The NCAA Erased My Career
theplayerstribune.com
theplayerstribune.com
If they want to insist amateurism is so important, then fine. Be amateur. Have student volunteers do the broadcasting, don't show any ads during the game, and take all the money out of it. Otherwise don't tell me players are the only ones who can't make money off of this.
College football makes obscene amounts of money, while at the same time discarding a ton of young athletes with permanently broken bodies. The TBI stuff in particular is deeply disturbing. I heard a heartbreaking interview with a family where 3 generations are entering dementia simultaneously because the younger 2 both played college ball.
Coaches, schools, broadcasters... true fortunes being made by this industry every single day. But somehow giving the dang kids a slice of that ruins the authenticity of the league. What a pile of nonsense.
A recent N.C.A.A. study determined that only about 20 of the 1,000 or so college sports programs in the nation were profitable.
The 30 largest universities in the country each routinely generate annual revenues exceeding $100 million from sports, but according to the National Collegiate Athletic Association, most of those revenues are spent covering operating expenses for the school’s athletic programs and paying tuition for their student-athletes. The majority of Division I colleges in the N.C.A.A. operate at a loss.
There is lots of money in college athletics. That money is not going to institutions to generate revenue for the institution at large. That money goes back to the athletic department and almost every college athletic program receives revenue in the form of student fees.
Here’s a quote from another piece [2]:
By far, the largest student fee is the last – the intercollegiate athletic fee – which can be upwards of 80% of the total fee amount at many institutions not in Power Five conferences.
Conventional wisdom says that intercollegiate athletics is a boon to colleges and universities; that it’s wildly profitable; attracts new students; enhances fundraising; and, boosts the university’s profile. Yet these are myths, often perpetuated by the media – and by the universities themselves.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/25/opinion/pay-college-athle...
[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/ccap/2014/12/12/who-actually-fu...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/why-students-foot-the-...
College Football (in the Power 5, and top tier group of 5) itself is very profitable. But the money is quickly spent on the program and to fund the program and the department as a whole.
Also, some stats there include Div II, III, etc. Programs without big TV deals, licensing revenue etc. do not make money from their athletic departments. Not a shocker or really what any of this is referring to.
But for the major programs, the money from licensing, TV rights, conference revenue sharing, etc. covers the basics for women's programs and less popular sports. Then it gets dumped along with booster $ into the CFB football facilities arms race, ever growing coaching salaries, and multimillion dollar buyouts of contracts.
This isn't totally unique to not-for-profit Universities either. Executive perks in non-profits are another way to make the year-end balance out. Government programs, and corporate departments dump cash at the end of their fiscal years to avoid losing the budget the next year.
Consider this. Take away the most profitable college sports program. Will that college be forced to increase tuition to cover the loss of money for non-athletic related expenses? The answer is no.
What is that article missing if your assertion is true?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/why-students-foot-the-...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/why-students-foot-the-...
In terms of sheer numbers of schools, I guess your definition of "few exceptions" hold true. Should the majority of commuter schools, like say California State University, Sacramento, subsidize heavily in athletics? Of course not. However, your UCLA's, Michigans, and Texas A&Ms make insane amount of money, and often give money back to their university.
Since you refuse to even do a small amount of research into this, stadiums and capital expenditures are vastly funded by alumni donations. Unofficially that is the biggest metric for athletic director success.
https://www.ibtimes.com/college-football-public-universities...
Each state, university, have different requirements on what is reported as subsidies. For example, discounting an out of state athlete's tuition may or may not be a subsidy. In some schools, all of the apparel sold with a school logo is athletics money, while in others, a percentage. And of course, private universities like Stanford, Northwestern, and the Ivys report very little.
The articles also strawman the entire argument by using student fees to fund athletics. True, some schools abuse the hell out of them. Some Division III schools have ungodly amounts of athletic fees, and the students will never see their return. However, success in athletics, and football in particular, add to the brand of the school. Anti-athletics faculty love to huff and puff about how this isn't true, but common sense and studies in business schools routinely dispute this. Boston College reported a 3x increase in enrollment the year after Doug Flutie threw his touchdown. University of Alabama's enrollment has gone way up while the acceptance rate has gone way down in Nick Saban's tenure. Even if you never attend a game of any sort in school, you will gain in the perceived value of your degree.
> I haven't looked into it but I doubt any football program paid for the stadium they use
This tells me all I need to know about your bias on this.
