Tennessee, men's basketball team work on CBA-like deal - ESPN

The University of Tennessee men's basketball team released a collective bargaining term sheet on Tuesday, a result of negotiations with the school's athletic administration, that includes a salary cap and spending floor, eligibility and transfer rules and cap circumvention enforcement.

The document, which is not a signed CBA yet, is the first of its kind in college athletics and is meant to show what an agreement between athletes and a university can look like.

The basketball team elected Tyler Lundblade, Campbell Duncan and DeWayne Brown II to be player representatives and work with the college sports players association Athletes.org and negotiate with the athletic department. Several rounds of discussions took place in August and September with the deal agreed to on Oct. 1.

«We know what we want and how we want to move forward,» said Brown, a freshman for the 11th-ranked Volunteers. «Working through the collective bargaining process has been great and I hope it's just a stepping stone for more college athletes to replicate our process with their own schools.»

The term sheet replaces revenue share and university-affiliate NIL contracts with a universal services agreement with payments to begin at the date of enrollment or first practice.

The proposed spending floor contains two options: spend 89% of the average annual salary cap over the agreed four-year window or negotiate a percentage of the athletic department budget to be established during the official collective bargaining negotiation. The deal would also include freshman pay scale similar to the rookie wage scale in professional sports and a minimum compensation that covers cost of attendance.

Under cap circumvention enforcement terms, the university, athletes,