NWSLPA: NIL economy threatens Title IX

File Photo: Paul Kahl

WASHINGTON, DC–In a press release, the NWSL Players’ Association head expressed concern about NIL in college sports undermining Title IX–the landmark legislation prohibiting sex-based discrimination in higher education and is the foundation for women’s sports.

One issues is the recent House Settlement. Under the House Settlement, Division I athletes are expected to receive approximately $2.6 billion in back damages for past antitrust violations, with the overwhelming majority of those payments projected to go to men’s football and basketball players.

Another flash point is the proposed Student Compensation and Opportunity through Rights and Endorsements Act (SCORE Act). Under the SCORE Act, NWSLPA Executive Director Meghan Burke contends that the SCORE Act “rewrites the legal framework governing that system and shields it from meaningful accountability.”

A vote on the SCORE Act was recently cancelled, but further attempts are being considered to restructure college sports around a new NIL economy would come with weaker accountability protections for women athletes remains ongoing.

“For over fifty years, Title IX represented a promise: that women athletes deserve equal opportunity, equal investment, and equal dignity in sports,” said Burke in the statement. “The House Settlement and the SCORE Act together risk reversing that progress right as a new college sports economy is being built.

“The House Settlement was supposed to correct decades of exploitation,” Burke said. “Instead, we are watching a new compensation structure emerge where the overwhelming share of NIL and revenue-sharing dollars is expected to flow right back to men’s football and basketball.”

Most of the attention surrounding NIL deals have centered around men’s football and men’s basketball as the perception that both FBS College Football and Men’s D-I College Basketball has turned into de facto pro leagues with the Big Ten, SEC, ACC, and Big XII the de facto major leagues similar to the English Premier League, Bundesliga, La Liga, and Serie A–essentially leaving other sports to fight for smaller scraps.

Burke argued that any serious reform of college sports must be player-centered, including collective bargaining rights, meaningful representation, and real accountability mechanisms — not simply stabilizing the business model while leaving athletes outside the room where the rules are written.

She also emphasized that universities–meant to be non-profit institutions–cannot continue to benefit from public support while disclaiming the obligations that come with it given all attention on their football and men’s basketball teams.

“Universities are nonprofit educational institutions that receive federal funding and tax benefits,” Burke continued. “They cannot operate a de facto for-profit sports business inside those institutions while disclaiming the civil-rights and labor obligations that come with public support.

“We are at an inflection point,” Burke said. “This moment will determine whether the next generation of athletes — especially women — inherit more opportunity than the generation before them. Women athletes, and everyone who believes equality and worker power in sports matter, deserve better than legislation that stabilizes the business model while keeping athletes outside the room where the rules are written. The only durable path forward is one where athletes themselves have a real seat at the table and the legal right to use it.”

COMMENT: The purpose of this statement is to ensure that women’s sports are at the table and have access to the geese that lay the golden eggs. It is this reporter’s opinion that men’s football and men’s basketball–particularly among the aforementioned major conferences–are looking to corner the market on golden eggs (if not the geese themselves).

The recent expansion of both the men’s and women’s D-i basketball tournaments to 76 teams is overbloated and most will view that expansion as a means to allow mediocre teams from major conference a way into the Big Dance while teams in most conferences not named the Big Ten, SEC, ACC, Big XII, and Big East will likely face another rung on the ladder to earn their “One Shining Moment”–making it less likely for a run similar to Loyola Chicago’s in 2018 or Florida Atlantic’s in 2023.

The major concern about legislation like the SCORE Act and the House settlement is that they do not make the pie bigger for everyone, it cuts bigger pieces of the pie for football and men’s basketball while leaving women’s sports–including women’s basketbal–with scraps, thus compromising Title IX which prohibits the denial of benefits under any education program or “activity receiving Federal financial assistance” based on sex.

Any restructuring of the college sporting landscape should include representative of women’s sports at the table. Especially given the national television exposure in recent years for women’s soccer, basketball, volleyball, and softball.