College sports exploits unpaid black athletes

[gunnarthor]

Pretty interesting op-ed in the Washington Post by Donald Yee, a professional agent and lawyer. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/01/08/college-sports-exploits-unpaid-black-athletes-but-they-could-force-a-change/

 

He argued that the economics of college football and basketball are so large and so unfair that the players in tomorrows Alabama/Clemson game should simply boycott it. 

 

"Change, however, could come rapidly and fairly easily. If even a small group of players took a stand and refused to participate — imagine if they boycotted or delayed the start of Monday night’s championship game — administrators would have to back down. There’s too much money on the line, and no one could force the teams to play against their will. The schools and the NCAA would simply have to renegotiate the bargain with football and basketball players.

Paying players would cost money, of course, but with billions in TV revenue coming in, it shouldn’t be impossible to find a way to spend some of it on labor instead of on exotic woods for new training facilities. Fans would get over the end of the NCAA’s “amateur” status, just as they have accepted pro basketball, hockey and soccer players competing in the Olympics."

 

Earlier this year, football players managed to get the president of a University to step down for his (perceived) record on racial issues.  Image what would happen if these kids boycotted tomorrow's game. 

[diehardtwinsfan]

This is a really good example of what bothers me about the race card that is often played in our culture.

 

College sports exploits student athletes.  PERIOD. Absolutely no reason to bring race into it. If you are a decent college athlete, you are being hosed. It isn't like the value of the scholarship is being lessened simply b/c of the color of ones skin.

[biggentleben]

This is a really good example of what bothers me about the race card that is often played in our culture.

 

College sports exploits student athletes. PERIOD. Absolutely no reason to bring race into it. If you are a decent college athlete, you are being hosed. It isn't like the value of the scholarship is being lessened simply b/c of the color of ones skin.

Ding, ding, ding! The U of M had no problem pushing me so hard that I had no time to see my personal eye doc, or even a non team doc, but as soon as surgeries began, they had no idea who I was. I'm certainly not even tan, so it wasn't a race thing to exploit me. It's how it happens.

 

Funny thing is, I'd have done about 90% of it all the same given the same opportunity, even knowing it'd be the exact same outcome with my eyes to end things in the end of it.

[gunnarthor]

 

This is a really good example of what bothers me about the race card that is often played in our culture.

 

 

Couldn't disagree more.  This disproportionately affects black men.  From the article, "After all, who is actually earning the billions of dollars flooding universities, athletic conferences, TV networks and their sponsors? To a large extent, it’s young black men, who are heavily overrepresented in football and men’s basketball, the two sports that bring in virtually all the revenue in college athletics. A 2013 study by the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education found that 57 percent of the football players and 64 percent of the men’s basketball players in the six biggest conferences were black; at the same schools, black men made up less than 3 percent of the overall student population. (In recent NFL drafts, five times as many black players were taken in the first two rounds, where the perceived best players are picked, as white players.) Athletics administrators and coaches, meanwhile, are overwhelmingly white.

 

So by refusing to pay athletes, the NCAA isn’t just perpetuating a financial injustice. It’s also committing a racial one."

[Craig Arko]

College sports exploit all the other tuition and fees paying students, and that's the part that really chaps my ass.

[TheLeviathan]

 

College sports exploit all the other tuition and fees paying students, and that's the part that really chaps my ass.

 

This.  Yeah, the athletes aren't seeing the kind of compensation they should for their contributions to that money making effort, but at least they get to use the facilities it pays for and get some sort of experience out playing for their school.

 

The non-athlete kids only get 30 years of debt to build their new gyms and facilities to attract new athletes who get meatier scholarships than most of them.

[Mike Sixel]

Really need to just kill college athletics, and make school about school......but I don't see that happening any time soon. It is free training for the NBA and NFL, and makes lots of (the non-athletes and non-students) people rich......

[Vanimal46]

The NCAA is not in place to have the interest of the student athletes, I think that much is clear. I just don't think there's a clear solution to this problem. Schools can't discriminate and only compensate athletes on sports that make a profit... Title IX would eat that up. I also don't think you can come up with an even salary figure that every school could afford for all athletes. If the NCAA gave schools free reign to compensate athletes how they choose, there would no longer be any parity in college athletics whatsoever. How could a school like Minnesota come close to recruiting above average talent if a team like Texas offers the player 50k more than they could afford?

I think the author did a good job of writing an eloquent, heavily researched, article. But let's also keep in mind the author's profession, and what he has to gain if college athletes were to get compensated. As a sports agent, his client list would increase ten fold. Then who would be the person exploiting college athletes? 

