The NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament has been around since 1939, but the 2025 version is set to mark the last time the players are amateurs.
In a few weeks, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken will hold a fairness hearing for the NCAA’s settlement to resolve the House, Carter and Hubbard antitrust litigations. If, as expected, she approves the settlement, a new structure will be established for the 2025-26 academic year and beyond. Participating colleges will share up to 22% of the average power conference athletic media, ticket and sponsorship revenue with their athletes, with $21 million expected to be the initial annual cap.
In other words, colleges will directly pay players for athletics. That pay will be on top of athletic scholarships and other school benefits, and players may continue to sign NIL deals, too.
College athletes won’t be viewed as professional athletes in the way we think of NBA or WNBA players. They won’t—for now at least—be employees of their schools and they won’t be members of a union, which requires, among other things, employee recognition. They’ll still be full-time students, meaning their eligibility to play hinges on remaining a student and meeting GPA, credit and other academic requirements.
But they won’t be amateurs.
Think of what “amateur” means. Dictionary definitions include “a person who engages in a study, sport, or other activity for pleasure rather than for financial benefit or professional reasons” and “an athlete who has never competed for payment or for a monetary prize.” Those types of definitions won’t apply to college athletes, some of whom will be paid by their schools.
For many years, NCAA rules defended the classification of student-athletes as “amateurs” because they supposedly engaged in a sport “for the educational, physical, mental and social benefits derived therefrom and for whom participation in the sport is an avocation.” That depiction led U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett to famously ask the NCAA during the oral argument for NCAA v. Alston, “Is that how you would define an amateur, as someone who is unpaid?” with Barrett also asking if “consumers love watching unpaid people play sports?”
That was a different NCAA. Since Charlie Baker became NCAA president in 2023, an association long afraid of change—for years it would even restrict athletes’ meals and snacks—has become more adaptive and reality-based. Baker isn’t from higher ed or a major athletic conference. He isn’t beholden to longstanding traditions and doesn’t spout antiquated rhetoric. He’s pragmatic and a dealmaker.
To that point, it’s noteworthy “amateur” doesn’t appear in the House settlement agreement. In the parties most recent court filing, a 73-page motion for final settlement approval, “amateurism” appears just once and only as a part of a quotation from a prior court ruling.
College athletes might not yet be pros, but their days of amateur status are about to end.
One could argue March Madness hasn’t been “amateur” for a long time. Coaches, administrators, trainers, journalists, TV hosts, conferences, colleges, media companies, broadcast networks, footwear and apparel businesses and (of course) the NCAA have all been paid, in some cases many millions of dollars. Meanwhile, the players have been denied pay on account of being “amateurs.” There have been changes along the way. Since 2021, college athletes have been able to sign NIL deals without forfeiting their NCAA eligibility. But the payer of NIL money hasn’t been the school. That’s set to change.
One could also argue that the new world won’t be entirely fair. The settlement has been criticized on multiple grounds, including that it attempts to function as a labor agreement in the absence of organized labor and doesn’t compensate athletes as much as collective bargaining would yield. It’s likely true that if college athletes become employees and unionized, some would be paid more.
But that’s for another day. Today is about how this year’s March Madness closes a chapter in college sports that has lasted for decades.
