When an Olympian Goes to College, Riches Stay Out of Reach

When an Olympian Goes to College, Riches Stay Out of Reach

In the third grade, a music abecedary aggressive Katie Ledecky to yield piano lessons. She showed an congenital aptitude for the chords, acrimonious them up quickly. Her academic acquaint were phased out in the eighth brand as her pond took off. Roughly 5 years later, no one is analytic Ledecky’s accord with the water. She has developed into the best changeable ambit freestyler in history and a accepted quadruple Olympic gold badge blackmail this summer in Rio de Janeiro.

As a swimmer, Ledecky faces banking restrictions that would not accept existed had she ashore with the piano. In the fall, she will accept at Stanford on a pond scholarship afterwards deferring her access a year to alternation for the Summer Games. The adjustment she agreed to if she active a letter of absorbed to bathe for the Cardinal in barter for tuition, books and apartment precludes her from a abeyant seven-figure banking adjustment through endorsements and paid appearances.

“I consistently knew I capital to bathe in college,” said Ledecky, who won the 200 and 400 freestyles in the aboriginal two canicule of this weekend’s Arena Pro Bathe Series accident at Skyline Aquatic Center. “I’m absolutely searching advanced to the opportunity.”

But why does accepting endorsement money and antagonism in academy accept to be an either-or proposition? The rules of amateurism that acutely barrier the earning abeyant of academy student-athletes do not administer to academy apprentice musicians. If Ledecky had activated herself to the piano instead of pond and becoming a music scholarship to Arizona State, she would accept been chargeless to analysis her amount in the accessible bazaar while alive against her degree.

David Hickman, a trumpet virtuoso and abettor at Arizona State, said his acceptance were about adequate to accomplish off campus “for as abundant money as they can make.” In some instances, the getting alms application has ties to the university, an arrangement, he said, that is beheld as broadly acceptable. In an email exchange, Hickman said that some of his alum acceptance becoming as abundant as $20,000 a year assuming freelance engagements, or with breadth orchestras and alcove ensembles, or both. The exception, he added, is foreign-born acceptance who do not accept blooming cards.

If artists aren’t accepted to abjure for their craft, why are the highest-profile athletes?

“I haven’t absolutely anticipation about it,” Ledecky said, adding, “I don’t anticipate anything’s absolutely traveling to change.”

The N.C.A.A. is adverse a class-action suit, brought by the above U.C.L.A. basketball amateur Ed O’Bannon, over the bartering corruption of academy athletes. It could accept ripple furnishings that adapt the academy mural — and not just for the athletes in the revenue-producing sports. The amount catechism is whether the N.C.A.A.’s amateurism rules, which currently bind advantage for academy athletes to a scholarship and a few thousand dollars to awning the abounding amount of attendance, are a all-important basic of academy sports to advice ensure aggressive balance, or are absurd and, perhaps, illegally restrictive.

“If Katie Ledecky goes to Stanford and she has a accord with a clothing company, does that yield abroad from what she’s accomplishing there, does that accord her an arbitrary advantage?” said Bob Bowman, the A.S.U. men’s and women’s pond coach. “I don’t apperceive that that changes annihilation except for her coffer account.”

Bowman watched the 22-time Olympic advocate Michael Phelps, whom he has accomplished back he was 11, abandon academy pond to about-face pro as a teenager. Imagine, he said, the acknowledgment pond would accept accustomed on the N.C.A.A. akin if Phelps had not been affected to accept amid authoritative money and authoritative academy memories in the pool. Added than a decade later, Bowman can’t appear up with a acute altercation for why Ledecky should accept to accomplish the aforementioned choice.

“I anticipate that there’s too abundant money getting fabricated off the athletes’ skills, likenesses, whatever they’re doing,” Bowman said. “Whether they’re in acquirement or nonrevenue sports, they’re absolutely bringing in some affectionate of absolute appulse for the university. It has to be dealt with somehow.”

The five-time Olympic advocate Missy Franklin, addition adversary in the Pro Bathe Series event, competed in college, at California, as a apprentice and a green afore axis pro endure year.

The Golden Bears don’t allegation actualization at their meets, so Franklin’s attendance didn’t advice advance the bathe team’s fortunes directly. But she did appear fund-raising contest for a donor-financed on-campus aquatics ability that is in the works, including one actualization that kept her from accessory an Association of National Olympic Committees bright in Thailand in which she was to be accustomed for her achievement at the 2012 London Games.

Franklin, 20, has aswell been featured in mailings beatific to -to-be student-athletes in sports added than swimming. On one envelope beatific to California sports affected participants was the brain-teaser “Why did five-time Olympic advocate Missy Franklin accept Cal?”

Franklin, who stepped abroad from her classes at Cal to activate her pro career and adapt for the United States Olympic trials at the end of June, said she was not abiding she would accept been able to alter school, sponsors and bookish swimming, even if all had been in play.

The advocacy aspect, she said, “is a little bit added backbreaking than I was assured it to be.”

“It sounds affectionate of asinine if you allocution about it, but photo shoots and commercials — those canicule are in fact really, absolutely taxing, added mentally than anything,” she said.

In a badinage aside, her father, Dick, afresh asked Franklin to brainstorm abstraction out time in her agenda to abstraction for finals.

“I capital to cry,” Franklin said, laughing. “I absolutely could not accept handled all that.”

The day is alpha if the best student-athletes — even those in the Olympic sports that don’t accomplish money for the able-bodied departments — will be able to adjudge how attenuate they wish to advance themselves instead of operating aural the attenuated borders accustomed by the N.C.A.A.

David Grenardo, an abettor assistant of law at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio and a above football amateur at Rice, argues that the N.C.A.A. cannot abide to abjure athletes the aforementioned free-market rights that acquiesce a music above to accomplish money arena music, a business above to accomplish millions creating a tech company, or a drillmaster to accomplish a baby affluence acknowledging the accoutrement that his athletes abrasion free.

“Ledecky should not lose the befalling to attempt in academy contest artlessly because her different skills, abilities and world-renowned concrete feats arete advantage through endorsements,” Grenardo said in an email.

Grenardo acclaimed that the athletes’ shelf activity as artefact endorsers could be beneath than an Olympic cycle.

Therefore, he said, “they should be accustomed to yield advantage of that befalling to endorse articles like anybody abroad can, including coaches and college-sports analysts.”

What’s the affliction that can happen?

“Even if all the swimmers accustomed endorsements,” Grenardo said, “then it still would not change the artefact in the pool, except maybe to actualize added action and fizz about the sport.”

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