The Impact of New NCAA Ruling on Stanford Sports

Some major news has just come out in the college sports world. The NCAA was a part of a lawsuit called House vs NCAA, with "three separate federal antitrust lawsuits, all of which claimed the NCAA was illegally limiting the earning power of college athletes." Players will essentially have a “salary” and will be able to be paid closer to their actual value than even NIL deals could offer.

ESPN is reporting that as part of the ruling, "the NCAA will pay nearly $2.8 billion in back damages over the next 10 years to athletes who competed in college at any time from 2016 through present day."

Similar to the professional game, the NCAA is expected to have a salary cap of around $20 million annually per school. This is also expected to encompass all varsity sports, not just the ones that draw the most money. How that money ends up being allocated will be the question.

Essentially, college sports have taken another step towards becoming more like the pro game, relying on money and high prestige rather than good recruiting and better opportunity for players.

This could potentially be a negative development for the Stanford Cardinal.

There is zero doubt that Stanford is the best sporting program in the nation across all sports. Winning National Championships in 49 consecutive seasons and taking home the best athletic university award, or Directors’ Cup, 26 times since 1993-94, while the only other winners have been Texas (3) and North Carolina (1).

What this means is that Stanford will surely use their salary cap amongst every sports program in order to spread the wealth around and continue to draw in the best athletes in numerous sports.

This is positive for smaller sports. With so many dominant small sports programs at Stanford, they will surely win out tons of recruits. This should mean they continue to be amazing programs, and continue the norm of winning National Championships on The Farm.

However, this may be detrimental for bigger sports. With schools such as Alabama and LSU putting so much money into football, it will be very tough to beat them out for players, as Stanford is likely to spread the money around a bit more than other schools. This is true in basketball too, as Duke and BYU amongst others will put all of their chips into basketball, easily beating out Stanford for recruits.

The other potential issue here is for Stanford to figure out their overall gameplan, and implement it so that they can have success on the field or court. NIL deals have been fairly new, and the Cardinal are still trying to get the hang of how they want to handle those, and this will provide a new wrinkle for them to consider.

It could also be helpful, having another avenue for success, while also limiting how much the competition can spend overall, which could loop Stanford in on some top recruits since they also have the prestigious education they can offer.

Overall, there are some positives and negatives to this ruling. Small sports will definitely continue thrive at Stanford for years to come. However, as football, baseball, and women’s basketball attempts to get back to their dominant ways, the new salary cap rule has the potential to make those rebuilds a whole lot tougher than before.