Ohio State athletic director says O’Bannon winning case would be ‘Armageddon’
Paying football and basketball players has been the focus of the college sports world this offseason, especially given the ongoing trial in the case of Ed O’Bannon versus the NCAA. Even just having the trail go forward has caused many conferences and the NCAA to address some of the issues players have brought up.
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However, the severity of change that would actually come has been a point of contention for many. On Wednesday morning, Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith put the effects of O’Bannon winning rather bluntly when asked by Bill Rabinowitz of the Columbus Dispatch.
“It’s an Armageddon scenario,” Smith said. “If we have to come up with a model to compensate student-athletes for their likenesses, then it will have a financial effect that will cause us to significantly change the amateur model, reduce the number of sports we offer, change the way we do business.”
Ohio State has one of Division I’s biggest athletic departments, not just in revenue generation or profit, but in sports they sponsor. Ohio State currently sponsors teams in 18 men’s sports and 19 women’s sports.
So, the Buckeyes would be in a difficult spot trying to keep all of those sports alive and having to pay 85-plus football players and 13 basketball players too.
Smith spoke to Rabinowitz following the Big Ten presidents and chancellors issuing a statement of changes they would like to see happen. Those changes include full four-year scholarships, scholarships that don’t expire when a player leaves their sport early, better medical care and covering the full cost of attendance.
All things that have been echoed by other conference presidents and chancellors in the past, but the effects of losing the O’Bannon case have not been fully explored until recently.
What remains to be seen is if the NCAA can move fast enough to head off the growing college union movement and the effects of O’Bannon’s court case. The proposals put down on paper to date appear to address many of the issues the union movement have been advocating for.