[gunnarthor]

 

The NCAA is not in place to have the interest of the student athletes, I think that much is clear. I just don't think there's a clear solution to this problem. Schools can't discriminate and only compensate athletes on sports that make a profit... Title IX would eat that up. I also don't think you can come up with an even salary figure that every school could afford for all athletes. If the NCAA gave schools free reign to compensate athletes how they choose, there would no longer be any parity in college athletics whatsoever. How could a school like Minnesota come close to recruiting above average talent if a team like Texas offers the player 50k more than they could afford?

I think the author did a good job of writing an eloquent, heavily researched, article. But let's also keep in mind the author's profession, and what he has to gain if college athletes were to get compensated. As a sports agent, his client list would increase ten fold. Then who would be the person exploiting college athletes? 

Generally, agents don't exploit their clients.  Sure, in some cases they might but usually agents have their clients best interests in mind.  Boras was the only person who was talking about Thor's longterm health (I think it was Thor, maybe the other great pitcher) when the Mets wanted to keep him pitching, for instance.

 

I do think the NCAA could set up a fair salary structure to compensate kids - I don't think it would be an bidding type thing.  I don't think paying only football players and basketball players, as the market dictates, would violate Title IX.  I'm not an expert but I'm pretty sure I read a few things about that when the O'Bannon lawsuit came out and the authors weren't overly concerned with Title IX.  

[mikecgrimes]

I agree at the highest level such as tonight but outside of maybe 10 athletes on the 10 best teams, some of them white BTW no way. Real simple solution allow paid endorsements to individual athletes, outside of title 9 issues problem solved.

[gunnarthor]

 

I agree at the highest level such as tonight but outside of maybe 10 athletes on the 10 best teams, some of them white BTW no way. Real simple solution allow paid endorsements to individual athletes, outside of title 9 issues problem solved.

Even if we allowed Nike to pay Ezikel Elliot (which we should) that still gets the NCAA off the hook for the millions of dollars they'll be bringing in through the games and merchandising of the players.  

[mikecgrimes]

 

Even if we allowed Nike to pay Ezikel Elliot (which we should) that still gets the NCAA off the hook for the millions of dollars they'll be bringing in through the games and merchandising of the players

 

So are we paying the 3rd guy off the bench for the Gopher basketball team?  What about some kid who is a healthy scratch half the time for the Alabama Huntsville hockey team.  To me you either choose to play college sports or you choose not to.  If your able to put on a resume that you played linebacker in the Big Ten along with decent academic success your set up to succeed.  Maybe we shouldn't allow anyone to agree to a scholarship until their 18th birthday but outside of that it's a fair system.

[Vanimal46]

 

I do think the NCAA could set up a fair salary structure to compensate kids - I don't think it would be an bidding type thing.  I don't think paying only football players and basketball players, as the market dictates, would violate Title IX.  I'm not an expert but I'm pretty sure I read a few things about that when the O'Bannon lawsuit came out and the authors weren't overly concerned with Title IX.  

Problem is some schools most profitable sport may be something different than football or basketball. Take the University of North Dakota for example. Their most profitable sport is hockey. Should they compensate their athletes while the University of Minnesota does not? The Gophers have bigger fish to pay off in football and basketball to keep up with the Big 10.... 

Or do schools become specialized, and choose their 2 sports that they want to compensate kids? I just don't know where the line ends if we open up this can of worms. Think of this example: Florida is well known to have a great football, basketball, and baseball program compared to Alabama, who's only known for football. Florida's got a lot more athletes to pay than Alabama... 

[gunnarthor]

 

Problem is some schools most profitable sport may be something different than football or basketball. Take the University of North Dakota for example. Their most profitable sport is hockey. Should they compensate their athletes while the University of Minnesota does not? The Gophers have bigger fish to pay off in football and basketball to keep up with the Big 10.... 

Or do schools become specialized, and choose their 2 sports that they want to compensate kids? I just don't know where the line ends if we open up this can of worms. Think of this example: Florida is well known to have a great football, basketball, and baseball program compared to Alabama, who's only known for football. Florida's got a lot more athletes to pay than Alabama... 

I imagine the eventual solution will be something like paying all college players X amount in a sport, so you'd be paid the same to play QB at LSU as you would Michigan and individual players should be able to negotiate money for their jersey sales, advertisements etc.  

 

Eventually, these kids will get paid and those problems will be addressed.  But right now, billions of dollars are created through college football and the players themselves get none of it.  That's not fair and we shouldn't expect it to stay unfair just because solutions are complicated.  

[biggentleben]

 

I imagine the eventual solution will be something like paying all college players X amount in a sport, so you'd be paid the same to play QB at LSU as you would Michigan and individual players should be able to negotiate money for their jersey sales, advertisements etc.  

 

Eventually, these kids will get paid and those problems will be addressed.  But right now, billions of dollars are created through college football and the players themselves get none of it.  That's not fair and we shouldn't expect it to stay unfair just because solutions are complicated.  

