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    The N.C.A.A. Agreed to Pay Players. It Won’t Call Them Employees.

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    The argument is the organization’s attempt to maintain the last vestiges of its amateur model and to prevent college athletes from collectively bargaining.The immediate takeaway from the landmark $2.8 billion settlement that the N.C.A.A. and the major athletic conferences accepted on Thursday was that it cut straight at the heart of the organization’s cherished model of amateurism: Schools can now pay their athletes directly.But another bedrock principle remains intact, and maintaining it is likely to be a priority for the N.C.A.A.: that players who are paid by the universities are not employed by them, and therefore do not have the right to collectively bargain.Congress must “establish that our athletes are not employees, but students seeking college degrees,” John I. Jenkins, the president of the University of Notre Dame, said in a statement when the agreement was announced.It is the N.C.A.A.’s attempt to salvage the last vestiges of its amateur model, which for decades barred college athletes from being paid by schools or anyone else without risking their eligibility. That stance came under greater legal and political scrutiny in recent years, leading to the settlement, which still requires approval by a judge.On its face, the argument may seem peculiar. Over the past decade, public pressure and a series of court rulings — not to mention the reality that college athletics generated billions of dollars in annual revenue and that athletes received none of it — have forced the N.C.A.A. to unravel restrictions on player compensation. A California law that made it illegal to block college athletes from name, image and licensing, or N.I.L., deals paved the way for athletes to seek compensation, some of them receiving seven figures annually.At the same time, college sports have become an increasingly national enterprise. Regional rivalries and traditions have been tossed aside as schools have switched conference allegiances in pursuit of TV money. Individual conferences can now stretch from Palo Alto, Calif., to Chestnut Hill, Mass., meaning many athletes in a variety of sports are spending more time traveling to games and less time on campus.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The NCAA Agreed to Pay Players. It Won’t Call Them Employees.

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      The argument is the organization’s attempt to maintain the last vestiges of its amateur model and to prevent college athletes from collectively bargaining.The immediate takeaway from the landmark $2.8 billion settlement that the N.C.A.A. and the major athletic conferences accepted on Thursday was that it cut straight at the heart of the organization’s cherished model of amateurism: Schools can now pay their athletes directly.But another bedrock principle remains intact, and maintaining it is likely to be a priority for the N.C.A.A.: that players who are paid by the universities are not employed by them, and therefore do not have the right to collectively bargain.Congress must “establish that our athletes are not employees, but students seeking college degrees,” John I. Jenkins, the president of the University of Notre Dame, said in a statement when the agreement was announced.It is the N.C.A.A.’s attempt to salvage the last vestiges of its amateur model, which for decades barred college athletes from being paid by schools or anyone else without risking their eligibility. That stance came under greater legal and political scrutiny in recent years, leading to the settlement, which still requires approval by a judge.On its face, the argument may seem peculiar. Over the past decade, public pressure and a series of court rulings — not to mention the reality that college athletics generated billions of dollars in annual revenue and that athletes received none of it — have forced the N.C.A.A. to unravel restrictions on player compensation. A California law that made it illegal to block college athletes from name, image and licensing, or N.I.L., deals paved the way for athletes to seek compensation, some of them receiving seven figures annually.At the same time, college sports have become an increasingly national enterprise. Regional rivalries and traditions have been tossed aside as schools have switched conference allegiances in pursuit of TV money. Individual conferences can now stretch from Palo Alto, Calif., to Chestnut Hill, Mass., meaning many athletes in a variety of sports are spending more time traveling to games and less time on campus.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      LSU’s Kim Mulkey Courts Controversy in Style

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      Inside the coach’s winning fashion playbook.The smog of a Washington Post exposé may have been hanging over Kim Mulkey’s head during the L.S.U. game on Saturday afternoon, but the highest paid coach in women’s collegiate basketball wasn’t going to hide. How could you tell?Well, in part because at the start of the N.C.A.A. tournament, she had given a news conference threatening a lawsuit about the article, thus calling to attention to it. In part because there she was, running up and down the sidelines and screaming her head off. And it part because … goodness, what was she wearing?A gleaming pantsuit covered in a jumble of Op Art sequined squiggles, as if Big Bird had met Liberace and they’d teamed up for “Project Runway.”Kim Mulkey, resplendent in sequins at the L.S.U. Sweet Sixteen game on March 30.Gregory Fisher/USA Today, via ReutersEven in the context of basketball, a sport in which players and coaches understood the power of personal branding through clothes long before almost any other athletes, Ms. Mulkey stands out. More than perhaps anyone else in the league — possibly in all of women’s basketball — she has made her image a talking point, a reflection of her own larger-than-life personality and a tool to draw attention to her sport. She is basketball’s avatar of the Trumpian era, offering a new version of The Mulkey Show at every game and costuming herself for the moment. As her team meets the University of Iowa again in the Elite Eight, brand Mulkey will most likely be raising the stakes once more.It would be wrong to call her clothes “fashion.” They have little to do with trends or silhouette. But love what she wears or hate it, love how she behaves or hate it, her sometimes ridiculous, always eye-catching outfits are, like her winning record, abrasive personality, problematic comments about Covid-19 and reported homophobia, impossible to ignore.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How March Madness Upsets Can Bring Attention and Money to Universities

