华盛顿介入大学体育：NIL金钱狂潮与国会监管风暴

Natalie Kitroeff: From the New York Times, I'm Natalie Kitroeff. This is the Daily.

Archival Audio: A sport has imploded before our very eyes. And I don't say this hyperbolically.

Archival Audio: In the 5 years since student athletes were allowed to get paid to play, college sports has gone completely haywire.

Archival Audio: Give it a break. This is not the college football we all grew up with.

Archival Audio: Each year, it's gotten a little worse.

Archival Audio: We have a broken system. Players are moving from team to team chasing a payday.

Archival Audio: Malachi Tony 4.1 million. Carson Beck four points evaluation.

Archival Audio: Million. I think my biggest year was six. He's a college kid.

Archival Audio: Colleges are amassing dark money war chests. Programs that never stood a chance before are becoming champions.

Archival Audio: The Indiana Hoosiers are the kings of college football. And no one, not the players, not the coaches, not the athletic directors, can agree on what the rules around all this even are, much less how to follow them.

Archival Audio: We have no rules and we have no governance. This is just a really sad state of affairs.

Archival Audio: It's not right and we got to find a way to do something. Today, Stuart Mandel of The Athletic explains why this week Washington finally decided to step in. It's Thursday, October 1st. Stuart Mandel, welcome to the Daily.

Stuart Mandel: Oh, we're starting right now.

Natalie Kitroeff: Yes.

Stuart Mandel: Okay. There was no real warning there, but I'm ready now. Thank you. Glad to be here.

Natalie Kitroeff: So, earlier this week, something very rare happened. a bill passed the Senate with overwhelming bipartisan support. And even rarer, that bill is attempting to regulate sports, which is a part of American life that Washington generally keeps its nose out of. So, we are turning to you to explain this moment. Help us understand what's going on here.

Stuart Mandel: Well, for the past 5 years, ever since college athletes were finally allowed to make money and specifically paid for their name, image, and likeness rights, what we now call NIL, everybody's been talking about how college sports is in chaos, a term you often hear as the wild, wild west. And so the industry, the NCA, the conferences, the schools have spent a lot of time and a lot of money lobbying Congress saying, "We need your help." So this bill, the Protect College Sports Act, which was co-sponsored by Ted Cruz, a Republican, and Maria Canwell, a Democrat, it covers pretty much everything you can think of in college sports. But what most people focus on is how it regulates name, image, and likeness payments and then how often the players can transfer between schools.

Natalie Kitroeff: Got it.

Stuart Mandel: And on Monday night, it passed in the Senate and it passed in a landslide. Final vote was 77 to 22. Now it goes to the House. Nobody can really predict what's going to happen then, but in the meantime, a huge bipartisan slam dunk for the people who sponsored the bill. Maybe not so much for the people who are on the other side of it.

Natalie Kitroeff: And this is being described as historic. Talk about why

Stuart Mandel: it's historic because nobody can remember a time when Congress set out to regulate an entire sport. You know, they they've regulated certain parts like NFL television rights and whatnot. But here is Congress basically saying, "Hey, we're dictating the rules now. They want to take over regulation of all of college sports.

Natalie Kitroeff: Okay, we're going to get into the specifics of the bill, what it actually does. But before we do that, I want to talk about the state of college sports right now. At this point, I think everybody has an opinion about college sports. There's a lot of dark money flowing through this world, and you, as a part of the amazing team at The Athletic, which is a sports publication owned by the Times company, have done a lot of vital work to help give us a clearer picture of the landscape here. So, let's tell the story of how we actually got to this point where Washington is intervening in this way.

Stuart Mandel: Well, I think it's safe to say that college sports has changed more in the last 5 years than it had in the 50 years before that. And that all has to do with a pretty important demarcation, which is prior to July 1st, 2021, throughout all of our lifetimes, it was understood college athletes cannot make money. They cannot receive any compensation above and beyond their scholarship.

Natalie Kitroeff: Right. In fact, at one point in the NCA rule book, it said you can give them a bagel, but not a bagel and cream cheese. That was a real rule.

Stuart Mandel: Wow. But throughout the 2010s, public opinion is shifting to, well, why don't the athletes receive a cup of all this money? People are reading about television deals that are worth billions of dollars. They're reading about coaches making5 $6 million a year, which is quaint now, but it was a lot then, and saying this is not fair to the athletes. They deserve a cut. And that eventually leads to state politicians around the country making their own bills, making their own laws that say athletes can make NIL money in direct conflict to the NCA's rules. And then a really big moment came in 2021 when the Supreme Court took up an antitrust case in which the NCA was sued. Not specifically about NIL. The issue in that one was a cap on educational expenses that the schools offer the athletes, but same principle, right? There was a restriction in place on a form of compensation and the Supreme Court ruled 9 nothing against the NCA. And in a concurring opinion that Justice Brett Kavanaaugh wrote, he kind of expanded the scope of their decision to cover a lot more than just this one issue. He wrote that the NCA's business model in any other industry would be flatly illegal.

