NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF — College sports are changing. Athletes are getting more now than ever before.
In addition to their academic scholarships and benefits, medical care and world-class training facilities athletes are now able to make money. They can cash in on their name, image and likeness in the form, often with the help of the negotiating power afforded to them by new rules allowing them to transfer at any time — and as many times as they want — without restriction.
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Beginning next year players will also be eligible to receive direct payment from their schools in the new revenue-sharing model outlined in the NCAA’s filing in the settlement of House V. National Collegiate Athletic Association. But with players now able to make six- and seven-figures while competing in college athletics, many wonder if they are getting the same long-lasting educational and character-building benefits that have defined the student-athlete experience for decades.
“There are so many more things — dynamics — in the system now like NIL and the ability to transfer unlimited times,” Vanderbilt Athletic Director Candice Storey Lee said. “I think it’s just harder to think about things in terms of being transactional. We pride ourselves on being transformational.
Storey Lee was a four-year letter winner in basketball and SEC honor roll student at Vanderbilt. She helped the Commodores cut down the nets as SEC Tournament champions in 2002.
Upon graduation she worked her way up the ranks, filling many roles within the athletic department before she was named athletic director in 2020. She believes the new rules have taken the focus off the educational part of being a student-athlete.
“I don’t really care how smart you are,” Storey Lee said. “If you go to a bunch of different schools it’s going to be harder for you to graduate.”
The NCAA has championed a steady rise in its graduation rates over the years. In 2023, a record 91% of student-athletes got their degree.
But with more than 20,000 NCAA athletes entering the transfer portal this past year alone there is real concern among many who work in college sports that graduation rates may have peaked.
“You’re going to go to four schools in four years, how do your credits transfer?” asked Middle Tennessee Athletic Director Chris Massaro. “How are you going to have a chance to graduate? For 90 to 98 percent of our student-athletes that’s still the most important thing we can provide for those guys.”
Just over one percent of college athletes go pro in their sport, so earning a degree is critical for most who put on a college uniform.
Like Storey Lee, Scott Corley was a basketball standout at Belmont from 1986-90. After graduation, he went on to have a successful career in finance before returning to Belmont in 2016 as the school’s athletic director.
Corley — who was a starter on Rick Byrd’s NAIA basketball teams — now sees a world where the big picture in NCAA sports is being lost amid all the talk of money.
“I understand what the student-athlete — how they have to look at it — because you have a limited window to monetize or monopolize on your athletic abilities,” Corley said. “But I do think they’re going to be missing out on a lot of things that I’ve been fortunate to appreciate and have friends for life. Those types of things that were really the bedrock of my college experience.”
Storey Lee thinks of all the friends she made while competing at Vanderbilt. She’s been to countless weddings and reunions with those teammates and friends in the years since.
“There’s the old student-athlete part of me that thinks, ‘Oh man, what about after you graduate and you go back for Homecoming and you see your friends and everyone reminisces?’” Storey Lee said. “And I’m like, ‘Well, if you go to five institutions which (Homecoming) do you to go to?’”
It’s the loss of those relationships that has Tim Corbin most concerned. A former Division III player at Ohio Wesleyan Corbin has developed into one of the most successful and respected coaches in college baseball.
In 22 years at Vanderbilt, he’s produced six SEC championship teams, five College World Series squads and won the national championship in 2014 and 2019. He’s also produced dozens of top end prospects that have gone on to play in Major League Baseball.
Corbin’s done it all while fostering a family-type environment at the ballpark, which helped lead to the nickname “Vandy Boys” for his players.
“I came into college athletics with the idea of building a culture,” Corbin said. "Building a program where the environment and the people in place are very special to the kid and they want to come back. There’s a reason why I have a professional locker room here. It’s because I wanted those guys to come back. And I think there’s less and less of that all the time. Not at Vanderbilt yet, and hopefully never is that the case at Vanderbilt. But I know that’s the case nationally.”
It’s a new era where money is prioritized over education and experience. And players are told to look out for themselves above the team or their school. The jury is out on whether that will produce better, more productive people after their playing days are done.
“When I think of the greatest things that a college education can do for a person it’s the building of relationships and having a place that you can call home,” Corbin said. “There was a loyalty, an honor, a pride in where you come from. I’m not sure if that’s going on as much right now.”
THE OLYMPIC IMPACT
Beyond the impact on the academic and personal experiences of the athletes on campus, the potential collateral damage caused by the shift to revenue sharing will cause waves that will ripple into other arenas, including the Olympics.
There are more than 1,200 current, former or incoming NCAA athletes who competed in the Paris Olympics. That number includes 385 athletes or approximately 65 percent of Team USA. Fourteen different U.S. teams, including men’s gymnastics, men’s and women’s volleyball and men’s and women’s water polo are comprised completely of athletes that played in college at NCAA member schools.
In total, NCAA athletes combined to win 190 medals through the first 13 days of the Olympics.
The United States has benefited the most from its prodigious college swimming program with stars like Tori Huske, Katie Douglass and Nashville’s Gretchen and Alex Walsh helping the Americans dominate the pool in Paris. But even French swimming sensation Leon Marchand, one of the stars of the games, is a swimmer at Arizona State.
Swimming and nearly all of the Olympic sports are considered non-revenue sports, fully subsidized by athletic departments flush with cash from revenue made in their football and basketball programs. Those college programs have allowed the United States as the only nation to not fund its Olympic teams on the national level. We haven’t had to because the training on college campuses is as good as it gets.
But with 22% of all revenue earmarked to pay players starting in 2025, schools will struggle to continue funding the same number of scholarships and maybe even sports moving forward.
Cuts are coming to athletic departments across the country in the form of jobs, scholarship reductions for certain teams, and maybe even the elimination of certain sports altogether. Male sports like men’s gymnastics, which has just 12 division one programs as it stands, figure to be first on the chopping block as schools still try to balance Title IX compliance in a world where football teams can now be fully funded up to 105 scholarships.
Any cuts made will not just reduce the opportunities to compete on campus, it will almost certainly have an adverse impact on Team USA’s future success.
“It will take one or two Olympics where some of the countries we don’t like to see win medals, winning a lot of medals and the U.S. not for people to say, ‘hey, what happened?’” Belmont University President Dr. Gregory L. Jones said. “But the trouble is that once we recognize that it’s going to take a lot of years to rebuild. You know, everything from swimming to wrestling to other sports. I think we could easily undercut the whole infrastructure that we have.”
Just how impressive are NCAA athletes in competition at the Olympics?
Consider the fact that if they were countries the ACC and SEC would rank third and fourth respectively on the medal count with three days left in the competition. The ACC has won 58 total medals including 21 gold, ranking only behind the U.S. and China. The SEC has won 55 medals, including 15 gold, ranking just ahead of the host French.
“There are countries around the world that would die to have the higher education enterprise like (American) universities have when it comes to intercollegiate athletics,” MTSU president Dr. Sidney McPhee said. “So sometimes we take those things for granted when we’re so close to it.”
One example of the collateral damage of a changing collegiate sports model that has not been part of the conversation up to this point.
