Back to college sports

Last updated on: March 10, 2014 at 9:50 pm by Jane the Actuary

Back to college sports 2014-03-10T21:50:00-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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So I really shouldn’t be talking about this, given my plan to write only what I know, and the fact that this isn’t even timely. But I already ventured into the subject on Saturday, and that got me thinking about this some more, so I thought I’d ramble about this some more in a thoroughly (or mostly) unresearched way.

The NCAA is a cartel. College football and basketball are very profitable for its member schools, at the top tier, and even at lower tiers, bring prestige. But they’ve constructed the system in such a way as to prevent the schools from paying athletes, directly or indirectly. They claim this is to preserve the nobility of the “student athlete” — but they know there is no nobility anywhere to be seen, that the large majority of the football and basketball players are there to play sports first and foremost, and academics are but an inconvenience. In function, football and basketball at the Division I schools have become the minor league system, as players wait for eligibility or opportunity to aim for the major leagues. For schools to pretend otherwise is corrupting, as shown by the periodic scandals of athletes being passed through courses without even a modicum of learning, and the wide-open admission standards for athletes, with the university that holds its athletes to the same standards as the rest of its students the very rare exception. Even if this isn’t the case, it’s still dishonest, and respected universities simply should be honest, as an institution which claims to hold itself to high ethical standards.

Yes, they say, student athletes aren’t paid because we honor the fact that they are students first and foremost. So I did a little hunting around. Marching bands: at Michigan State, the students pay the cost of the “class” (one credit), plus the uniform and other miscellaneous fees. At others, not only are all costs covered but (google marching band + stipend), the university pays a stipend for fulfilling the obligations of the marching band season. Not a big one, but enough to point out the hypocrisy of the “nobility of studenthood” rationale. What other sorts of student activities pay actual cash, rather than just in nobility points? Research assistants of various kinds. Actors in student theatrical performances, depending on the university. Are there universities where performers in their orchestras are paid stipends? I couldn’t tell.

But, says the defender of NCAA policies, the athletes are compensated, by their full ride scholarships, which can be valuable indeed. Meh. A full-ride scholarship is only worth as much as the value the student gets from it, and if a football player chooses a university because of the renown of its football team and coach, it’s fairly immaterial whether it’s a $60,000 annual pricetag or a fraction of that. Besides which, these scholarships themselves are tightly controlled by the NCAA, with limits on how many scholarships can be provided per sport — an equivalent to the pay caps of pro sports. A cartel which agrees that the employees of all its members shall be paid a fixed amount isn’t any less of a cartel than one where they agree that all employees shall be paid squat.

And it’s a cartel in another manner, because the existence of big-time college athletics has pretty much suffocated opportunities for athletes to make their way to the major leagues through a farm team system. Why is baseball different? I don’t know, but it is. Same for hockey — while there are schools where hockey is popular (and not necessarily Division I schools; Lake Superior State University’s hockey team was the powerhouse in the CCHA), prospective hockey players do have alternate choices in the form of NHL farm teams For a football or basketball player who dreams of the NFL or NBA, college ball is all there is. = Cartel.

So imagine that some player, maybe someone who was injured and thus lost any chance at pro ball and has nothing to lose, sues. Could they do that? Would it require the Justice Department to file an anti-trust suit? Or has Congress given them an anti-trust exemption? Anyway, imagine that this happened — and colleges could not agree among each other not to pay their athletes. Would their be enough pressure to keep universities holding to an unwritten law, if not a written one? Or would universities gradually move towards stipends, or royalties for player images, or at least the opportunity to sell autographs? How would that not make the system worse, with even more money spent on the big-money programs? What additional steps would be necessary to move universities towards my pet solution, of moving the “minor league” sports of football and basketball “off-campus” in organization if not in the physical location of the stadium?

Mind you, I’m not pro-minor-leagueization because it’ll make universities better; I don’t really know whether university assertions that the football and basketball programs fund other athletics are true, or whether they just fund well-paid coaches and luxurious workout rooms. That’s not the point. The point is that it’s corrupting and dishonest to continue the farce of the noble student athlete.

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