Why can’t student-athletes make money?

By Troy Scott
May 13, 2021

The age-old question that has been the hot topic for student-athletes is, “Why can’t we make money off of our likeness and abilities?”  This question has started to gain more momentum over the last 10 years as stories of student-athletes losing their eligibility came to light. The NCAA has always been consistent with its answers. People are stripped of their rights to express themselves and are under the control of the organization. This problem is not just a Division I problem, it affects colleges in all divisions.

Photo provided by Mitch Goulet. Goulet (pictured far left) had to sacrifice his collegiate career because of a Puma video he and his friend created for money.

Meet Mitch Goulet, a content creator for sports media giant Overtime, who runs the account Overtime FC that has over 500 thousand followers. His journey came with sacrifice, but not the kind of sacrifice he was expecting to make. Goulet was a soccer player for Westfield State in Massachusetts. Westfield State is a Division III institution that competes in the Massachusetts State Collegiate Athletic Conference. The school is similar in size to Cabrini in terms of the number of students. He was living the typical student-athlete experience with playing the fall season and while doing that starting an Instagram account to showcase him and his friends’ best shots on the soccer pitch.

“The Instagram account, STRKR FC, was gaining more and more popularity as we continued to make videos,” Goulet said in an interview via Zoom. “We were reaching numbers that we thought were not possible for the time frame.”

In his junior year of school, he was going through his regular college experience while also making videos for the social media page when he received an offer from soccer giant Puma to do a video for them to promote the new cleats that they were releasing.

“When we got the email from Puma expressing interest to collaborate for their new boots, we were excited as it was Puma,” Goulet said. “We did not get an opportunity like this before so we were excited to see that big brands were paying attention to our content.”

Photo provided by Mitch Goulet. Goulet pictured with world-renowned manager Jose Mourinho as a result of the success of STRKR FC.

The deal with Puma was to create a video with the new cleats for a total of $300 to be split between the two of them.

“We both went to our coach and athletic director to let them know of the situation and asked if we were able to do it,” Goulet said. “The school didn’t have any idea as it was just a small school and this had never occurred before.”

This situation went through all levels of administration at the school and eventually went to a representative of the NCAA, who was finally able to give an answer to Goulet and his partner and teammate.

“The NCAA representative told us that we couldn’t do the video as we would be taking away our status of being amateurs,” Goulet said. “Because we were getting paid for a soccer video it would mean that we would be getting paid for soccer. But the problem that I had with that decision and still have to this day is the fact a regular college student can make money off of what they are good at, but a student-athlete can’t have that same opportunity because of the amateurism that the NCAA apparently holds to a high standard.”

This led the two to make a decision to either give up the opportunity and continue to play collegiate soccer or continue to the STRKR FC page, make money and get more opportunities.

“We decided to do the video and continue the page as we knew it was going to lead to better opportunities than playing soccer for Westfield State,” Goulet said. “We both made very fun memories playing collegiate soccer and met wonderful teammates as well, but we knew the market for soccer content creators was relatively new and we were on the right track.”

Photo provided by Mitch Goulet. Goulet with his co-worker at Overtime at Manchester City FC’s training ground

Student-athletes are increasingly upset about this unfairness. One of the leading speakers for this problem is Rutgers point guard Geo Baker, who started the hashtag #NotNCAAProperty on Twitter. This led to a lot of athletes from all levels of collegiate sports talking about their experiences with the NCAA not allowing students to make money for themselves.

“Seeing how many people were affected by the NCAA and how the narrative is starting to go to the student-athletes is good to see,” Goulet said. “What Geo did was important in the fight for student-athletes to create a better financial situation for themselves.”

The trend of student-athletes starting to create a brand around themselves is starting to put pressure on the NCAA. Players like Zion Williamson, LaMelo Ball and Anthony Edwards all have made themselves a brand before coming up into the NBA. LaMelo especially decided to go the route of going overseas and building the brand that way. More athletes out of high school are finding different ways to maximize their image and make money off of their names. Some of the ways are playing overseas, going to play professionally at a young age and going through trainers to get ready to play professionally.

By bypassing the NCAA in general, the NCAA is losing a lot of potential money as the viewership for their sports are going down. They also lose out on the quality of their sports as the best players are not playing for any of the NCAA’s top institutions.

“The NCAA needs to update their leniency as athletes are looking at different and better options to make money,” Goulet said. “This has to happen or college athletics will become a thing of the past.”

The wave of creativity and athletes being more open-minded has hurt the NCAA in many different ways. The most important way though is the financial way. There are a whole lot more Mitch Goulet’s now and people are tuning in to watch these creators as people want to see what the student-athlete experience is like at all levels. The real question is not if, but when will the NCAA allow student-athletes to make money off of their strengths.

How will their decision affect the future of collegiate sports? Only time will give that answer.

 

 

 

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Troy Scott

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