Survey: ADs Split on Fair Pay to Play Issue

Athletic directors appear split about issues related to whether college student-athletes should be paid to play.

AthleticDirectorU and AthleteViewpoint gathered information on the topic of name, image and likeness and student-athlete compensation by surveying current Division I athletic directors on the issue. 

The survey was distributed to 344 NCAA Division I athletic directors. Of that group, 97 individuals responded, providing a 28.2 percent response rate. 

The responses were representative of the population of AD's across Power 5, Group of 5 and FCS/Non-Football institutions with all three classifications seeing nearly identical response rates. 

The survey found that 47 percent of respondents did not support athletes having the opportunity to profit from their name, image and likeness. Fully 44 percent said they should have that right and it should apply to all sports. A small portion (3.1 percent) of respondents said athletes should have the opportunity to profit from their NIL, but with the caveat that only football and men’s basketball be included. A slight larger pool (6.3 percent) of respondents answered “yes, but only for football & men’s basketball, and some women’s sports.”

The full study also looks at the intricacies of the issue, asking about attitudes toward different NIL models and the state of the rule-making process itself. Fully 43 percent of respondents said the process is moving along at the “appropriate pace,” while 21 percent said things were moving “too slow,” and 36 percent said things were moving “too fast.”  

With a 90 percent confidence interval, the data has a +/- 6.3 percent margin of error — indicating the views of the ADs who responded are generally representative of the perspectives of all Division I ADs.