Do you not have opinions, impressions, thought, ideas about things you haven’t studied? Of course you do. In my case I was intellectually honest enough to let the reader distinguish between those thoughts of mine I had ready evidence for and those that I don’t.
As to your third paragraph please keep in mind my usage of with rare exceptions. Of course you can cite counter examples to the general trend of college football being a drain on resources. Also note that I’ve cited evidence to back up my beliefs and you have not. You’ve even made a reference to common sense. There are far too many examples of where intuition and common sense are wrong for this to be a legitimate basis for a strong belief.
There are a lot of people who make a lot of money off of college sports. None of them are players.
Are the players underage? If the players are treated as employees of a business would the business have to jump through tons and tons of extra legal hoops?
I'm not saying that this is the case. But it's not too uncommon that messed up situations arise as a result of society's desire to protect a group.
Why would that matter? Underage sports participants get money all the time (tournament prizes, junior racing sponsorships, etc).
More broadly, it points out just how incoherent the demand that some athletes remain "amateur" is, when "amateur" is just used as a proxy for "unpaid": there's nothing noteworthy about a teenage driver winning a cash prize for a small-time race, and nobody in the pro racing world is going to say that they're not an "amateur" driver just because they got money for racing once.
I remember in high school(~6-10 years ago for me) people would talk about situations with the NCAA like this, and people who had absolutely no stake whatsoever in the system would defend it, often with the kind of weak arguments many have mentioned in this thread. Disappointing that we can't simply agree that people working should be proportionately paid. Some mention scholarships and the like, and I don't think that this is a "terrible" system, but it's clearly incredibly weighed in favor of the NCAA and the schools themselves.
If you want to become an athlete in the rest of the world you skip schooling after high school and go straight into professional sports. The academic sports complex is a massive scam that is two-fold. It makes money off the (mainly blacks) “student” athletes either from the sports (and NCAA) or the alumni contributions in division 1 schools with men’s basketball or football. The students get nothing in return (not even an education in most cases - many examples of them being “graduated” whilst being illiterate and innumerate - see link at bottom). In the division 3 schools that are ranked competitively academically they are used as quota systems to let more whites into the school with esoteric or “elitist” sports like the aforementioned tennis or fencing or squash.
The rest of the world has the equivalent of our Minor League in Baseball for all competitive sports.Any sports in college is strictly intramural and for “fun”. Schools do not recruit athletes, as entrances are often based on exam results or some form of academic testing system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_League_Baseball
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_athletics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_athletics_in_the_Unite...
My favorite story on our academic athletic complex is the bond issuance of over 60 million dollars to build a high school football stadium in Texas:
https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2639092-texas-town-appro...
———-
https://edition.cnn.com/2014/01/07/us/ncaa-athletes-reading-...
Second, the non-athletes pay a pretty penny for those classes that the athletes may ignore. It's common for students and their families to part with $150,000 to more than $300,000 for the same access to classes. Now, I agree that many athletes fail to get an education, but I think it's a stretch to say that this is all the fault of the college industrial complex. At some point, the students have to go to class.
Third, I realize that many coaches ask for long time commitments from athletes, but even then the value of the scholarship is still pretty sweet. For many, it may be the easiest money they make in their life. Even if they work out for 20 hours for the 25 weeks in a season, that's just 500 hours, about 1/4 of a normal full-time job. If the scholarship is worth $75,000 (as some are), then you're pulling down the equivalent of $300,000/year on an hourly basis. But it gets better because that scholarship is TAX-FREE.
Your general attitude about college sports has much merit, but the athletes are compensated.
Let’s address your other points: 1. Scholarship money. Scholarship money is great, but here’s the deal. Normally very few people get a full ride. There are only a certain amount of scholarships per team. Each sport has a different number of allotted scholarships and it is fixed across the schools in a a division. Your average scholarship is mostly like half of tuition or less, because of trying to make the team as a whole better.
2. Athletes have to go to class. Yes the have to. Unfortunately, there are these pulling demands or just crap reality.
First scenario: So your broken down student athlete, who has been training 30 hours, has to attend class. He/she attends class but honestly being mentally present is tough.
Second: You’re a student athlete whose ability to attend school is based on athletic performance. You don’t perform well or get hurt, you can lose that scholarship next year. Say bye bye to school.
