Two Sides of the Same Coin? Race, Racial Resentment, and Public Opinion Toward Financial Compensation of College Athletes

Abstract

Abstract The last decade has seen a series of high-profile battles over the rights of college athletes take place in the nation’s courthouses and state legislatures, and on the floor of the U.S. Congress. How has the public responded to these changes and how do they formulate their views on policies that seek to provide additional financial compensation and employment protections to college athletes? Using six years of nationally representative polling data on NCAA reform, we find that public opinion on the financial rights of college athletes and the NCAA’s treatment of its athletes follows the same trajectory as so much else in American social, political and cultural life—massive racial differences in how people understand the issue and a growing polarization among whites based on ideology and racial attitudes. More specifically, we find that while support for NCAA reform among African Americans and white conservatives inched incrementally upwards between 2014 and 2020, support among white liberals increased exponentially. As we explain, this asymmetrical increase in support has much to do with the rapidly evolving racial attitudes of white liberals. Indeed, we show that racial attitudes are the largest and most important determinant of support for the three most commonly discussed reforms to the NCAA: “pay for play,” name, image and likeness rights (NIL), and unionization protections. In short, opinions about the future of college athletics have as much to do with race and racial attitudes as they do with sports and education.