“What I don’t understand,” Harbaugh told reporters at his first weekly news conference, “is how the NCAA, television networks, conferences, universities and coaches can continue to pull in millions—and in some cases, billions—of dollars in revenue off the efforts of college student-athletes across the country without providing enough opportunity to share in the ever-increasing revenues.”
Through the tumultuous season that followed, which included two ongoing NCAA investigations into his program, Harbaugh repeatedly called for football players and other college athletes to receive a portion of sports-related revenue they help universities generate.
Those revenues have surged in recent years, driven by escalating broadcast-rights contracts for football. But the NCAA has long insisted that the amateur status of players is a fundamental feature of college sports, and that amateurs cannot be paid to play. Now Harbaugh and other coaches are echoing what athletes’-rights advocates have said for years—and think they’re about to win.
The NCAA has historically limited college athletes’ compensation to tuition, room, board and, in the wake of a 2021 Supreme Court decision, small grants. Even with that modest augmentation, the NCAA rules—set against schools’ brimming coffers—have created a divide.
In 2022, Power Five athletic departments spent an average of $53 million on coaches and staff across all sports but just $18 million on financial support for athletes. That’s according to financial data from dozens of the nation’s biggest athletic departments gathered by the Knight-Newhouse College Athletics Database and analyzed by The Wall Street Journal.
Michigan, for instance, spent $75 million on coaches and staff in 2022, compared with $33 million on athlete aid and meals. The athletic department has about 350 staff members and 950 athletes.
The figures don’t include endorsement deals—money that comes from outside of the school—that coaches or athletes sign. Such deals for athletes let them earn compensation—and for big stars, windfalls—in recent years for the first time. But NCAA rules still maintain one philosophical red line, that schools can never pay athletes to play for them.
The gap between what colleges pay coaches and what they allocate in athlete funding provides a dramatic backdrop to the rising pressure for college athletes to be paid, and specifically out of the billions of dollars generated by their sports. A wave of lawsuits is also contributing to the push, with various cases working their way through courts around the country. Any one of them could result in a decision that forces pay for players.
The furthest along is a federal case in California, in which past players are suing for damages in the form of lost endorsement money at a time when the NCAA banned such deals, and which also argues that players should have access to a portion of television rights deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Both claims rest on an idea that has increasingly vocal support from judges all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, and within the Justice Department—that the NCAA’s longstanding rules severely restricting athlete compensation may not withstand antitrust scrutiny.
Even the NCAA is starting to feel the force, with association president Charlie Baker recently unveiling a proposal that would let top athletics departments pay athletes directly through their own endorsement deals and trust funds. The move remains an idea at the moment, and would need to be approved by NCAA member schools. In the past, hundreds of smaller programs have balked at radical changes to the school-athlete relationship. The proposal marks a radical shift from the top of an organization that for decades had clung to the notion that college sports couldn’t survive its athletes being paid to play.
Harbaugh is an eye-catching forecaster of the future of college sports. He served two suspensions totaling six games, one for an NCAA investigation into alleged recruiting violations and another suspension for a separate probe into alleged improper sign-stealing by a subordinate. Harbaugh has said he’s “muzzled” about the first NCAA investigation and has denied knowing about or directing the sign-stealing.
But Michigan’s coach isn’t alone in his feelings on athlete pay. UCLA football coach Chip Kelly brought up revenue-sharing at a Dec. 15 news conference before the L.A. Bowl, saying, “The schools should be paying the players, because the players are what the product is. And the fact that they don’t get paid is really the biggest travesty.”
In response to email queries from the Journal, several other coaches indicated their support for sharing revenue with athletes, or at least considering it. LSU coach Brian Kelly said he would be “in favor of beginning the conversation” about revenue-sharing, and North Carolina State coach Dave Doeren said he agreed that athletics revenues should be shared with athletes.
Even Clemson coach Dabo Swinney, who in 2019 suggested he would leave college sports if athletes became professionals, now says he favors setting aside revenue to deliver to athletes after they graduate.
Nick Saban, Alabama’s six-time national championship football coach, has expressed frustration at programs “buying” recruits by funneling money to them through booster-backed endorsement deals. At the Southeastern Conference’s spring meetings last May, Saban suggested regulating the system of player compensation.
“I mean, unionize it,” Saban said. “Make like the NFL. It’s going to be the same for everyone. I think that’s better than what we have now.”
That college football coaches have changed where they stand on this issue is especially notable because they have the most to lose in future contracts should athletes gain a share of revenue. From Saban’s $11.4 million annual pay to Swinney’s $10.9 million and Brian Kelly’s $10 million, they’re among the highest-paid coaches in all of sports.
Those coaches’ perspectives also pit them against college athletic conferences, which have lined up against revenue-sharing, including lobbying the U.S. Congress for a federal law that would block any attempts by states to mandate it. Conference lobbyists have told U.S. lawmakers that revenue-sharing requirements could change the familiar look of college sports and result in some sports being cut.
At a preseason media event last summer, Southeastern Conference commissioner Greg Sankey said that revenue-sharing efforts “create new threats around the support of Olympic and women’s sports….
And our primary objective is to continue these broad-based, widespread opportunities through experiences, friendships, learning opportunities, competitive opportunities that are inherent in the higher education setting in a continuing focus for those of us in college athletics.”
But in California, activists continue to push a bill that would require universities in the state to use all new athletic revenue generated by sports such as football and basketball to pay players. Legislation passed the state assembly in the summer, before stalling in the state senate amid an all-out effort by the conferences to block it. Advocates have vowed to revive the effort in the middle of next year.
Supporters and opponents of revenue-sharing alike have viewed legislative efforts in California as having the power to make the rest of the country follow. “Something’s going to happen,” said Ramogi Huma, a former UCLA football player who has spent two decades pursuing compensation and protections for college players, and is the architect of the California push. “Once the monopoly is broken, the schools have to keep up.”
Public opinion is also moving toward athlete pay. Seton Hall has been tracking sentiment on the issue since 2006. The wording of the question has changed slightly over time, but the first time respondents were asked if they thought college athletes should be paid a salary, a full 83% said no. That no had fallen to 55% in 2015.
By 2021, 49% of respondents said yes to financial compensation for athletes in revenue-producing sports, “such as basketball and football” and in 2023, that figure had reached 55% for respondents reflective of the general U.S. population. Among self-identified sports fans, 62% said yes.
“It would be reasonable to believe that the astronomical coaching salaries coupled with TV and advertising revenue has impacted the public’s perception of college athletics,” said Daniel Ladik, associate professor of marketing at Seton Hall, and since 2020, the methodologist for the poll.
“It has become more and more difficult to maintain that cherished myth that college sports are only played for the love of the game. It’s a multibillion-dollar industry, and the only ones not getting paid are the athletes.”
On Nov. 27, after Michigan beat Ohio State, Harbaugh renewed his call for sharing revenues with athletes. Harbaugh recounted to reporters the enormous promotional build-up for the game, which drew 19 million TV viewers—the most for a regular-season contest since 2011.
“Who can be against the players being compensated for what they do?” he said.
Write to Rachel Bachman at Rachel.Bachman@wsj.com, Louise Radnofsky at louise.radnofsky@wsj.com and Tom McGinty at Tom.McGinty@wsj.com