Sedona Prince graduated from high school outside Austin, Texas, as an all-American basketball player intent on making her mark. As she enters her final year in college, she has left an indelible imprint — but not on the court.
Prince, a 6-foot-7 center at Texas Christian University, became an avatar for the upheaval in college sports.
She is a plaintiff in two antitrust lawsuits, including House v. N.C.A.A., whose settlement agreement, if approved by a judge, would fundamentally change college sports by allowing schools to directly pay their athletes. Her video of a paltry weight room at the 2021 N.C.A.A. women’s basketball tournament laid bare the disparate treatment between men’s and women’s players, which has led to significant changes.
Prince, 24, has 2.6 million followers on TikTok, has testified before Congress and consulted with lawmakers who want to codify rights for college athletes. She is trying to organize college athletes to give them a more powerful voice, and fears that the settlement may be bad news for female and Olympic athletes.
Ramogi Huma, who leads the player advocacy group National College Players Association, also opposed the settlement on Thursday, saying it would allow schools to collude against revenue-sharing and restrict payments from collectives.
Complications from a broken leg just before college turned Prince from a self-conscious teenager into an activist. “I didn’t think I was every going to play basketball again because of my leg and so I was like, ‘you know what? I’m just going to try to make a change while I’m here,’” she said.
Prince has also benefited from new rules that eased transfer restrictions and have allowed college athletes to make money from endorsements. Prince said she made $550,000 in the last half of 2021 when college athletes first began getting paid for the use of name, image and likeness, and has had more than 50 endorsement deals. She is also at her third school, transferring from the University of Texas to the University of Oregon, where she spent three years, and then to T.C.U., where she is preparing for her final season.
Prince recently spoke with The Times about her role in the landmark case and what she hopes to achieve for college athletes.
Shortly after the interview, a former girlfriend, Olivia Stabile, a social media influencer, accused Prince in a series of TikTok posts of shoving her to the ground and threatening to sue Stabile if she were to go public about the incident. In a text message to The Times, Prince said: “The allegations are false, defamatory and misleading. I’ll be addressing them at the appropriate time.” Prince declined to answer other questions about the situation.
These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
If the House v. N.C.A.A. settlement is approved, what’s the most important element to you?
Getting past athletes paid has been a feel-good moment in my heart, especially women’s basketball players that have been like, “oh, man, you kids got N.I.L. We just missed it.”
You are one of the few plaintiffs in all these antitrust cases against the N.C.A.A. who is still playing. How often do you get asked about the case by other athletes?
One of my coaches, Minyon Moore, was my old teammate at Oregon, and she falls into that plaintiff class. She asks a lot of questions. My teammates ask a lot. A lot of athletes don’t understand the magnitude of where we’re at — how long this has taken, how much fighting there’s been and what an important time this is. We’re winning this, but how do we get more, and how do our voices get heard?
What question do you get asked the most?
“How much money am I going to get?” (Laughs.) It’s a calculation my lawyers came up with that will determine what athletes get. Let’s say you started every single game for four years at a massive Division I school, had a lot of ESPN games and were one of the best players on your team. Then your initial value will be higher than someone who was at a mid-major. Then you factor in followers. The calculation is very extensive, very complicated. But everyone wants to know, what am I going to get paid? Which is a very fair question.
One of the settlement’s proposals is to allow schools to put aside just over $20 million to pay athletes as soon as next year. Are you worried that all the money will go to football and men’s basketball players?
That’s the scary part, right? We’re leaving it up to the schools to make these choices, and who says they’re not going to give 100 percent to football? They could just be giving it to high school and transfer kids to build their football team. There’s no one holding them accountable. That’s my biggest concern. If we keep putting our trust in schools and in the N.C.A.A., the same thing is going to happen that’s been happening for years, and we’ll have more lawsuits.
What will the settlement mean for Olympic sports? Some believe more money will be diverted into football from sports like gymnastics, swimming, volleyball and track.
I hope not. It’s only a concern if the school makes it one, if they only invest in football. Football is always going to get a lot of money, but you can take a lot of this money and help uplift other athletes so they don’t have to work second jobs and can pay off debts and loans because they’re putting in as much work, if not more, than football players.
One of the court filings in opposition to the settlement is by David West, a former N.B.A. player and union leader who said college athletes were not duly represented. What would you say to that?
I wholeheartedly agree. I flew out to Notre Dame a few weeks ago to talk to their student-athletes about what is going on and what the future is going to look like. Enough student-athletes’ voices have not been heard at all. We should be viewed as shareholders in this multibillion industry. We’re the work force. We’re allowed to make our own decisions. I wish I could have had more of a say, even as a plaintiff, which is crazy to say.
There’s a perception that if you’re a plaintiff, you’re intimately involved in this.
I’ve talked to my lawyers for about 1,000 hours, so I’m definitely a part. My lawyers educated me a lot about what’s going on. But a few months ago, all of a sudden it got leaked that we’re settling finally. We got kind of blindsided, right? I felt like I had been a part of it and so passionate about it for so long. It’s one of the reasons I posted about the weight room. And so all of a sudden to be like, “oh, yeah, we made a decision and we’re settling on this and that’s that.”
Do you have misgivings about your involvement?
I feel confident that my lawyers did the best they could and got us everything that I think was possible. I know that for a fact. That’s who Jeffrey Kessler and Steve Berman are. But was it enough? Could we have gotten a third party roped in, a players’ association where there were more rules and regulations about what is going to come of this distribution of money? I’m happy with the outcome, but in saying that I know we’re not done.
There have been attempts at organizing college athletes over the last decade or so, but nothing has stuck. Does there need to be a collective voice?
It’s imperative for there to be a space for student-athletes away from the university that has resources: free legal advice, free second opinions on injuries, free mental health care, background checks on people you work with. Every other sports league has one except for us, and we’re the most profitable league in the country.
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