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      As administrators at universities like St. Peter’s, Fairleigh Dickinson and Florida Gulf Coast can attest, upset victories bring attention, alumni donations and a lot of work.When Oakland University’s 14th-seeded men’s basketball team defeated No. 3 Kentucky on Thursday night, delivering the first shocking upset of this year’s N.C.A.A. tournament, it cast a spotlight on the relatively anonymous university based in Rochester, Mich.And if history is any indication, the next few days and weeks — and perhaps longer — promise to be a lucrative time for the school.Upset victories by double-digit seeds are not just a big deal for busted tournament brackets. They also raise the profile of the schools who pull off the shockers. Big wins routinely lead to spikes in applications, enrollment and, as the university community rallies around its team, alumni contributions. Media coverage leads to attention that is otherwise hard to come by, and the name recognition can be long lasting.“It was a bit surrealistic,” said Eugene Cornacchia, the president of St. Peter’s, whose men’s basketball team also upset Kentucky in 2022. “It was exciting to win, but I didn’t necessarily understand the onslaught of the attention that would ramp up so quickly.”After the victory, Cornacchia said his phone was ablaze with text messages from friends, alumni and members of the media. His school, a Jesuit university based in Jersey City, N.J., with an enrollment of around 3,000 students and an endowment of less than $40 million, had previously been to three tournaments and won zero games.The team went on to win its next two games, before falling in the regional final to North Carolina.The tournament run was good for business. In the eight months before the win by St. Peter’s over Kentucky, the university sold roughly $58,000 worth of merchandise, Cornacchia said. After the upset and through the end of that month, it sold more than $300,000 worth of merchandise and ran out of its supply in a matter of days. Yearly commitments from donors rose from $450,000 to more than $2 million.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Big Year for Women’s College Basketball in New York

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      Both the Columbia and N.Y.U. women’s teams made it to postseason tournaments.Good morning. It’s Friday. We’ll look at why this season was a first for women’s college basketball in New York City. We’ll also find out how LaGuardia Community College will spend a $116.2 million grant from a foundation run by Alexandra Cohen, whose billionaire husband bought the New York Mets in 2020.Ryan Hunt/Getty ImagesThis was the first season that Columbia University’s women’s basketball team made it to the N.C.A.A. Division I tournament.New York University’s women’s team, undefeated in 31 games, also made it to the postseason, making this the first year that the two colleges have done so at the same time — Columbia in Division I, with an at-large place in the Big Dance, and N.Y.U. in Division III. N.Y.U. won the national title in Division III by ending Smith College’s 16-game winning streak, 51-41.“We kind of pulled away in the end, and one of the officials congratulated me on winning,” said Meg Barber, the coach of the N.Y.U. team. “This was probably with about 45 seconds left. I said, ‘Not yet.’ I was like, ‘It’s not over yet,’ and he was like, ‘Yes it is.’”And next season?“I’ve barely processed that we won the national championship,” Barber told me on Thursday, “so I haven’t really thought about next year.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      For Women’s Basketball, Caitlin Clark’s Lasting Impact May Be Economic

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      People have flocked to watch the Iowa star on TV and in person at a time when her sport is more valuable than it ever was before.Caitlin Clark, the University of Iowa basketball player who has dazzled crowds with her deep shooting range and preternatural scoring ability, is one of the biggest draws in sports.Tickets to her games this season were nearly 200 percent more expensive than they were last year, according to Vivid Seats, a ticket exchange and resale company. Fans routinely traveled hundreds of miles to catch a glimpse of her, lining up for hours before tipoff and boosting local economies.Nearly 10 million people, a record, watched her play in last year’s championship game, a loss to Louisiana State. More than three million tuned in this year when she set the career record for points scored by a Division I college basketball player. Ms. Clark and top-seeded Iowa begin N.C.A.A. tournament play on Saturday.Adam Bettcher/Getty ImagesNow, as Ms. Clark prepares for her final N.C.A.A. tournament — No. 1-seeded Iowa plays its first game on Saturday — excitement has reached a fever pitch. It has some wondering if Ms. Clark’s effect on the popularity of women’s sports, and their economics, will linger after her career at Iowa ends.Viewership, juiced by media rights deals, and corporate sponsorships are the key drivers of revenue for college and professional sports. In women’s sports, those have long lagged behind what men’s sports receive. In 2019, for instance, women’s sports programming accounted for less than 6 percent of coverage on ESPN’s “SportsCenter,” according to a study.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Lefty Driesell, Basketball Coach Who Put Maryland on the Map, Dies at 92

