The U.S. Department of Education said Title IX rules will apply to future revenue dollars payments that schools share with college athletes but declined to offer guidance on how schools should distribute the money between men and women.
www.espn.com
No guidance
Not sure how you can apply Title IX to revenue sharing for athletes as a whole. Wouldn't you share revenue from men's football program with football players, and likewise for other sports. As long as the
percentage of revenues that is paid from the revenues generated by each sport's team is equal between men's and women's sports is that not equal distribution - especially when the basis for the argument is that it is the athletes that are valuable participants in the process of producing that revenue. There are a lot of problems with attempting to apply Title IX to fairly distribute revenue to athletes in college sports, which I agree will take years to resolve.
What I find more difficult is Secy Cardona's take on equity in NIL:
"Some of the concerns I have is that it's going to be the male athletes getting paid and [the] just-as-committed, just-as-hard-working women athletes, not. That, to me, speaks to the need to make sure we're communicating proactively, that this is being addressed," Cardona said at the time. "... Universities must adapt and create structures that are monitoring this, that are communicating what they're doing to proactively create equity. Let's not wait for the problem. ... I think we have an opportunity here to really learn from maybe the past and create structures here, or promote structures at the federal level that could be visited at the state, at the college level, that ensure equity, that ensure access."
He is implying that the universities have to take a role is creating "equity" in NIL to comply with Title IX. If he means equality of opportunity that is one thing, but if it is somehow measured by equality in resulting payment amounts that is another.
I would note that many of the highest paid NIL athletes are women - very attractive women gymnasts that have large social media followings more related to their attractiveness than their athletic ability. The fact is that NIL is never going to be fair. It is based upon the value of one's name, image and likeness. For most men, that value is based mostly on athletic ability. For women, athletic ability is still the major factor for most, but there are other factors (the image part) that can come into play. How do you equalize that? How does Title IX take that into account?
It is a positive that NIL as it currently operates is not ran by the universities but by private groups supposedly unaffiliated with the university (but which take their direction from coaching staffs). Theoretically this would not be subject to Title IX, but a good lawyer should be able to argue that the consortiums are not independent.
What a can of worms applying Title IX to this area is going to be.
