USC President Harris Pastides says the NCAA will vote this week to allow universities to give student-athletes stipends and insure them against injuries.
Pastides wrote in an op-ed for the Chicago Tribune Sunday that the NCAA will allow well-heeled conferences to give athletes a stipend for incidental expenses and insurance for career-ending injuries. They’ll also be allowed to offer better academic and career counseling, better medical monitoring and “enhanced well-being benefits including meals and nutrition.”
He also wrote that student-athletes will be represented under the NCAA’s new governance structure. Two athletes will be voting members in the organization; previously, only university presidents could vote.
Still, athletes’ two votes is a relatively small portion of the total. By comparison, the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac 12 and SEC will each get four votes, or a collective 38.7 percent of the vote, Pastides wrote.
The NCAA will vote Thursday, one day before football players at Northwestern University vote on unionization.
Pastides, a member of the NCAA’s Division I executive committee, also criticized the pace of change at the NCAA.
“The NCAA must act now,” Pastides wrote. “Admittedly, the wheels of progress have turned too slowly.”