Natalie Kitroeff: That's a quote.

Stuart Mandel: Yeah, that's what he wrote. So that's when the NCA caved. And so July 1st comes and athletes can now do endorsement deals. If I can sign with Gatorade, you can, too.

Archival Audio: Jared Casey, you just made one of the greatest game-winning catches in Kansas football history. Where are you going now? Where am I going? I'm going to Applebee's.

Stuart Mandel: So, pretty quickly, you started seeing college athletes appearing in TV ads, for sports drinks, for fast food chains, local mom and pop shops in some of these college towns where they're big celebrities.

Archival Audio: Hey, this is Dakota Scrawler, wide receiver from Louisiana. When your AC isn't the coldest, you call SOS, heating and cooling.

Archival Audio: SOS.

Stuart Mandel: And of course, social media ads. All of these things that we would consider to be fairly benign. What nobody foresaw was that once they open that Pandora's box that NIL rights would be used for a completely different purpose, which is boosters paying their athletes to come to their favorite school.

Natalie Kitroeff: And just say what boosters are exactly. Boosters are donors to a university's athletic department. And the NCA considers you a booster if you buy season tickets, but what we think of are the really wealthy alumni with deep pockets who have hundreds of millions of dollars to throw around and want to win.

Stuart Mandel: And how are they doing that? Well, in history prior to NIL, it was all back room shady under the table stuff. Stuff, frankly, that was hard to prove, but you always heard rumors about it. And now it's all in the open and it's protected by law.

News Anchor: Nicole Evva has committed to Tennessee. $8 million NIL deal.

News Anchor: The Athletic reports that a high school quarterback in California, a five-star recruit who hasn't committed to a college yet, has signed a 4-year, $8 million deal with a collective associated with the University of Tennessee.

Natalie Kitroeff: So what's a collective? It's a bunch of donors pulling their money together in one pot that they can then use to distribute to recruits because the school itself can't do it. They would get in big trouble. So they create this third-party system.

Stuart Mandel: and pulling a whole bunch of money together, $8 million in this case.

Natalie Kitroeff: Yeah. And that sent shock waves throughout college sports because nobody realized just how quickly we'd gone to multi-million dollar deals.

Stuart Mandel: Right. And it's easy to imagine how these sums of money can begin to transform the way these leagues actually function.

Natalie Kitroeff: Absolutely. Because right around that same time in 2021, the NCA also loosened its restrictions around transfers. So for a long time, if you wanted to transfer to another school, you had to sit out a year. So people didn't transfer that often. In 2021, they put in a rule where you could transfer once without sitting out. And then a series of court cases followed that, and basically blew that up so that now you can transfer as many times as you want. So at the very same time, you had total free agency and a ton of money entering the system.

Stuart Mandel: Wow. The other big change is right up till that point, the schools themselves couldn't be involved. All these NIL deals were being done by third parties. But starting in 2025, again, because the NCA settled a major antitrust lawsuit, schools can now directly revenue share with athletes, to the tune of about 20 to $22 million a year.

Natalie Kitroeff: This is a huge deal, right? Schools now being able to directly pay players. Walk me through what the goal was here.

Stuart Mandel: The goal was actually to stabilize the system. The thinking at the time was well if we the schools can control the payments then there's going to be less movement and the costs are going to go down. We're going to have this clearing house where every third-party deal over $600 has to be approved, and the collectives are going to go away. But what's happened is that clearing house is caught up in legal challenges, and the collectives are doing just the opposite.

Natalie Kitroeff: What does that exactly look like? It sounds extremely chaotic, but paint me the full picture here.

Stuart Mandel: Yeah, it looks like the NFL, if the NFL had no rules or ability to enforce their rules, you have on the field, these are young men. Off the field, they have agents. And the agents are calling around to athletic departments or directly to collectives and saying, "Hey, what are you going to pay for this guy?" And if a player is disgruntled with his situation, maybe he's not getting enough playing time, maybe he just wants more money, they'll say to their coach, "Hey coach, we got this offer. You need to match it or come Monday when the transfer portal opens, we're out of here."

Natalie Kitroeff: And they're doing that over and over again. They're shopping these players around. You're saying

Stuart Mandel: they're constantly shopping these players around. In fact, the guy could have one good game in September and suddenly that's the window to start calling around engaging interest. And ultimately the goal is to get the best deal when the transfer portal opens. But as we said, none of this is transparent. There's no requirement that people disclose who is making what, so it's all rumors and speculation. And we haven't had real hard data on what the marketplace actually looks like until now.

