On Sept. 24, 1955, Ray Dennison lined up for the opening kickoff of a football game for the Fort Lewis A&M Aggies. As the clock ticked away its first few seconds, Dennison’s head collided with another player’s knee.
The injury put Dennison in a coma. Thirty hours after the collision, Dennison died. His wife, Billie, filed a claim for death benefits on behalf of her husband.
Dennison’s claim was taken all the way to the Colorado Supreme Court, where it sided with the university. Dennison’s family did not receive any benefits from his death.
The NCAA and the university argued that Dennison was not an employee of the university; rather, his situation was a freak accident.
According to an Atlantic article, the term student-athlete was created with the sole purpose of ambiguity. Former executive director of the NCAA, Walter Byers, said from that case on, the term was “embedded in all NCAA rules and interpretations.”
Since Dennison’s passing, numerous athletes, coaches and activists have stood by and fought for the rights of college athletes. Over the decades, the idea of what a student-athlete is has evolved. The last four years have radically altered the landscape of what student-athletes are.
In 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the NCAA violated several antitrust laws against student-athletes. This decision created the Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) era of college athletics.
Student-athletes could finally make their own money by starting businesses or working at training camps.
It quickly became abused by players and institutions.
“It was kids getting $10,000 showing up for Johnny’s birthday party to sign autographs for half an hour,” said Fresno State Athletic Director Garrett Klassy.
The dream for most college athletes is to play their sport professionally. Even though the odds are stacked against a large majority of college athletes, this dream drives them to every possible chance to have careers as professionals.
Depending on the sport, the chances that athletes make a professional roster sit around 2%.
A student-athlete’s time is invested fully into their sport. Strength-training, practice, nutrition and treatment all add on to the time commitment an athlete has on top of their academic responsibilities.
No time to work a part-time job means no opportunity to cover extra expenses after the cost of attending a university, until June 2021.
In 2025, the House of Representatives settled with the NCAA to pay $2.8 billion to former athletes and create a new “revenue-sharing” agreement.
“[The settlement] actually adds more guardrails and more structure,” Klassy said. “I think it’s good. Student-athletes are receiving more rights, and the reality is, they’re putting their bodies on the line to represent all these great institutions.”
For the next 10 years, schools will be able to pay players directly. Athletic departments that opted into the settlement will be under a “salary cap” of $20.5 million for the 2025-26 academic year. The cap is expected to increase each year for 10 years.
The cap that the NCAA decided on was carefully crafted by taking a percentage of the average revenue from the Power 5 conferences.
All NIL deals will go through an approval process through NIL Go, a portal created in the 2025 settlement.
Fresno State Athletics has dipped into this aspect of NIL. The Valley Co-Op fund is Fresno State’s other NIL aspect that was introduced in July.
“We wanted to figure out what’s the best way to really market the next stage of college athletics,” Klassy said.
While Klassy believes in the more traditional terms of “student-athlete, recruitment and retention,” Fresno State Athletics created its own revenue-sharing opportunity for its athletes.
The co-op was tied to the Valley roots of agriculture. No matter how much a person donates, it helps the entire system.
“What do you do in a co-op — especially in agriculture?” Klassy said. “You help things grow. You’re helping the market, and we need to rise to the Pac-12 level.”
Klassy alluded to the fact that Fresno State Athletics has one of the lowest operating budgets in the Mountain West — and eventually the Pac-12 — and the challenges that come with fundraising.
One aspect that NIL has encroached on is the scholarship that athletes receive when they get recruited. It was their only source of security coming to college, but what does it do now?
With such a small number of athletes receiving the opportunity to play their sport professionally, a university has the duty to give athletes a serviceable education. For the Valley, the impact that graduates have is even more profound.
“We contribute — not athletics, but the university — to the economy in this Valley, at a significant level,” Klassy said.
Even for the 2% of athletes who get to play professionally, no one plays in a league forever.
“We want to recruit young men and young women that understand the value of an education and what a degree means,” Klassy said.
The landscape of college athletics has changed dramatically since Dennison’s tragic passing. The NCAA has more transitions on the horizon, but student-athletes have won the long-standing battle for payment.
