Being as it’s New Years Day, and all the bowl action is taking up most of the viewing space on the tube, I thought that this was an apt subject to explore.
There’s been a lot of noise made lately about the NCAA and all the problems with American college sports. Most of the noise has been made in football and basketball, about recruiting and how it’s been abused by some schools, almost traditionally.
Aside from recruiting and injuries, mostly head injuries, the biggest problem at this particular moment stems from whether or not we should pay athletes to play games in college that almost all of them would play for nothing, just as they have their whole short lives. The loudest argument for paying college athletes seems to come from a couple of columnists who have made their names on this argument, and that fact alone makes it seem more than a little suspicious to this writer.
Look, no one denies that some few colleges make a lot of money on the play of their athletes. But the reality is that this is true of only a few. The Notre Dame’s, the Michigan’s, the USC’s and the Alabama’s make a lot of money on football while the Duke’s, the Uconn’s and the Kentucky’s do the same on basketball but the majority of schools actually lose money on their athletic programs and to put the onus of salaries on top of what they are losing would probably force them to drop sports altogether or seriously cut back on their academic scholarships, which are, after all the important reason for these schools existence.
Those who try to sell us on the idea that we should pay these gifted kids because heir talent brings fans into the seats don’t seem to understand that these gifted kids are already being paid, far more than any ungifted non-college grad would make in the real world. The cost of room, board, tuition and books at a major college runs close to fifty grand a year. How many nineteen year olds do you know who make that kind of dough, along with being showcased for a potential multi-million dollar pro career?
But more important than the showcasing is the education, an education at many schools, that those kids would never be able to get. So they get fifty grand in room, board, tuition and books per year plus the value of a college degree, if they are smart enough to pay attention and earn it. Sure many kids at the football factories, especially in the deepest south, never finish school and hardly go to classes when they are in attendance, but that’s their fault, their decision to waste the real benefits of their scholarships. On the other hand there are those kids who go to schools like Duke, Stanford, Notre Dame, Northwestern, Clemson, Boston College and others, kids who graduate and go on to careers outside sports, that they would never have attained without sports. Yes, they played without salaries but they got an education that will stand tem n good stead for the rest of their lives. Tell me it wasn’t worth it.
But let’s forget, for just a moment, about the benefits occurring to student athletes and look at some of the practical aspects of actually putting these kids on salary.
When most people talk about this they are talking abut football and basketball because those are the big money sports but those who think that way are doing it with their letter sweaters not their heads because once you pay your first football player you are now obligated to pay every man, woman and child who plays any sport for the university, and, you have to pay them all the same amount. You don’t believe me, just check out the rise of women’s athletics, not through the basketball courts but through the federal courts. Just try discriminating against the kid who runs track or holds down a post on the fencing team when you are paying some class cutting, 360 pound defensive tackle a salary to play football.
If you really want to look at the problem with money in college sports just take a look at what the coaches are making. Most major college coaches, make between two and five million bucks a year. Maybe, just maybe the schools could cut back on that number to say, whatever the dean of one of their colleges makes a year. That would be fair and also set a good example. It would also be unrealistic because our colleges, which are supposed to be setting good examples for our youth and teaching them how to live as adults are just as avaricious, just as mean spirited, just as big cheaters as your average oil pipeline company.
Of course there is a solution, but unfortunately it lives in the grey zone where so many moral issues flounder. I think that college coaches should be paid no more than, the top salary for any other department head. Now don’t forget, these aren’t student athletes, so this presents an opportunity for all those drooling alumni, who have been dying to slip the kids a few bucks under the table. Most, at least in the north, have been frustrated in their attempts to do that but there is no rule against overpaying the local coach for doing a commercial for your company or appearing at its employee dinner. It wouldn’t take much for four or five of those oil baron alumni to make up the difference that a rule limiting his salary to that of the highest department head would create for the coach of say, Oklahoma, or maybe Texas.
But let’s go back to paying the players. Once you pay them they are no longer amateurs, even the phony amateurs they are now, so the first thing they do is get agents and before you know it whatever the agreed upon stipend that the NCAA has allowed is being boosted out of sight for those five star recruits by their agents. What happens when one of them flunks out? The school has a fortune invested in this kid and he can’t pass third grade math. What happens to him? Do they just dump him the way Notre Dame did this year, when their staring quarterback was caught doing the wrong thing in a test? I think not. As a matter of fact, there are damned few schools that would have done that, even without a salary structure.
Can you see Alabama, USC or Ohio State declaring their starting quarterback ineligible because of anything as mundane as an academic faux pas? The President of the University would be hung from the goal post at halftime on opening day and I don’t mean in effigy.
The real problem with college sports, especially football and basketball is not whether or not to pay athletes, which would be a catastrophe for all collegiate sports but how to create equity on the playing field or the court. Let’s face it; many kids who go to college to play sports aren’t really smart enough to be interested in a free education or any education at all. Stupidity is just as endemic to the human race as is intelligence, probably more so.
I went to school at a well-known football school but one that maintained high academic standards. My two best friends freshman year were superb football players who would have started if freshman had been eligible in that era. Both flunked out after freshman year. Neither wanted to, but neither maintained good enough grades to stay in school. That would never have happened a most football factories, but that should happen at all of them.
It’s even worse with basketball, where many schools like Connecticut or Louisville recruit kids for one year before they go on to the pros. These kids are no more students of those schools than are the elephants at the local zoo. Their very presence makes a mockery of the concept of amateurism.
The bottom line is very simple; the games should be played by student athletes, not professionals wearing school colors. If you start paying college athletes there are no more college sports, there are only second rate pro teams that can’t compete with the talent of the NBA or NFL.
Oh yeah, one more thought. If a kid goes to college on a sports scholarship, he should be made to sign a contract, obligating him to play for that school for four years. He can break that contract in order to play for a pro team but if he does he must pay some kind of indemnity to the school and that indemnity should be in the form of money to be spent on non-athletic scholarships. I would suggest the cost of one years sports ride for each year of eligibility he walks out on. So if a kid leaves after his freshman year, as many basketball players do, he would owe the school three years at approximately fifty grand or one hundred fifty grand to be paid out of his first year pro contract.
Considering the money involved in pro contracts, this isn’t really very much and it won’t solve the problem of kids leaving for the pros, but it would be a help to someone who has the brains to go to college, but not the bucks.
Of course if such a kid didn’t make a pro team, then the contract would be invalidated. A kid who doesn’t want to go to college for nothing and isn’t good enough to play pro sports, probably isn’t going to be in a position to make an honest living anyhow.
I like that idea!