Guest Post: Could college sports revenue sharing be an antipoverty program?

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Today, I’m happy to turn the time over to Peyton Barish. Barish is a former track and cross-country athlete at NC State who recently graduated with his master's in public policy from Duke University. His master's thesis focused on the impacts of conference realignment in the ACC, and he has worked on issues related to the future of collegiate athletics, focusing on making the experience more just and equitable for athletes across sports. Peyton can be reached at [email protected].

Peyton isn’t here to write about realignment today. But a few months ago, he reached out to me, asking to write about the potential for college athletics revenue sharing to serve as an explicit antipoverty program.

I suspect there’s plenty of room for additional research and study here, but I thought his thesis was interesting enough for a newsletter. I’ll pass him the mic now.

Since the announcement of the proposed settlement in the House case, I cannot seem to read a news story about revenue sharing without also reading questions like "How will school X pay $22 million?" or "Will school Y be able to build new facilities?"

Despite this paradigm-shifting change, administrators across the collegiate athletic industry have not spoken enough of the transformational, positive benefits revenue-sharing will have on one of the most illustrious human capital development programs in the United States. With revenue-sharing on the horizon, collegiate athletics will become an anti-poverty program.

The idea of direct cash transfers (DCTs) caught public attention during Andrew Yang’s presidential campaign. He had proposed a universal basic income of $1,000 a month that every American would receive, no strings attached. Despite its recent introduction into the American consciousness, DCTs have served as a significant anti-poverty measure in countries across the globe for decades. Countries of all stripes have experimented with DCTs, whether low-income or high-income, Asian or Latin, it is a policy explored by many, including several cities in the United States.  The general theory is simple: give people autonomy over their spending decisions and provide a financial safety net through a regular, guaranteed amount of cash rather than benefits (food stamps, unemployment insurance, etc.).

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