Categories

A Lawsuit May Upend College Sports. One Local Coach Is Excited

4 hours ago
0 View
A Lawsuit May Upend College Sports. One Local Coach Is Excited

What that could mean for college sports: For many working in college sports, like Mitch Charlens, the head coach of San Diego City College’s lauded basketball team, that move seems unlikely to satisfy athletes.  “I don’t see them being able to get the toothpaste back in the tube. There’s going to be a million kids who […]

What that could mean for college sports: For many working in college sports, like Mitch Charlens, the head coach of San Diego City College’s lauded basketball team, that move seems unlikely to satisfy athletes.  “I don’t see them being able to get the toothpaste back in the tube. There’s going to be a million kids who say ‘I want the same thing. I don’t want those two years I played at a JUCO (junior college) to take away from my NCAA eligibility,’” Charlens said. “There are going to be an infinite amount of lawsuits.”  
The Learning Curve

“They’re not just going to be used by the universities for money and advertisements, now the kids will be in school longer and they’ll have a better chance of leaving with a degree or a higher degree like a Ph.D,” he said. 

Secondly, for schools like City College, whose basketball team is one of the most accomplished in the state, the level of talent attracted may increase dramatically. Instead of worrying about burning a year of eligibility at a community college, students will know they have time to develop and grow as an athlete before they move on.  


Given that pressure, and the NCAA’s track record in these situations, Charlens thinks it’s likely that additional court cases will continue to erode the current position and lead to community college play not counting toward NCAA eligibility at all. That would open the door to athletes potentially playing college sports for half a decade or more. Learning Curve
Your biweekly update on the state of education in San Diego County schools.​Here’s the skinny: Athletes at schools overseen by the NCAA have long had but four short years of eligibility – and that’s included years played for lower-level programs, like community colleges.  If that does happen, it could have two very positive impacts, Charlens said. First, the ability to stay in school longer could lead to more student-athletes earning degrees while they play. A ruling late last year could have a similarly seismic impact on college sports. And now that athletes have the chance to make big time money at the college level via NIL, that time to develop may be all the more attractive. If that becomes a reality, however, it could drastically change college sports, transforming what was once viewed as an amateur sports league into a series of farm systems. That didn’t sit well with Diego Pavia, a quarterback for Vanderbilt University, who himself played at a community college prior to transferring to the four-year university. So, he sued the NCAA, arguing that the four-year eligibility requirement denied him the ability to profit from his name, image and likeness at the collegiate level. Like pretty much every other time an athlete has sued the NCAA in recent memory, the court sided with Pavia. Browse all newsletters at vosd.org/newsletters
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again. But that ruling didn’t apply to the thousands of other athletes in similar positions – only Pavia. So, to seemingly nip the issue in the bud, NCAA officials issued a waiver granting a single extra year of eligibility to athletes whose four years were in part eaten up by stints playing at community colleges. 

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *