The latest dent in the NCAA's foundational principles of amateurism came from an unlikely place: Monaco.
A gold medalist in track and field will become the first athlete to win international prize money at the Olympics, track and field's international governing body announced Wednesday. Each gold medalist receives her $50,000 for individual wins. The Monaco-based World Athletics Federation, which oversees athletics, has also pledged to award cash prizes to silver and bronze medalists at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
“We need to start somewhere and ensure that a portion of the revenue generated by athletes at the Olympic Games goes directly back to the people who make the Olympics a global spectacle,” World Athletics president Sebastian Coe said in a statement. It’s important.”
What's not yet clear is whether current college athletes will be able to collect that money. In what feels like a holdover from college sports' antiquated past, the NCAA currently prohibits athletes from accepting prize money at events such as tennis and golf's U.S. Open. The NCAA did not immediately respond to a request for comment on World Athletics' announcement.
The NCAA allows payments to Olympic athletes in college under its Operation Gold program, but its rules clearly state that the money must come from the athlete's home sport governing body. stipulated in They can receive money paid by national governing bodies and the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee. The USOPC currently awards each gold medalist $37,500, each silver medalist $22,500, and each bronze medalist $15,000.
This very unique environment allows college athletes to get paid to play their sport and maintain their NCAA eligibility. This is basically not possible in other environments.
It is long past time for the NCAA to allow athletes to receive their hard-earned prize money, regardless of which governing body pays it. That would include World Athletics, which pays prize money from the income it receives from the International Olympic Committee. This includes individual professional sports organizations such as the USTA and USGA, allowing college tennis players and golfers to earn prize money while maintaining their collegiate eligibility.
This situation is at the heart of a lawsuit filed by University of North Carolina tennis player Reece Brantmeyer, who says she and other athletes like her can keep the prize money they earn by participating in and winning tournaments. They claim that they have the right to do so. At the moment, we can only store enough to cover our expenses.
Meanwhile…these athletes saw Caitlin Clark appear in a national TV commercial to sell headphones through lucrative name, image and likeness (NIL) deals while quarterbacks maintain NCAA eligibility. are doing.
UNC Associate Head Tennis Coach Tyler Thomson said, “I can't think of another situation where an organization would be subject to such harsh penalties that they would be prohibited from receiving their own sweat-earned money.” The Athletic Last month, when Brantmeyer filed her lawsuit. “I think that's really wrong, especially in his NIL days.”
This point becomes even more poignant in the era of NIL, characterized by pseudo-salaries paid by booster-supported groups. These NIL agreements effectively allow donors to pay athletes to play at a particular school, meaningless when schools and conferences cannot directly pay athletes. This is a workaround. The argument that tennis players' receipt of prize money is closely tied to their compensation for playing is far weaker than what happens in sports like football and men's basketball.
UNC tennis player Reece Brantmeyer sued the NCAA for not allowing college athletes to receive prize money and maintain their eligibility. (Preston Mack/NCAA Photo via Getty Images)
In any case, the current system may not last much longer, as lawsuit after lawsuit continues to chip away at the NCAA's longstanding legal arguments defending amateurism. Meanwhile, the organization and all college athletes are stuck in a kind of gray area as rules that may have once made sense exist unchallenged until the spotlight shines directly on them.
The light revealed the NCAA's hypocritical stance on prize money. It's blindingly bright against the backdrop of multi-million dollar NIL transactions and solicitations that shouldn't even be solicitations. It's wild to think that the governing body for college sports could force tennis players to turn professional instead of allowing them to attend classes, compete in college, and receive prize money in various events. . Or the NCAA could bar a college sprinter who beat the world's fastest from receiving funding from the World Athletics Championships simply because it's not administered through the USOPC.
All these strict rules do is force elite athletes off campus sooner than they would like. That's not what the NCAA should be doing, intentionally or not.
So here is your chance to right your mistakes. After several losses in court, common sense gives us a chance to win. Let college athletes keep their prize money and eligibility.
(Top photo of Ashing Mu, who left Texas A&M to turn professional just before the 2021 U.S. Olympic Track and Field Championships and celebrates her gold medal in the women's 800 meters at the Tokyo Olympics: Jewel Samad / AFP via Getty Images )
