So as you may or may not know, there have been a lot of changes in the past week concerning College Athletics. In America, the schools join conferences consisting of anywhere from 8 team - 16 team (or so) Football is the largest money maker with Basketball being second (or first for some schools.) I'm sure other schools have different sports that bring in money (Johns Hopkins and Lacrosse, etc.) but for the biggest 5 conferences (The Power 5) it's really Football and Basketball that fund every other sport in the Athletics department.

Now, in America, college athletes are considered amateur players and not professional, so they are not paid. Schools have options to give out x amount of full ride scholarships and partial scholarships to their athletes. That is the only form of "payment." Now, I'm not here to argue whether this system is right or not, but considering that a lot of studies have shown that (at least for football) the students put in more time year round on athletics than schools, a lot of players and schools have agreed something needs to change.

The regulatory body over college athletics is called the NCAA. They recently lost two important battles that have now stripped them of a lot of their power. A judge basically ruled that the NCAA not allowing players to be paid was violating Anti-Trust rules. Additionally, the power 5 conferences banded together and basically forced the NCAA to pass a ruling granting them autonomy, where (withing reason) they can almost pass whatever rule they want to.

So now to the part that brings in /r/basicincome. It looks like players will not have a route to not only make money for their own likeness, (before they could not make money selling their face on a T-Shirt or for video game endorsements, etc.) they will also be able to make money through a collective payment.

Nothing is decided on how it will be done. Some people are in favor of individual schools paying players based on the percentage that they bring into the school. So in the SEC (one of the power 5 that is really focused on football revenues) pretty much only the football players would be paid and if it's proportionate to the amount that those players make the school, we could see really big salaries. Currently there is no player's union; however, even before these rulings, there have been rumblings of a player's union getting started. Not sure how it would change everything, but it definitely would be interesting.

Another thought is that you pay all the athletes, but the bread-winners (football and basketball) would receiving the majority of the payment. Interestingly, there is a piece of law that was passed under the Education Amendments of 1972 law called Title IX. Title 9 says:

*No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance."

The biggest outcome of Title IX is that schools had to offer and equal opportunity for both men and women (so if you had 9 men's athletic teams, you had to offer an equal number for women to participate in.) The key line I want you to focus on is "be denied the benefits of". I think we can all agree that receiving a payment would be a benefit, so according to US Law, all athletes (regardless of sport) would be allowed to be discriminated against and could receive this money.

Following this train, I'm actually in favour personally of paying all athletes an equal payment. Even if they are the star of the football team and help bring in x millions of dollars in donations or the worst rostered player on the women's field hockey team (I love women's field hockey by the way, just picking something that doesn't have a huge television contract) both those players would receive the same amount. For sake of argument, let's say it's $5,000 a year.

So this would be the semi-equivalent of the UBI. It's a payment made to every single athlete regardless of sport. Yes, it's not a perfect system because it's not like every student is paid, but if you think of it within the realm of just the athletic department, you have 100% payout. Additionally, scholarships would not go away. The regulatory body of the NCAA would still be able to punish teams and take away scholarships that they could give away, etc., but now the players have a way to pay for food and other basic needs while in college. Considering what they do to bring in money to the schools, it's helping to bring back some of the wealth. This money would come from donations to the Department, TV revenue sharing, and other forms I may not even be thinking about.

Additionally, it does not stop a star player from trying to individually capitalize on his/her fame. Monies that are made through sponsorship or putting your name on a video game are direct profit to the player. So you can equate this to a job. Sure, it's not a perfect analogy, but it would mean that receiving UBI does not limit you to just that UBI. If you have a skill or marketable trait and you can get monies from that, the equal payout to all athletes does not stop you from additional income (which would be income that does not go into the shared UBI.) So if the school makes x amount of dollars from your agreement with a video game company and the player makes y amount of dollars, the money the school made on x does not go into the UBI pot, but instead directly into the AD coffers.

Well, the whole point of me posting this is that I"m a big believer in UBI, but it's hard to convince some people. While this isn't a straight 1:1 analogy of UBI, I think it's one of the closest systems we'll see being implemented in "real world" America. Additionally, I've overheard a lot of people that I know would be against UBI saying that a "socialist" system like this is what is needed in college athletics. It just surprised me and I was wondering what you guys think.

If something like this comes to fruition, it may be possible to help ease everyone's mind towards a more domestic or even global UBI. Thanks for reading this all if you did. Just trying to get my thoughts out and wanted to hear from you guys/gals who are much more well read when it comes to Basic Income.