Ģ������Ƶ

While most sports fans look at the changing landscape of intercollegiate athletics – including the transfer portal and financial compensation for players – through the perspective of the impact on their favorite teams, two professors in Western Carolina University’s College of Business are examining the issue from a different angle.

For Kadence Otto, professor of sport management, and Charlie Parrish, associate professor of sport management and director of WCU’s School of Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Sport Management, and Hospitality and Tourism Management, the recent and dramatic changes in college sports are a matter of a shift in labor market conditions in a capitalist society.

Otto and Parrish recently published a paper titled “Monopsony Fracture: An Exploration of College Athletes’ Freedom to Move and Freedom to Capitalize Through the Lens of Push-Pull Theory” in the Journal of Legal Aspects of Sport.

The paper is based on their study of how student-athletes are reacting to a shift in regulations governing their actions off the fields and courts of competition, most notably regarding the ability of student-athletes to readily transfer from one institution to another and new opportunities to receive compensation for the usage of their name, image or likeness – often known as NIL.

A monopoly is a market condition that exists when there is only one seller of goods or services, the researchers said, while a monopsony is a market condition that occurs when there is only one buyer of goods or services. Because there is a single buyer in a monopsony, that enables the business or organization to keep labor costs artificially low, in effect controlling demand.

While it is rare for a business entity to be both a monopoly and a monopsony, that was precisely the case for the NCAA until the courts got involved, first by dissolving the NCAA’s monopoly of the collegiate sports market, Otto and Parrish said.

“In 1984, the NCAA’s monopoly on college football abruptly ended when the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the NCAA’s horizontal control of the college football television market violated the Sherman Act (NCAA v. Board of Regents),” Otto said.

“Simultaneously, the NCAA was – and still is – the only buyer of college sports labor, the athletes,” she said. “But, in 2021, its monopsony fractured when SCOTUS unanimously ruled ‘that the NCAA enjoys monopsony control … depressing wages below competitive levels for student-athletes.’”

The court’s termination of the NCAA’s monopsony fracture prompted Otto and Parrish to embark upon their exploration into how athletes are beginning to operate in a freer market and to develop a better understanding of contemporary college athlete labor migration as well as the reasons behind increased migration.

“The purpose of this study was twofold – first to examine college athletes’ rate of transfer (freedom to move) and opportunity to secure scarce benefits via NIL (freedom to capitalize) due to NCAA policy change, and second to explore how push-pull theory could be utilized to understand college athlete migration,” Parrish said.

Otto described “push-pull” as a theory that can help shed light on human labor migration and why people move from one job to another, an activity often based on economic motives.

“In our study, we looked at college athlete labor migration and why student-athletes transfer,” she said. “Because athletes now have the freedom to move through the transfer portal and the freedom to capitalize through NIL compensation, utilizing this theory to understand athletes' motivations to transfer should prove insightful.”

Positive and negative factors exists for student-athletes at their current institutions and at potential new destinations – that is, schools to which they may transfer. Those factors can either “push” or “pull” them to transfer to another school, the researchers said.

“For example, Athlete X is not a contributing member of the team, so the coach encourages or ‘pushes’ the athlete to transfer. This ‘push’ is a negative factor at Athlete X's current school and causes X to transfer,” Otto said.

At the other end of the spectrum is the “pull factor,” said Parrish.

“In this example, Athlete Y is the most valuable player of the conference, and numerous schools are vying for the athlete’s services. These are positive ‘pull’ factors,” he said. “New School Z offers the athlete the most NIL money, so Athlete Y transfers to New School Z because of this positive ‘pull’ factor.”

Parrish and Otto specifically examined “push-pull factors” that influenced the decisions of two former college athletes.

Caleb Williams, a football player who originally signed with the University of Oklahoma, later transferred to the University of Southern California. There, he signed NIL deals worth an estimated $3.6 million annually.

Angel Reese, a women’s basketball player who originally signed with the University of Maryland, later transferred to Louisiana State University, where she amassed an NIL valuation of $1.7 million – rated first among all women’s basketball players and seventh  among all college athletes.

Otto, a longtime advocate for the rights of student-athletes in the world of intercollegiate sports, said she believes that recent court decisions have tilted the playing field – no pun intended – in favor of those who provide a product on game days.

“Given the more than 100-year history of the NCAA, the organization has never proactively changed to advance athletes' rights. To the contrary, it has fought tooth-and-nail to deny athletes' rights, and it is still fighting,” she said. “If not for lengthy and successful litigation and legislation, athletes would not have the freedoms they enjoy today through NIL and the increased freedom to transfer.”

Now that a freer market exists, it is important to understand what motivates student-athletes to transfer, or to even choose a certain school in the first place, the researchers said.

“What is the driving force? Is it NIL money? Is it the coach? Is it the prestige of the program? Understanding why student-athletes choose or move to other schools will shed light on what they value, what they perceive is a ‘fair exchange’ for their services,” she said. “And we believe we've found a theory that will help shed light on this, and that is ‘push-pull.’”

Otto and Parrish said they believe their recent paper presents an opportunity for additional, more in-depth study of labor market issues around the highly lucrative world of intercollegiate athletics – especially at the upper echelons.

“Data outlined in our recently published paper confirm that the rate at which college athletes transfer schools has sharply increased in the new freer market. The rate of transfer of the general student body has historically been much higher, at 38%, than the rate of transfer of college athletes, at 22%,” Parrish said.

“That gap is closing quickly since the legislative changes, and it now stands at 38% for the general student body compared to 29% for student-athletes,” he said. “Specifically, athletes in men's basketball lead the way in terms of composition of transfers on NCAA Division I rosters, at 34.5%.”