Natalie Kitroeff: that information is very hard to obtain. Everybody's very hush- hush about it. Like I said earlier, they're under no obligation to publicize it. But this summer, myself and several of my colleagues from The Athletic came out with the most comprehensive data yet. We'll be right back.

Natalie Kitroeff: All right, Stuart, how did you get to these numbers? How did you figure out what this marketplace actually looks like?

Stuart Mandel: Well, one thing you figure out pretty quickly is coaches and GMs are very reluctant to speak publicly about specific numbers. But on background, they are desperate to talk about it because they're losing their minds. And so my colleague Max Olson and I went around and interviewed dozens of coaches, GMs, athletic directors, collective operators across the FBS, and we were able to put together real data on what positions are making, what players are making. And what we found was that the average starting quarterback at a power conference school is making between 3.5 and $4 million a year. Even just regular starters are making 500,000 to a million. And what that means is for a team that wants to contend for a national title, they're spending anywhere from 15 to $20 million on their roster alone.

Natalie Kitroeff: So the idea that the market was going to stabilize once the schools establish direct revenue sharing and third party deals have to be approved, the collectives would go away. Clearly that was not the case.

Stuart Mandel: Yeah. Yeah, I mean I think in a vacuum you could make the case that it's not actually that significant a number relative to how much revenue comes in. But it's jarring because 5 years ago that number was zero. And now all of a sudden you have these teams spending $20 million a year on players.

Natalie Kitroeff: right? And the other dramatic piece of this, I think, was just how inequitable this system was shown to be. And honestly, problematic if you're a school that is only paying $8 million to your players and your rival is paying 20, 25, $30 million.

Stuart Mandel: No question. It's a really alarming takeaway from this that kind of accentuates just how wide the gap is growing between the halves and have nots. Now, there's always been halves and have nots in this sport, but the difference was always in facilities, coaching staff salaries, things like that. Now it's direct. If you have more money, you can literally buy better players off of other people's rosters.

Natalie Kitroeff: He can he can make a huge difference. In fact, another big concern is how all that money affects transfers.

Stuart Mandel: I happen to think that the rise of transfers has been good for the sport overall. Indiana wins the national championship last year, goes from losing his program to national champion. They could not have done that without transfers. Their coach brought in like 30 transfers. But on the other side of that, it means your favorite team's roster could be completely overturned every single year. You buy a jersey of a guy, and next year he's playing for your biggest rival. And fans are having a hard time feeling connected to their teams.

Natalie Kitroeff: Yes. I mean, what you've described is not just a complete reordering of fans relationship to college sports, but a complete reordering of how college sports actually work at the most fundamental level. And that brings us back to this bill that just passed the Senate. So break down this bill for us. What does it actually do?

Stuart Mandel: Well, the bill is kind of a college sports mad li to be honest, but this is my first time covering anything congressional. I had to watch C-SPAN for 3 hours for the first time in my life. And you know, a few weeks ago, College GameDay was in Austin, Texas.

Archival Audio: to be joined by Senator from the state of Texas, Ted Cruz.

Stuart Mandel: Ted Cruz appears on the show to basically shill for the bill. And he gets, by the way, booed the entire time.

Ted Cruz: Well, look, as you know, well, college sports is an amazing institution. It

Stuart Mandel: not because of the Bill, but because he's considered a curse wherever he goes to a Texas team's game.

Natalie Kitroeff: They just don't even want him in the stands.

Stuart Mandel: Most college athletic programs right now, they're losing tens of millions of dollars. And for Cruz and for the other senators who were deeply involved in this, there are really two issues that seem to be at the top of their priority list. One is transfers, the other is spending. On transfers, it would basically give the schools the authority to enforce binding contracts, which they haven't been able to do. So players would be locked into a contract, and if you transfer, you would have to sit out a year. It would basically stop the revolving door.

Natalie Kitroeff: Correct. You would have far more of your roster in place from one year to the next.

Natalie Kitroeff: Okay. And what about the spending piece? How does it address that?

Stuart Mandel: It's important to note that the bill does not include any specific limit on what an individual athlete can make. It's a cap on how much the school can spend on those athletes. Technically, there's a cap on spending, and it gives the schools and the NCA a limited antitrust exemption, which is what they have been begging for forever. Because without that, anytime they try to put a cap on anything, they get sued and they lose. This would protect them from antitrust lawsuits.

Natalie Kitroeff: Yeah, it's definitely a cost control measure because right now, year to year to year, these rosters are going up 40, 50, 60%, maybe even more, and they need that to slow down. Now, there are schools right now that want to spend more. Ohio State, Texas, they have the money, they want to spend it. But for 95% of the schools, they simply can't keep up.

