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A New Fight In The Battle For Student-Athlete Rights
Executive Summary
The National College Players Association filed a discrimination complaint against the NCAA’s 350 Division I members to the Department of Education, alleging that the organization unfairly caps athlete compensation in limiting scholarship money and direct school-to-athlete benefits.
Because Black athletes make up a higher proportion of student-athletes in Division I men’s and women’s basketball and football, the NCPA argues that restrictions on benefits and compensation disparately impact Black student-athletes.
The complaint is not a legal action: It will be referred to the Office of Civil Rights inside the DOE, where an investigation will take place to determine if NCPA’s allegations have merit. From there, if violations are found, the process allows for mediation between the two parties before the case would be referred to the Department of Justice.
The specific compensation related to the DOE complaint is different from the name, image and likeness earnings collegiate student-athletes may now earn.
The NCPA complaint focuses on scholarship money, saying sports with predominantly Black athletes receive unequal scholarship money in proportion to their sport’s revenue.
NCPA president Ramogi Huma told Sportico the complaint is part of a “kitchen-sink strategy” that the advocacy group has implemented against the NCAA, all in the name of fighting for more pay for play.
The NCPA also filed unfair labor charges against the NCAA, Pac-12, UCLA and USC in February and also started a push for athletic scholarships for Ivy league student-athletes, Title IX transparency and the enforcement of health and safety standards.
If you thought the introduction of name, image and likeness compensation for collegiate student-athletes was the end of the debate over pay for play, you thought wrong.
The war over amateurism has only intensified, and the National College Players Association is initiating its own charge.
The National College Players Association in the past two months has ramped up its fight against the NCAA’s amateurism model, recently alleging unfair labor practices by the NCAA and just last week filing a civil rights complaint to the Department of Education over the NCAA’s 350 Division I members capping scholarship compensation for student-athletes.
The restrictions on scholarship money provided to student-athletes disparately impact Black athletes, the NCPA’s complaint filed with the DOE’s Office of Civil Rights said. This is because the highest-revenue sports at the collegiate level — football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball — are predominantly Black and receive the same scholarship money and room and board assistance as other sports at Division I universities.
"This multibillion college sports enterprise imposes discriminatory practices that disproportionately harm Black athletes, while predominantly White coaches and administrators make millions of dollars," NCPA executive director Ramogi Huma said in a statement detailing the complaint. "College athletes throughout predominantly White sports receive fair market compensation, but athletes in the only predominantly Black sports (FBS football and men's and women's basketball) do not. All college athletes should have the opportunity to receive fair market pay. This can happen without cutting any sports. Colleges would just have to spend a bit less on coaches' salaries and luxury facilities.”
The NCPA’s complaint is not related to name, image and likeness compensation, focusing solely instead on scholarship money and room and board assistance. It also claims, USA Today noted, “that the NCAA’s limits result in ‘an abuse of Pell Grant funds’ because this money — which the federal government awards to low-income students based on need — would not have to be provided to football and basketball players if they were ‘compensated fairly.’”
“The complaint,” Sports illustrated wrote, “provides percentage estimates of how much of a sport’s total revenue is applied to athletic scholarships: 29.9% for women’s basketball, 8.9% for men’s basketball and 8.1% for football.” The math then shows football players missing out on $185,000 in fairly-assessed scholarship money per year, while men’s basketball players miss out on $164,000 and women’s basketball players miss out on $24,000.
“While compensation restriction has the appearance of being administered on an equal basis it is not… in part because of the emphasis on recruiting Black athletes, not Black degree seekers, by a majority of the schools in the FBS Football and Division I men’s and women’s basketball programs,” the complaint states, according to Sportico.
The complaint is not a lawsuit or legal action, and the specific target of 350 Division I universities — as opposed to the NCAA as an organization — is an important note. Member schools set their own policies rules, not the NCAA.
Instead, Sportico reported, the move initiates an investigation by the Office of Civil Rights, which can then determine if violations of the law have occurred. If so, the OCR can attempt to mediate the issue between the two parties, in this case the NCPA and the 350 Division I member schools. If mediation failed, the matter would be referred to the Department of Justice.
The OCR, Sportico noted, “will review the complaint, with an initial focus on whether it is timely, sufficiently clear in explaining a legal violation, not preempted by other agency decisions and not overly duplicative of allegations against those 350 schools in state or federal court.”
USA Today detailed the significance of the complaint in the larger fight over amateurism and college athletics labor:
“Tuesday’s filing is the latest effort by the NCPA to further loosen the NCAA’s rules on compensation for athletes, who, over the past nine months have started being allowed to make money from the use of their name, image and likeness. This followed numerous state laws being passed to allow this activity and the Supreme Court unanimously ruling against the NCAA in the Alston antitrust case. The NCPA and another athlete-advocacy group, the College Basketball Players Association, have filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board on behalf of football players and men’s and women’s basketball players.”
The complaint is part of a larger “kitchen-sink strategy” by the NCPA to challenge the NCAA and its member schools on a variety of issues, Huma told Sportico. In addition to the complaint and the unfair labor practices lawsuit in California, ESPN pointed out that NCPA has recently pushed for athletic scholarships for Ivy League student-athletes, improved Title IX compliance, enforcement of health and safety standards and the preservation of all sports.
The advocacy organization was emboldened by the Supreme Court ruling in the Alston vs. the NCAA case, in which justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that the NCAA and its member colleges “are suppressing the pay of student-athletes … But the student-athletes who generate the revenues, many of whom are African-American and from lower-income backgrounds, end up with little or nothing."
NCPA stated that its goal with the complaint is to achieve “the elimination of these civil rights violations and the abuse of Pell Grant funds by ending collusive athlete compensation limits among Division I colleges that deny fair market compensation to college athletes.”
Huma explained in multiple media interviews that his organization hoped to push federal agencies with legal authority to enforce labor and, in this case, civil rights laws in dealing with some of the most complicated, contentious issues in college sports.
“There are plenty of federal agencies that already have the power to enforce existing laws,” Huma told Sports Illustrated. “We are blitzing the federal agencies to get them to use their authority.”
Huma also told USA Today: “The big picture here is that we are looking to push the envelope with federal agencies. There are agencies that already have legal authority to bring forward reform in NCAA sports that will benefit players. We don’t need a new labor law. College athletes are employees. We just have to have college athletes recognized as employees under existing laws.”
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