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      He built Maryland into a national powerhouse and became the first coach to win more than 100 games at each of four major college programs.Lefty Driesell, the Hall of Fame coach who built nationally prominent basketball teams at the University of Maryland in the 1970s, and who at his retirement in 2003 was the nation’s fourth-winningest N.C.A.A. Division I men’s coach, died on Saturday at his home in Virginia Beach. He was 92.His death was announced by the university.Driesell (pronounced drih-ZELL) was the first coach to win more than 100 games at each of four major college programs. Over five decades, his teams won a total of 786 games.He coached at Maryland from 1969 until October 1986, posting a 348-159 overall record in College Park. His Terps reached eight N.C.A.A. postseason tournaments, won the 1972 National Invitation Tournament championship and captured an Atlantic Coast Conference tournament championship in 1984. They finished high in The Associated Press’s national college basketball rankings of the early 1970s.He was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2018.Driesell was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., in 2018.Maddie Meyer/Getty ImagesAcross Davidson, Maryland, James Madison and Georgia State, Driesell had an overall record of 786-394. He coached James Madison to four consecutive appearances in the N.I.T. and led the team to the N.C.A.A. national tournament in 1994.He closed out his coaching career at Georgia State, where he was head coach from 1997 to 2003. He led the team to a huge upset of Wisconsin in the opening round of the 2001 N.C.A.A. tournament.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Dartmouth Players Are Employees Who Can Unionize, U.S. Official Says

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      A regional director for the National Labor Relations Board cleared the way for the collegiate men’s basketball team to hold a vote.A federal official said Monday that members of the Dartmouth men’s basketball team were university employees, clearing a path for the team to take a vote that could make it the first unionized college sports program in the country.In a statement, the National Labor Relations Board’s regional director in Boston, Laura Sacks, said that because Dartmouth had “the right to control the work” of the team and because the team did that work “in exchange for compensation” like equipment and game tickets, the players were employees under the National Labor Relations Act.A date for the election on whether to unionize has not yet been set, and the result would need to be certified by the N.L.R.B. The university and the N.C.A.A. are expected to appeal the director’s decision.In September, all 15 players on the team’s varsity roster signed and filed a petition to the labor board to unionize with the Service Employees International Union. On Oct. 5, Dartmouth’s lawyers responded by arguing that the players did not have the right to collectively bargain because, as members of the Ivy League, they received no athletic scholarships and because the program lost money each year.The N.C.A.A. and its member schools have long resisted unionization attempts by college athletes, defending the student-athlete model that has come under fire by labor activists, judges and elected officials over the years.In 2014, the Northwestern football team led the highest-profile attempt by a college program to unionize, arguing that because the players were compensated through scholarships, they had the right to bargain collectively.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      N.C.A.A. Investigates Booster Club Funding for College Sports

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      The University of Tennessee’s football program is under investigation for recruiting violations involving a donor collective, signaling an effort to rein in the role of outside money in college sports.The N.C.A.A. is investigating the University of Tennessee’s football program for recruiting violations involving a group of outside donors, signaling an escalation of efforts to rein in the growing influence of money flooding into college sports, according to documents and people familiar with the case.The investigation is focused on Tennessee’s high-profile donor collective, a group of alumni and wealthy boosters who support the team by channeling payments and other benefits to players. The inquiry is looking at, among other things, the group’s role in flying a high-profile recruit to campus on a private jet while the football team was wooing him, one person familiar with the case said.Having the booster group pay for the trip by the recruit, Nico Iamaleava, now Tennessee’s starting quarterback, would be a violation of N.C.A.A. rules. The inquiry comes after the N.C.A.A. penalized Tennessee for earlier recruiting violations and signals the organization’s growing concern about the huge sums being injected into the nominally amateur world of college sports by donor collectives.The case could have profound implications for the direction of high-profile programs across the country, especially in football, where outside money raised and disbursed to players by collectives has reshaped the economics of the game. News of the investigation into Tennessee’s athletic program was first reported by Sports Illustrated.Officials at Tennessee are concerned that the investigation could result in a devastating blow to its football program, according to a person briefed on the matter. The program is already on probation for the earlier recruiting violations, and school officials are worried about the potential for the N.C.A.A. to take drastic action, like banning the team from postseason play and disqualifying players.Facing that possibility, the school has hired several law firms and is considering a range of legal options to stave off any consequences.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More