Natalie Kitroeff: I have to say, Stuart, there's a lot that's fascinating about this bill, but I think it's really interesting that a bunch of Republicans are supporting what's essentially the government intervening in a private labor market and capping compensation.

Stuart Mandel: Yeah. Yeah. To get to that much bipartisan support, you had both Republicans and Democrats going against what some of their traditional stances would be. You have, like you said, Republicans who are traditional free market advocates voting for government regulation, and Democrats who are typically pro-labor voting for restrictions on labor. But there is real pushback. Within Congress, the Congressional Black Caucus has already said they're going to oppose this. If we're going to impose rules on athletes, we should apply the same rules to coaches.

Archival Audio: because it's not about the athletes, it's not about fairness, it's enforcing hypocrisy.

Stuart Mandel: Couple of the main issues are, first of all, the elephant in the room. This bill restricts what schools can spend on their players, but not their coaches. And oh, by the way, the majority of college football and basketball players are Black, and the majority of coaches making 10, 12, $13 million a year are white. And on top of that, the bill explicitly states that athletes are not employees, which prevents them from ever unionizing and collective bargaining for their rights.

Natalie Kitroeff: Right. It sounds like the critics of this bill are pointing out what they see as something fundamentally unfair, which is that if you're trying to control costs, why are you doing it only on the backs of the labor, the athletes, and not on the coaches or the athletic directors or the administrators?

Stuart Mandel: Yeah, it's pretty fascinating to go back to 2019 2020 when the states were first starting to propose these NIL bills. California was the first one. I used to say back then there's never been a more bipartisan issue in America, because Democrats supported it because it was a civil rights issue, a labor rights issue for largely Black athletes. And Republicans supported it because it was free market, individual rights. And now here we are 5 years later, and it's bipartisan again, but in the exact opposite direction, to put the genie back in the bottle.

Natalie Kitroeff: All right. So, this bill has a long way to go before it passes. It goes to the House now. We don't know what's going to happen there. But I want to ask Stuart, we've spent a lot of time here talking about the chaos, the anxiety, the system falling apart. But has all of this actually ruined the sport?

Stuart Mandel: Yeah, that's what's crazy. For all the angst, for the fact that it went all the way to the Senate, Saturdays in the fall have never been more exciting. When you're watching a great game like Texas vs. Georgia, Ohio State vs. Oregon, the ratings are through the roof. Fans are loving the product on the field. Nobody is watching that game thinking about collective bargaining or antitrust law. They're just watching incredible football.

Natalie Kitroeff: Turns out college football is just a really hard thing to break.

Stuart Mandel: They're trying hard to break it, but they haven't yet.

Natalie Kitroeff: All right. Well, Stuart, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Stuart Mandel: Thank you so much for having me.

Natalie Kitroeff: We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today.

Archival Audio: Suddenly, boom, the brakes of the wings come up. We start dog diving. Like the plane loses control. We fell down 15,000 ft, like 5 km.

Archival Audio: No. S now.

Archival Audio / Natalie Kitroeff: In my head, I said, I don't deserve to die like this. I'm so young. On Wednesday, a Fly Dubai plane on its way to Israel made an emergency landing after one pilot stabbed another and passengers and crew won a fight to regain the flight control.

Archival Audio / Natalie Kitroeff: Like a massive turbulence and we didn't know what happened. Then we saw that there is a people running to the cockpit and we understood that there was some stabbing over there. The plane suddenly plunged thousands of feet during the attack, which was only stopped when a group of passengers rushed to subdue the aggressive pilot. Videos from the plane showed at least one wounded man and several others covered in blood. All of the passengers and crew members arrived safely in Israel by Wednesday night after a replacement aircraft was sent to retrieve them. As they disembarked, they shared harrowing stories of what had happened on board with my colleagues Adam Rascan and Natan Odenheimimer.

Archival Audio: The most frightening moment was actually for me after we arrived in Saudi Arabia. And every time I just thought of going back to that plane, I just thought of the moment where the plane collapsed and maybe it could happen all over again. And then maybe

Natalie Kitroeff: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that one of the pilots had quote apparently attempted to crash the plane with its passengers on board, nearly all of whom were Israelis. The Israeli authorities are investigating whether the incident was an attempted attack on Israelis or a suicide among other possible explanations. Today's episode was produced by Carlos Prito, Adrien Hurst, Eric Krupkkey, and Asta Chathurvedy. It was edited by MJ Davis Lynn and Michael Benois with help from Rob Zipco. Contains music by Marian Lozano, Pat McCusker, and Dan Powell, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Wonderly. That's it for the daily. I'm Natalie Kitroof. See you tomorrow.