His concurring opinion in a case against the NCAA is blistering . (NCAA V Alston)
"The bottom line is that the NCAA and its member colleges are suppressing the pay of student athletes who collectively generate billions of dollars in revenues for colleges every year. Those enormous sums of money flow to seemingly everyone except the student athletes. College presidents, athletic directors, coaches, conference commissioners, and NCAA executives take in six- and seven-figure salaries. Colleges build lavish new facilities. 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,"


20-512 National Collegiate Athletic Assn. v. Alston (06/21/2021) (supremecourt.gov) (https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/20-512_gfbh.pdf)


Neil Gorsuch wrote the initial opinion against the way the NCAA compensates college athletes .

His concurring opinion in a case against the NCAA is blistering . (NCAA V Alston)
"The bottom line is that the NCAA and its member colleges are suppressing the pay of student athletes who collectively generate billions of dollars in revenues for colleges every year. Those enormous sums of money flow to seemingly everyone except the student athletes. College presidents, athletic directors, coaches, conference commissioners, and NCAA executives take in six- and seven-figure salaries. Colleges build lavish new facilities. 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,"


20-512 National Collegiate Athletic Assn. v. Alston (06/21/2021) (supremecourt.gov) (https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/20-512_gfbh.pdf)


Neil Gorsuch wrote the initial opinion against the way the NCAA compensates college athletes .


The NCAA is out of control and needs to be reined in. Good for Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.

It is the death knell of genuine, amateur college athletics. You will end up with a few dozen (or even fewer) financial monsters who dominate everything and amount to nothing more than training facilities for the NFL and the NBA. Women's athletics will become even more irrelevant.

I agree that colleges have foolishly allowed vast sums of money to be spent on what amounts to vanity, but to say that the college athletes do not receive anything is completely untrue. College athletes get a really great college experience for four or five years, great athletic training, the opportunity to play athletics on a high level, and lest it go unmentioned, at least one college degree if not two or three.

Having said that, I see the truth in the SC ruling. I guess it has all been inevitable, but as one old enough to remember college athletics as it was fifty years ago, it is sad to see all that about to pass away and be replaced with the monster that lies ahead of us.

That was a time when pro athletes were underpaid and subject to things like the reserve clause making them effectively indentured servants . Free agency revealed their true value because they were not just employees . They were the product being sold .

A scholarship is valuable to someone who will genuinely use it to better themselves . But too many are offered knowing that the student will do nothing with the time in school except to train and play the sport , They leave campus unprepared .Few move on to become pros .

To the NCAA “amateur" and “student-athlete” are terms used by the universities so they can exploit the talent , skills ,and name brand of young athletes .

But too many are offered knowing that the student will do nothing with the time in school except to train and play the sport , They leave campus unprepared .Few move on to become pros .Then perhaps that is the problem which should be addressed. Not really sure how that becomes an argument in favor of NIL. Very, very few college athletes will sell shirts with their names on them.


To the NCAA “amateur" and “student-athlete” are terms used by the universities so they can exploit the talent , skills ,and name brand of young athletes That's a fair comment for the big schools. For the hundreds of smaller schools, it's much less true. For many of them, athletics is a burden insisted upon by the alumni.

I often thought that high schools would have been much better off if athletics was moved to non-school organizations. Perhaps the same would be true for colleges and universities.