 

Also realize that the revenue sports fund those that do not create revenue. So sports like cross country and swimming in most schools are completely funded by sports like basketball and football. So, you wouldn't be able to have a 1/1 relationship with dollars earned from the game to the dollars available to the athletes within that particular sport. Also, why would the QB on the football team deserve to get paid but a swimmer not, even if his/her sport isn't revenue-generating? That's where this all gets into quite a bit of a quagmire.

[diehardtwinsfan]

I agree that there's a can of worms here, but given the billions being brought in by college sports, and how the system is deliberately engineered in such a way to keep the students from receiving any of it (without their voice I might add), the time has come for something to be done as opposed to nothing. These kids are exploited, and sadly a few simple changes such as allowing them to profit from their own namesakes, guaranteed medical care, and a reasonable stipend would do a lot to correcting that. A halfway decent lawyer could beat the NCAA in any anti-trust case put against it. The biggest surprise I have here is why it hasn't happened yet.

[Vanimal46]

 

Also realize that the revenue sports fund those that do not create revenue. So sports like cross country and swimming in most schools are completely funded by sports like basketball and football. So, you wouldn't be able to have a 1/1 relationship with dollars earned from the game to the dollars available to the athletes within that particular sport. Also, why would the QB on the football team deserve to get paid but a swimmer not, even if his/her sport isn't revenue-generating? That's where this all gets into quite a bit of a quagmire.

Exactly. And gunnarthor's solution could work, but it has to be X amount that all universities can afford for all student athletes. Not just the LSU's and Michigan's of the world, but the Louisiana Tech's and Central Michigan's of the world too.
 

I'm not that far removed from college, and I worked on my alma matter's D1 hockey team (Go Mavericks!) along with living with the players too. I've seen their schedules, pretty rigorous at times. And they're not really able to go back home and work full-time in the summer months to gain extra income. An extra $20k would go a long ways for the guys I lived with. However, even with that stipend, there's still going to be the argument that they're making millions off of me, and I'm getting paid peanuts.

[nicksaviking]

 

I imagine the eventual solution will be something like paying all college players X amount in a sport, so you'd be paid the same to play QB at LSU as you would Michigan and individual players should be able to negotiate money for their jersey sales, advertisements etc.  

 

 

I agree that if the players are to be paid, this is the only way it will work.

 

Still, what happens when Alabama says all of their football players should be paid $1M (because I'm pretty sure every cent of tax dollars in the state of Alabama goes to their football team) and the U of M says they should be paid 1K?

 

I just don't see how any scenario that has players getting paid doesn't have an end result of about two dozen schools in an elite division and everyone else in a 2nd or 3rd tier. The Gophers better get used to playing Central Michigan yearly. If we think they have trouble keeping up with Wisconsin, Nebraska, OSU, Michigan and Michigan State now....

[Vanimal46]

 

I agree that if the players are to be paid, this is the only way it will work.

 

Still, what happens when Alabama says all of their football players should be paid $1M (because I'm pretty sure every cent of tax dollars in the state of Alabama goes to their football team) and the U of M says they should be paid 1K?

 

I just don't see how any scenario that has players getting paid doesn't have an end result of about two dozen schools in an elite division and everyone else in a 2nd or 3rd tier. The Gophers better get used to playing Central Michigan yearly. If we think they have trouble keeping up with Wisconsin, Nebraska, OSU, Michigan and Michigan State now....

On top of that, we already have numerous scandals of players getting benefits already from schools.. The number of scandals is going to skyrocket if any sort of compensation is involved. I can already see the headlines now of "Texas A&M under investigation for paying 5 Star QB $100k over the $20k stipend"

[mikecgrimes]

 

I imagine the eventual solution will be something like paying all college players X amount in a sport

 

Thats already basically in place although the #'s are so low to really care.  It was going to be a big deal in hockey as it was originally thought the smaller schools wouldn't be able to afford it, but at least around here it looks like every school is doing it.  The point will always be that a select few athletes are bigger then the uniform they wear but probably 98% or more aren't, those 2% can stop showing up but it appears they have to good of a thing going to give it up.  The last thing we need is for some middle of the road athletes who when it comes down to it have a revenue over replacement factor of zero dollars and zero cents to get together and destroy college athletics for everyone.

[gunnarthor]

 

I agree that if the players are to be paid, this is the only way it will work.

 

Still, what happens when Alabama says all of their football players should be paid $1M (because I'm pretty sure every cent of tax dollars in the state of Alabama goes to their football team) and the U of M says they should be paid 1K?

 

I just don't see how any scenario that has players getting paid doesn't have an end result of about two dozen schools in an elite division and everyone else in a 2nd or 3rd tier. The Gophers better get used to playing Central Michigan yearly. If we think they have trouble keeping up with Wisconsin, Nebraska, OSU, Michigan and Michigan State now....

