An often-overlooked aspect of the consequences of CFB players becoming paid professionals: If CFB stops being an "amateur" sport and athletes are no longer on scholarship, it could result in the t...

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/cfb by /u/JimHarbaughTheChamp on 2024-01-30 03:59:38.

Original Title: An often-overlooked aspect of the consequences of CFB players becoming paid professionals: If CFB stops being an “amateur” sport and athletes are no longer on scholarship, it could result in the total decimation of women’s sports.

---

FBS football programs can have 85 scholarship players. Due to Title IX, a university that receives federal dollars must offer the same number of athletic scholarships to both men and women. So the existence of the football team ensures that there will also be 85 female scholarship athletes as well.

One often-referenced idea for getting NIL and the transfer portal under control is to just make athletes paid employees of the university. And while that may work fine for football, it also means that they would no longer be scholarship athletes.

Football programs generally pay for the rest of the sports at a university. Women’s basketball, for example, is typically the most expensive program in any athletic department. There’s another post shared today about Ole Miss’ athletic programs and how the football program made $12.5M last year but WBB lost $8.5M.

The unfortunate reality is that many universities would not have women’s athletics if they were not required to by Title IX- outside of certain programs like Baylor and UConn WBB, women’s sports are typically an expense, not a revenue generator.

Football players no longer being scholarship athletes would open the door for universities cutting up to 85 scholarships for women.