things i think about while powerwashing 87

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Happy late Olympics!

In the spirit of the Olympics, here's a few tidbits about this year's Olympics that I found pretty interesting:

• the gold medal match between China and The Netherlands for women's field hockey was actually somewhat of a grudge match as the head coach for China (who is Australian) used to coach for The Netherlands and was fired in 2022.
• American wrestling is doing pretty well! But Japanese wrestling seems to be doing even better. Check out these two matches.
• I watched one biking race and am now inspired to get off my butt and watch more biking
• The dynamic Taiwanese duo in badminton men's double is back with another gold over China after winning in Tokyo!!!

And now, an axe to grind.

Every Olympics, we see the wonderful effects of having less-revenue generating sports in the NCAA. Track and field, wrestling, swimming — all sports that don't unfortunately don't generate the revenue and donation dollars that football and basketball do. And we see Olympians all over the world compete in the NCAA — for example, Joseph Schooling of Singapore (WHAT A NAME LMFAO) who beat Michael Phelps in the 2016 Olympics was then a student-athlete not at any college in Singapore, but UT Austin.

And the reason I bring this up is that due to House v. NCAA, this could all change. The TLDR behind House v. NCAA is it was an class-action antitrust lawsuit aimed at the NCAA for using athletes' name, image and likeness (NIL, which you have probably heard of by now) and earning money off of it. The immediate effect (pending review by judge) is that the athletes who sued the NCAA will immediately get a bit of a payout. One of the many other effects is that athletes will now be entitled to a revenue share — meaning the universities will have to/get to pay the athletes now. Hooray!

But some of these sports don't generate much revenue. Like how some departments at work don't directly generate much revenue but contribute to the quality of life (like quality assurance, etc.).

So what happens to these non-revenue generating sports? Well they'll probably start to get cut. In order for smaller basketball and football programs to succeed, they'll need to pay their athletes much more. In doing so, they may not have enough money left over to support some of the smaller sports. On a larger university scale (think Oregon, Purdue, UCLA) these schools may choose to invest heavily into football or basketball — trying to pay those players more and being willing to cut some sports as a result.

And due to Title IX, if one men or women's sport gets cut, another of the opposite gender has to be cut as well.

To the Singaporean lawyer reading this: I hope I got this right lol

So here it is, all coming to a head here at the Olympics. We see some of the fastest runners and swimmers compete at highest level at both the NCAA championships of these sports and the Olympic games. And now this rich Olympic tradition could come to an end.

To finish this off, I'll leave with two notes:

There's no telling how this is gonna finally end. The settlement agreement (which includes the revenue share) is still under review by a judge in the Ninth Circuit.

The NCAA isn't faultless. The NCAA has been operating in a way that's the equivalent of having a punchable face for quite a while. They deserve all the punishment coming at them. The smaller sports don't.

More reading:

• [The Athletic]: If NCAA House settlement is approved, smaller schools could take the brunt of the impact
• [Fox Sports]: House v. NCAA settlement: What it means, why it happened and what happens next?
• [Duke Chronicle]: Breaking down the House v. NCAA settlement and the possible future of revenue sharing in college athletics

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