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The 20-hour Rule from a Student Perspective

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The 20-hour Rule from a Student Perspective

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The NCAA has a restricting measurement that limits time for student-athletes. Known as the Bylaw 17.02.14, the measurement says, “A student-athlete’s participation in countable athletically related activities shall be limited to a maximum of four hours per day and 20 hours per week” (Lever, 2021). Katie Lever explores the faults of this 20-hour rule in her article, "Flaws of the 20-Hour Rule," emphasizing that its original intention is to balance academic and athletic responsibilities for student-athletes. However, she points out that numerous non-countable but mandatory activities, such as meetings, media activities, and team events, contribute to exceeding the required 20 hours. This has led coaches to get away with having their athletes dedicate an easy amount of thirty hours a week. Level illustrates the flaws of this rule by describing a detailed itinerary of a four-day track trip, illustrating the discrepancies between actual time spent and the countable athletically-related time. She concludes that the total hours of countable athletically-related time for the entire trip the NCAA considered were five hours, when in reality, she did a total of 22.5 hours in traveling and competing in a span of four days. Despite its limitations, Katie Lever argues that the current system allows for a workload similar to one of a full-time job, and suggests the need for stricter regulation to align college athletes' commitments more closely with their pursuit of education. Lever concludes her article by encouraging future student-athletes to consider the real demands of an NCAA life before committing to such a program.

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The ability for donors to directly compensate any athlete they choose puts sports departments in danger of losing funding in the future.  In this New York Times article, Bruce Schoenfeld explains how the N.C.C.C. regulation, which forbade athletes from getting any kind of pay because of their name or status, was unanimously overturned by the Supreme Court. Athletes were then free to work for big sums of money in partnerships with brands and companies. For example, University of North Carolina (UNC) athlete Armando Bacot was making over $500,000 from business collaborations and endorsements (Schoenfeld, 2023). The option to pay or endorse a specific athlete can be detrimental to the rest of the team or other athletic departments. The story follows the athletic director of UNC, Bubba Cunningham, and the consequences of sponsorship deals. Usually, a donation to the athletic department of a well-known football team would support every member of the team and then trickle down to other less well-funded teams. Companies no longer need to go through colleges in order to pay certain, high-profile athletes. As a result of a change in pay, many smaller or less "popular" sports teams run the risk of losing funding or receiving support of lower-quality.

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Now that college players are allowed to cut sponsorship deals, some of them are raking in the money — but at what cost to the rest?

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The Atlantic’s podcast about the rare unanimous supreme court ruling about the NCAA’s rules for student athletes (including IPLs and receiving additional payments) and what it was like before and after the ruling for athletes. The podcast speaks about students’ struggles before the supreme ruling, and how it changed. It includes first hand experience of student athletes and how things like the lack of sufficient payment negatively impacted their athletic/ academic career. The podcast starts with talking about how the athletes were first introduced to the NCAA and their perception of it. Harris talks about how he was introduced to the term “amateur student athlete” and how he felt that, “Basically they tell you over and over again: “Stay away from any kind of money. Period.’” (Longoria). They moved onto what this meant for student athletes, where a lot of them were missing money to pay for their basic needs, and weren’t allowed to receive help paying for it. They then interviewed a teacher about how she felt and what she did with the situation once she was aware of how bad the student athletes have it. Willingham, a teacher at UNC shared about her she felt brainwashed to believe that the students and her as a teacher were so lucky and privileged, but when she tried to fight the injustices she found that people were strongly opposing her. She ended up suing the UNC for how they attacked her character for “whistle blowing”. The podcast continued and interviewed a few other professionals in the field, all which had an underlying theme of the student athletes deserving better.

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Listen to this episode from The Experiment on Spotify. In June, the Supreme Court issued a narrow ruling on college sports: Student athletes will now be able to receive educational benefits such as free laptops and paid internships.

