of color in campus leadership positions which resulted in another combined grade of a D for race and gender on the Racial and Gender Report Card (RGRC). This is, by far, the lowest overall grade in all the 2019 Racial and Gender Report Cards. Richard Lapchick, Director of TIDES and principal author of the report, observes that "The lack of representation of women and people of color has been a consistent issue within the arena of college sport." ; Lapchick also observes: "A student at any of these institutions of higher education would either be expelled or put on academic probation with these marks." (emphasis in original); Lapchick provides specific percentages for key university decision-makers: " As the 2019-20 report illustrates, 88.5 percent of chancellors and presidents were white, 80.8 percent of athletic directors were white, 83.6 percent of faculty athletic representatives were white, and 80 percent of conference commissioners were white. Additionally, 77.7 percent of chancellors and presidents, 76.2 percent of athletic directors, 52.9 percent of faculty athletic representatives and 70 percent of conference commissioners were white men. "

2020 (January) - 9th Circuit judges assigned to decide Alston ask parties to file briefs on "...the impact, if any, of California's Fair Pay to Play Act [SB 206]...on this case."; brief to be filed by February 19 th.

2020 (February 11, 2020) - Emmert testifies before Senate Commerce Committee on Manufacturing, Trade, and Consumer Protection; in written statement, Emmert testifies that the NCAA "...may need Congress's support in helping maintain uniform standards in college sports."; Emmert's written testimony is riddled with misleading narratives and conflicting positions, particularly on NIL; Emmert uses term "amateurism", rather than the "collegiate model"; in all prior discussion of NIL, from the report of the CCB (April 2018) to its public statements on NIL and "modernizing" its rules (October 2019), NCAA has used the "collegiate model" and avoided the use of the word "amateurism" to promote its theme of "modernization"; the invocation of amateurism at the hearing is noteworthy because amateurism is the focal point of the NCAA's appeal in Alston which the NCAA's lawyers are briefing in the 9th Circuit.

2020 (February 19th) - In Alston, parties file simultaneous briefs on the relevance of California's NIL law; NCAA says law has no impact; NCAA also admits that none of its prior rhetoric on NIL ("taking action", "divisions directed to immediately [begin action]", NCAA will "modernize" its rules) should be taken to mean that the NCAA will actually make changes; the NCAA stated its position on NIL this way: " Plaintiffs mischaracterize the Board's measured directive in asserting that the NCAA unqualifiedly '...instructed each Division to promulgate rules permitting athletes to receive compensation for the right to use their names, images, and likenesses." As noted, the Board directed the divisions to 'begin considering modification and modernization of relevant NCAA bylaws' consistent with the aforementioned principles ["collegiate model"], and 'work to create new NCAA bylaws reflecting divisional priorities."; other quotes from the NCAA's brief on the NCAA's commitment to NIL rights for athletes:

- " ...the outcome of the [NCAA NIL working group] is uncertain. "

- " The [working] group has simply proposed a high-level 'regulatory framework' to guide "discussions. '"

- " ...the NCAA Board of governors has direct[ed] the working group and the three NCAA divisions to investigate the issue further and develop specific legislative proposals that are not expected to be voted on until January 2021. What those proposals will be, and what will ultimately be adopted, is thus speculative. That is especially true given that the NCAA made clear that any rule changes must not enable NIL-related benefits to be used as pay-for-play. "

2020 (February) - 9th Circuit issues Notice of Oral Argument in Alston; set for March 9 th.

2020 (March 9th) - 9th Circuit hears oral argument in Alston.

rich@cagerredux.com

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A Timeline of College Sports Inflection Points - Cager Redux

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A TIMELINE OF COLLEGE SPORTS INFLECTION POINTS This timeline is inspired in part (in both format and substance) by a number of sources that I found particularly illuminating on the themes of this blog.

# data[].attributes.body
There are many cons should the NCAA allow college athletics to be paid to play from both a college and player standpoint. Over time, college athletics have gained popularity among the American population. Paying student-athletes to play sports at the collegiate level has been a highly controversial topic and continues to be in today's world. Though it is widely supported that college athletes should be paid, I do not support this stance for many reasons!

# data[].attributes.body
Should College Athletes Be Compensated Beyond Scholarships?

# data[].attributes.body
1. How would the University pay all athletes, coaches and employees?

2. Would Pay distribution vary by sport, gender, conference level and how is that fair?

3. What makes a student-athletes training time more important then a normal student who spends their time working to pay for their own college?

4. Do you think it is fair to pay someone sitting the bench the same amount as a starter? (They both put in the time everyday)

5. Is it right to pay college student-athletes and put money ahead of their education?

6. As college kids, do we think they would be responsible with their money?

7. Do you think the pay of student-athletes would ruin team culture and relationships between teammates and coaches?