Yeah, there will be problems and perhaps the end result dramatically changes what college football looks like.  It's changed before.  The Ivy league used to be the best football conference.  

[gunnarthor]

 

Also realize that the revenue sports fund those that do not create revenue. So sports like cross country and swimming in most schools are completely funded by sports like basketball and football. So, you wouldn't be able to have a 1/1 relationship with dollars earned from the game to the dollars available to the athletes within that particular sport. Also, why would the QB on the football team deserve to get paid but a swimmer not, even if his/her sport isn't revenue-generating? That's where this all gets into quite a bit of a quagmire.

Why should a swimmer or golfer's inability to get paid mean that Cam Newton shouldn't have been paid (officially).  The stability of the swim or golf teams shouldn't concern the other students.  That's a concern for the NCAA schools, who would still have more than enough money to cover those programs, if they wanted to.

[Vanimal46]

 

Why should a swimmer or golfer's inability to get paid mean that Cam Newton shouldn't have been paid (officially).  The stability of the swim or golf teams shouldn't concern the other students.  That's a concern for the NCAA schools, who would still have more than enough money to cover those programs, if they wanted to.

I think you're really over estimating how many programs generate the kind of revenue needed to pay hundreds to thousands of athletes. This article is a little old, but it states that "Just 23 of 228 athletics departments at NCAA Division I public schools generated enough money on their own to cover their expenses in 2012."

The money needed to pay these players will come from subsidies, and student fees. And if I were a student again, I would be more than upset that I have to pay a much higher tuition to help pay Joe Blow $50k to be the QB at my school. 

 

 

[TheLeviathan]

The problem isn't the schools hording money from the athletes, it's the NCAA hording money from everyone.

[diehardtwinsfan]

 

Couldn't disagree more.  This disproportionately affects black men.  From the article, "After all, who is actually earning the billions of dollars flooding universities, athletic conferences, TV networks and their sponsors? To a large extent, it’s young black men, who are heavily overrepresented in football and men’s basketball, the two sports that bring in virtually all the revenue in college athletics. A 2013 study by the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education found that 57 percent of the football players and 64 percent of the men’s basketball players in the six biggest conferences were black; at the same schools, black men made up less than 3 percent of the overall student population. (In recent NFL drafts, five times as many black players were taken in the first two rounds, where the perceived best players are picked, as white players.) Athletics administrators and coaches, meanwhile, are overwhelmingly white.

 

So by refusing to pay athletes, the NCAA isn’t just perpetuating a financial injustice. It’s also committing a racial one."

 

The fact that there are more black athletes in basketball and football doesn't make it racial. It's a race issue when those same black athletes are being accorded worse treatment than their white counterparts because of the color of their skin. They aren't. They are all being treated unfairly.

 

I stand by my original statement. College sports exploits athletes.  PERIOD. The NCAA doesn't care what the color of their skin is. Equating it to race is nothing more than poor journalism at best, stoking race flames where they don't exist in order to create controversy that isn't there. Look, there's real racism in this country.  I won't dispute that, but crap like this does more to stifle progress on the subject than it does bring awareness to it. If anything, it only fans the flames making it worse.

[gunnarthor]

 

 

I stand by my original statement. College sports exploits athletes.  PERIOD. The NCAA doesn't care what the color of their skin is. Equating it to race is nothing more than poor journalism at best, stoking race flames where they don't exist in order to create controversy that isn't there. Look, there's real racism in this country.  I won't dispute that, but crap like this does more to stifle progress on the subject than it does bring awareness to it. If anything, it only fans the flames making it worse.

 

I really disagree with your last two sentences.  The point the author was making, and that I agree with, is that if this was affecting young white men (or if old black men were the ones making money off of it) it would have been fixed years ago.  By refusing to accept that racism is a factor we can ignore how black men are disproportionately affected by the NCAA (while sports that are predominately dominated by black men can fund sports programs that have fewer black men).  You may be right that an faceless NCAA doesn't care who is being robbed but the fact that their victims are mostly young black men is definitely a reason those in power let it still happen.

 

 

[Craig Arko]

"Sec. 3. The object of the University shall be to provide the inhabitants of this Territory with the means of acquiring a thorough knowledge of the various branches of Literature, Science and the Arts."

 

https://regents.umn.edu/policies/charter

 

Seems like a pretty good idea.

[Mike Sixel]

 

"Sec. 3. The object of the University shall be to provide the inhabitants of this Territory with the means of acquiring a thorough knowledge of the various branches of Literature, Science and the Arts."

https://regents.umn.edu/policies/charter

Seems like a pretty good idea.

 

Agree with me? No more college sports, just stuff for "regular" students to do for fun?

[TheLeviathan]

Colleges, for many reasons, have stopped being places of higher education for a long time.

[twinsnorth49]

 

The problem isn't the schools hording money from the athletes, it's the NCAA hording money from everyone.

Nailed it.