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"College Football's Power Brokers Are Destroying It"

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"College Football's Power Brokers Are Destroying It"

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The college football landscape is being changed by reshaped conferences driven by substantial television deals. Schools are leaving athletic conferences due to television deals which are creating in a sense “super conferences”. The word “super conferences” means an athletic conference with a lot of high-ranking colleges regarding athletics. For example, the Pac-12 is losing teams due to its inability to secure a lucrative television deal, however, the SEC and the Big Ten have substantial financial television deals that are landing them huge colleges to join their respective conferences. For context, the SEC has a contract with ESPN that is 10 years worth 3 billion dollars, and the Big Ten has a contract of 7 years worth 7 billion dollars (Hill, 2023). Since schools are leaving their original athletic conferences this entails that joining a new conference means playing new teams and traveling farther away which is sacrificing traditional rivalries and historical ties. Furthermore, with NIL, athletes are now considering potential earnings alongside education and athletics when choosing a school. Athletic conferences that bring in more money due to television deals are now more enticing than ever for recruits to choose from. This dilemma questions the integrity of amateurism in college athletics since college athletes can be paid substantial amounts of money.

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College Football’s Power Brokers Are Destroying It - The Atlantic.pdf

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This chart from a Student Athletes website "represents the number of hours each student I surveyed spends with his/her sport each week" (Student Athletes). As student-athletes, a significant portion of their daily routine is engaged in various aspects of their sport. The data indicates that a majority, of these athletes invest more hours in their sports compared to their study time each week. This emphasizes how time management and sports activities affect college student-athletes, whose schedules are usually more demanding than those of regular students.

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The visualization pictured above is an Instagram post with Quinn Ewers who is the starting quarterback at the University of Texas. The Instagram post is tagged with Ryl Tea which is an iced tea brand (Ewers). Ryl Tea and Quinn Ewers have a sponsorship which is an NIL deal and Quinn Ewers posting this ad on his personal Instagram shows that he needs to post a certain amount of times on social media with Ryl Tea in order to get some incentive back. Since our topic deals with college sports and ethics this is a first-hand example of what NIL deals look like through social media. Many athletes post through social media to advertise their sponsorships in order to fulfill their part of the NIL deal.

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1. Collegiate sports → Football Games → How does a university switching conferences affect its traditional rivalries and fandoms?

Our colleagues should read Zain Bando's paper, "Rivalry Games and the Impact of Realignment," about this research question. Bando explains how the Big Ten is a well-known conference when it comes to college realignment. When colleges switch conferences, many rivalry games have fallen short, endangering the tradition and history of the sport. This implies that individuals may start to lose interest in the rivalry between well-known college teams.

To read the article, visit https://mikefarrellsports.com/college/rivalry-games-and-the-impact-of-realignment

2) Collegiate sports → College student-athletes → Does being a student-athlete affect one’s mental health?

If interested in this research question, a relevant article is, https://sais.org/resource/mental-health-of-student-athletes/

This article was written in leu of the unfortunate suicide in March of 2022 of Katie Meyer, a senior at Stanford University who was the captain of the soccer team, and studying international relations. The article brings up the problematic aspect of sports culture of being tough, and competitive, that may deter a student athlete to ask for help when dealing with mental health struggles. It brings up the importance of actively bringing up the topic of public health with athletes so that they know it is ok to talk about and know where to go for help.

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Bando, Zain. “Rivalry Games and the Impact of Realignment.” Mike Farrell Sports, 6 Aug. 2023,

mikefarrellsports.com/college/rivalry-games-and-the-impact-of-realignment.

Ewers, Quinn, and Ryl Tea. Instagram, 2 August 2023.

Hill, Jemele. “College Football’s Power Brokers Are Destroying It.” The Atlantic, 6 Aug. 2023.

Lever, Katie. “Flaws of the 20-Hour Rule.” 2aDays, 31 Aug. 2021.

Longoria, Julia, host. “The Myth of the 'Student Athlete.'” The Experiment, The Atlantic, 29 July 2021.

Schoenfeld, Bruce. “Student. Athlete. Mogul?” The New York Times Magazine, 23 Jan. 2023.

Student Athletes. "Statistics." Weebly, Weebly, https://studentathletes1.weebly.com/statistics.html.

Vallas, Danielle & Pelosi, Gabriella. "Mental Health of Student-Athletes." Serving & Accrediting Independent Schools, https://sais.org/resource/mental-health-of-student-athletes/