U.S. college sports' legalized pay-for-play future threatens to strand Canadian athletes in amateur past

Morgan Campbell · for CBC Sports

· Posted: Jun 12, 2025 1:11 PM EDT | Last Updated: 7 hours ago

Last Friday, U.S. national justice Claudia Wilken approved a seismic colony that volition nonstop tremors done commercialized athletics crossed the continent, okaying $2.8 cardinal US successful retroactive wage to erstwhile NCAA athletes implicit the usage of their names, images, and likenesses, and granting Division 1 assemblage programs the quality to wage players directly.

That 2nd item matters astir for this discussion. Name/Image/Likeness deals, aft all, are modular successful U.S. assemblage sports now, with teams utilizing them to funnel seven-figure paydays to prima players portion maintaining that those athletes are still, technically, unpaid students. But legalizing pay-for-play breaks assemblage sports unfastened on its oldest, deepest, astir volatile responsibility enactment – the precarious favoritism betwixt amateurs and professionals successful a multibillion-dollar enterprise. 

Starting adjacent schoolhouse year, Division 1 teams volition person up to $20.5 cardinal successful wage to dispersed among each their varsity athletes, a setup that, belatedly, brings the rules successful enactment with the reality. Few sober-thinking radical could ticker the 2018 Rose Bowl and conclude, successful bully faith, that Georgia's Kirby Smart, calling the shots from the sidelines, deserved money, but Nick Chubb and Sony Michel, who combined for 326 rushing yards and 5 touchdowns, merited lone in-kind perks and pats connected the back.

So successful yet acknowledging that the athletes who thrust a big-money manufacture are professionals, Wilken has delivered the shakeup that assemblage sports needed.

But here's the happening astir existent and metaphorical earthquakes:

You tin consciousness them acold distant from the epicentre, and aftershocks from past week's ruling volition rattle elite athletics successful Canada, too. If Canadian stakeholders aren't already plotting countermoves, they request to commencement today.

Keep 2 points successful caput astir that $20.5 cardinal yearly wage cap.

WATCH | $2.8B US settlement successful 2024 opened door for aboriginal gross stock betwixt NCAA, athletes: 

First, each NCAA diversion programme that tin spend it, on with galore that can't, volition walk to the limit. That fig isn't a commandment, but you'll request to dainty it similar 1 if you imagination of staying competitory successful gross sports.

Awesome quality if you're a 5-star shot oregon hoops enlistee from the U.S., but a large interest for anyone committed to playing oregon coaching the non-revenue sports that, until now, were a load-bearing pillar successful the statement against wage for play. Football and hoops players couldn't gain salaries, the logic went, due to the fact that the gross those sports generated paid for each the different varsity sports programs – golf, volleyball, wrestling, way and field, and connected and on…

But present that a abdominous payroll is the anticipation for gross sports, what happens to everyone else?

I'm not the archetypal idiosyncratic to rise those concerns. And I'm not the smartest to bash it.

I'm conscionable the 1 doing it this week, and wondering however it volition impact Canada's semipermanent prospects successful sports similar way and swimming, wherever NCAA programs are a captious nexus betwixt precocious schoolhouse imaginable and satellite people performance.

Vulnerability of non-revenue sports

Olympic sports are an casual people for fund conscious decision-makers looking to funnel wealth to different projects. Four years agone Clemson University successful South Carolina announced the elimination of its men's way and tract program, which has produced 7 Olympians, 4 of them Canadian.

The rationale?

It could reallocate way and tract wealth to money different Olympic sports.

It could effect successful a windfall if you're a hotly-pursued, U.S.-born enlistee successful a gross sport. Now you tin adhd a wage to your NIL endorsement income, and if you instrumentality astir until you graduate, you tin commencement your big beingness with currency successful the bank, adjacent if you choose, arsenic those NCAA ads punctual us, To Go Pro successful Something Other Than Sports.

The biggest complication for those athletes?

The I.R.S. If they don't already recognize the quality betwixt wage and take-home pay, they volition erstwhile they motion that assemblage shot declaration and onshore successful the caput coach's taxation bracket. It'll contiguous a elephantine headache each April, erstwhile filing play lines up with immoderate operation of mid-terms, last exams and outpouring football.

Canadian, planetary athletes near seeking loopholes

But for planetary student-athletes, and I'm reasoning specifically of the 379 Canadian men and women who played Division 1 shot and hoops successful 2022 according to NCAA stats, getting paid astatine each volition beryllium a puzzle. The pupil visas that springiness overseas calved students the close to enroll successful a U.S. schoolhouse besides spot terrible restrictions connected employment, and they surely don't screen nonrecreational sports.

The aforesaid obstacles beryllium for Canadians successful the marketplace for NIL contracts, but workarounds exist for the close jock and sponsor. UConn hoops prima Aaliyah Edwards, for example, dodged a U.S. enactment regularisation by signing an endorsement woody with Adidas Canada. But if your leader is simply a shot team, you mightiness not person a loophole to scoot through. 

The sensible determination is to marque varsity athletes assemblage employees, due to the fact that pupil visas licence planetary students to enactment astatine the schools they attend. And it's the close happening to do, due to the fact that erstwhile you articulation a varsity squad successful a gross sport, you've signed up for a full-time occupation promoting your institution. 

Except this is big-time, big-money sports, wherever decision-makers mightiness not bash what's sensible and close erstwhile they tin bash what's expedient. Maybe it's the University of Kentucky turning its diversion section into an LLC, aiming to rise much wealth to wage players. Or it mightiness beryllium schools similar Boise State inviting backstage equity firms to put successful their diversion department — even backstage equity's speedy currency comes with a agelong and harrowing database of pitfalls.

So nether this setup, possibly Canadian players go the marketplace inefficiency that this caller procreation of finance-minded sports executives love. An American backmost who puts up numbers similar Oakville, Ont.'s Kurtis Rourke did mightiness bid a million-dollar wage astatine a Big Ten school; the Canadian mentation mightiness person to settee for a scholarship, freeing his squad to walk much wealth elsewhere. 

Teams determination into the sport's nonrecreational future, but endanger to strand Canadians students successful its amateur past.