Two weeks ago, I wrote that “the moniker ‘student-athlete’ has rung hollow for years.”
Apparently, officials at the highest echelons of the NCAA agree with me.
Some of the chief powerbrokers in collegiate athletics think the NCAA is on shaky ground by continuing to deny college athletes access to the money they generate, according to documents released through a pending antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA and reported by ESPN.
To be fair, these officials, including senior policy advisor Wallace Renfro and University of Nebraska Chancellor and former member of the association’s Board of Directors Harvey Perlman, have not commented on how and when the actual payment of funds should occur and what the quantity should be. Just that they find the system unequitable.
Perlman wrote that the NCAA’s current practices regarding commercial licensing agreements — through which the association allegedly takes advantage of the images and likenesses of college players for monetary gain — are “a disaster leading to catastrophe.” Renfro, who has worked with the NCAA since the 1970s, mulled in a 2010 memo to drop the “athlete” portion of the term altogether and allow players to hire agents, according to ESPN.
Some of this could be resolved if the lawsuit, which seeks to force the NCAA to compensate players for using their images and likenesses in commercial contexts (think EA Sports’ NCAA Football and NCAA Basketball video game franchises), proves successful. If courts compel the NCAA to distribute this money, it would be a first step towards a fiscal equality between athletes and administrators.
But this lawsuit and the surrounding discussion address just a piece of the overall money pie. Licensing fees for video games are all well and good, but equity won’t exist until athletes get a cut of the funds directly generated by their on-field performance.
After my column two weeks ago, in which I suggested that college football players deserve that cut, I knew I would have to revisit the topic. A commenter on the column raised several salient points (which, unfortunately, I don’t have enough space to respond to in this column) and a Facebook poll on the Daily Cal’s page showed overwhelming support for the status quo. Almost 90 percent of respondents voted “No” to the question: “Should college football players get paid?”
So there’s still some convincing to do.
The idea that college football players — and those in college basketball, the other money-making college sport — could get paid is still anathema to many people who cling to the notion of the student-athlete and, more importantly, the student-athletes as an amateurs.
This, as I wrote before, is patently ridiculous.
Beyond the general work commitment, college football and basketball players are effectively in the minor leagues. While both the NFL and NBA do have systems like the United Football League or the NBA Development League, these are insignificant when you consider the entire enterprise. Unlike in baseball, where an established development system takes players from college through levels of professional games to the majors, the main entry point to pro football and basketball is through college.
This brings us full circle to the distress expressed by Perlman, Renfro and others. While the NCAA may have begun as a genuinely amateur endeavour, it has since exploded into a multi-billion dollar enterprise that cannot kid itself any longer about its true purpose: Student-athletes are, at best, students but more likely athletes.
The NCAA does not protect its athletes via any sort of educational mission, as it currently claims. Instead, it exploits them.
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United Football League isn’t even part of the NFL. Most likely the UFL will die this year due to lack of interest and money. As for financial equality…administrators will always find some other sucker to do it for less. That’s the way the world works. The moment people start crying for fair compensation is the moment shit gets shipped off to China. Everyone is greedy, everyone wants more, but the rule of thumb is: “Those who hold all the cards win the bet”.
Bottom-line: They give us a year of performance, we give them a year of free education, room & board. They are compensated.
The fact is that no amount of additional compensation will satisfy players. Look for strikes, lock-outs and labor unrest to follow any implementation of this stupid idea. Can you imagine players striking before the Rose Bowl? Games canceled because schools are trying to break the inevitable unions that will form?
Oh yeah, let’s do THAT, you moron. Next time you get the urge to express you ideas, remind yourself that you are an idiot.
Calm your ego. When you open your column announcing how smart your are, no one wants to keep reading.
I have been a fan of paying players for years. However, we have to handle this in a way that doesn’t (1) further erode parity between teams and (2) doesn’t destroy most of the programs in the athletic department. Using Cal for the example, if we are going to compensate athletes, it needs to come from a pool that includes all the NCAA teams or at least the Pac 12 and every school should pay the same compensation. If compensation is provided by the individual university or if athletes get agents for their own deals, then USC and Alabama become unstoppable juggernauts for the rest of history, since they can afford to pay for the best athletes. My second worry is about the athletic department losing more programs. At this time, the athletic department doesn’t make enough money from ticket sales and other revenue sources to fund itself. Paying athletes will lead to major changes in the department depending on the amount of compensation the athletes get. More than likely we will see several men’s and women’s sports cancelled. The university should also be free from having to financially support the athletic department in any way once student compensation starts. The athletic department becomes a self sustaining business. My real point is that compensation should be fair, but it should be handled in a way to keep it from creating the messes that we see in pro sports.