The National College Players Association is taking another step in its pursuit of having college athletes paid.
NCPA executive director Ramogi Huma on Tuesday filed a civil rights complaint on behalf of the organization with the Department of Education, asserting that all 350 NCAA Division I schools are violating Black students’ civil rights by colluding to cap athlete compensation. The NCAA limits what schools can provide to athletes in terms of athletic scholarships and, for the most part, prohibits any direct pay from schools to players.
The filing is the latest chapter in an athletes’ rights movement that has generated sweeping changes to archaic NCAA policies governing athlete compensation and transfer policies. Last month, the NCPA filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board against the NCAA, Pac-12 Conference, USC and UCLA. The goal is to affirm employee status for Division I basketball players and FBS football players. The moves from the NCPA are separate from reforms around name, image and likeness (NIL), which allow athletes to earn compensation from endorsement deals, appearances and other ventures.
Aaron M. Sprecher/AP
The civil rights complaint is seeking to eliminate the cap on athlete compensation, potentially opening the door for players to receive additional pay from their schools. In a copy of the complaint obtained by Sports Illustrated, the NCPA argues that because a high percentage of Black students are also college athletes, the NCAA-wide compensation limit causes a “disparate impact” on Black college students, what it terms a “legally protected class.”
The nine-page complaint to the Department of Education outlines the millions of dollars that basketball and football players are missing out on because of what it calls “unjust compensation limits.” The complaint provides percentage estimates of how much of a sport’s total revenue is applied to athletic scholarships: 29.9% for women’s basketball, 8.9% for men’s basketball and 8.1% for football.
Women’s basketball players are each being denied $24,000 a year; men’s basketball players $164,000 annually; and football players $185,000, the complaint says.
“College athletes throughout predominantly white sports receive fair market compensation [in the form of athletic scholarships], but athletes in the only predominantly Black sports [FBS football and men’s and women’s basketball] do not,” Huma says. “All college athletes should have the opportunity to receive fair market pay. This can happen without cutting any sports. Colleges would just have to spend a bit less on coaches’ salaries and luxury facilities.”
The NCAA governance structure is often misunderstood. Schools, not the governing body, create the rules. High-ranking university and conference administrators adopt policies that the NCAA then is responsible for enforcing.
As part of the NCPA’s argument, it cites U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion in the NCAA’s landslide loss in NCAA vs. Alston Supreme Court ruling last summer.
“The NCAA concedes that its compensation rules set the price of student athlete labor at a below-market rate,” Kavanuagh wrote. “The NCAA couches its arguments for not paying student athletes in innocuous labels. But the labels cannot disguise the reality: The NCAA’s business model would be flatly illegal in almost any other industry in America.”
Before filing the complaint, NCPA leadership met with Department of Education officials, encouraging them to enforce civil rights laws to address this issue, Huma told SI. Officials were prepared for Tuesday’s filing and will now further investigate the issue in a process that is expected to be slow. The same goes for the charges the NCPA sent to the NLRB, with some experts believing a ruling could be more than 18 months away.
“There are plenty of federal agencies that already have the power to enforce existing laws,” Huma says. “We are blitzing the federal agencies to get them to use their authority.”