And you're correct to point out that many of the scholarships in minor sports are fractional. The funny thing is that there's so much prestige involved in getting an athletic scholarship that many don't complain about this. Indeed for many schools up to and including the very best, the prestige may be worth more than the dollar value.
But things have become twisted along the way. Higher education is still there, and it has become a bit more practical, which is not bad. However the "sports" part became completely broken. Instead of giving students a good body (a noble goal), it shifted to competition, taking subpar students with great athletic skills just to beat the other college team, and overworking and ultimately breaking them. The complete opposite of the original idea.
If that were the goal then they would offer daily aerobics or yoga classes and not engage in competitive sports. For most students college sports is a spectator sport and an opportunity to get drunk.
With that said, the current system sucks. Many athletes have lost their scholarships due to injury and were then on the hook for the costs of school, requiring some to transfer or drop out. There are some sports and programs that expect most of your time to be dedicated to the sport rather than your academics. The culture around some programs is toxic.
But none of it is inherent to the idea of "college sports". Would you argue that other extracurricular activities like clubs, student government, etc., are detrimental to education? Or would you say that they provide education in other areas of life compared to pure academia?
for one, people rarely live on campus and people are not connected to their educational institute asmuch as Americans. a lot of students are part of associations (some with large legacies. mainly Germanic ones). but these assosiciations are not directly linked to a particular school.
also, the major difference between american colleges and European ones in my experience is the control the school has over people's lives. American schools seem to treat their students as kids in a bigger body, and they have sometimes insanely strict rules about behaviour, student housing etc.
most European school I have experience with couldn't care less about what you do in private, and besides some support networks for mental health, think of their students as adults who should fix their own housing, income, sports etc.
The northwestern group was as close as I’ve seen to a real challenge, but nobody has had the guts to go the distance in a lawsuit. I wish someone would - the result would be enlightening.
Sure, that's not going to affect healthy star players. But if you have something that really would be suited to rest or you want to take a tough course load, well, maybe they'll let you "red shirt" and maybe they won't. You still count against the scholarship limit.
If we could go back in time, maybe every town would have its football team and those teams could be promoted and relegated like many soccer teams. Players would be paid to play. Instead the college and university teams fill the need for people to have a local team.
Stop doing anything that gives them money for any reason and let them know why. If enough people do it, the problem solves itself one way or the other.
If enough people do it... but they won't. They need to be sold on the idea, en masse, and that doesn't just happen.
Fortunately, we have a tool for collective action: government! Government regulation is how we can push institutions toward aligning with our values. Of course, entrenched interests don't want to be pushed, which is why there's been a massive campaign over the past few decades to scapegoat governments and paint them in a negative light. But they're the right tool for the job.
I think you have it totally wrong. I didn't suggest collective action. That involves organizing, funding, etc.
I just recommended stop giving them your money.
Also, the law already has a process for which this could be solved. That isn't regulation - it's a lawsuit. They damaged her unreasonably for something beyond her control. She should sue.
Regulating how the NCAA acts is not what the government should be involved in. Getting the government to regulate the NCAA is 1000x harder than just suing, and that's 1000x harder than just stop patronizing those organizations yourself. When you aren't emotionally tied into the NCAA, or when you're patronizing an alternative, NCAA fiascos don't both you.
The law doesn't necessarily have a process for this because you can't simply maintain a lawsuit whenever you feel you've been wronged. You have to make a claim for which there is a legal framework established by... the government! Do you have any reason to believe this former student would have a legally established right that the NCAA violated by following its policies?
And besides, your own comment recognized that this is a bigger problem than this one individual case!
Why part of universities? Because in the 18th and 19th centuries a sound body was thought to be as important to a sound mind as a thorough knowledge of the great Western philosophers.
Why did it end up in the spectacle we know today as college football and NCAA and so on?
Because Princeton being Princeton, cheated at rugby.
The NCAA need to seem important, which means they need people to break the rules regularly and be punished for it. That’s just one of many ways their fucking over students for the NCAA’s benefit.
The appropriate response is for students to boycott the NCAA, but socially and financially that is a huge hit. Normally the way around this is a union, but good luck getting one started.
However like most monopolies it’s not just network effects, they heavily protect themselves. Anything that makes you a professional athlete permanently kicks you out of NCAA scholarships etc. So, students are going to have a huge issue getting something off the ground, but they have a lot more leverage if students suddenly boycotted the Rose Bowl etc.
The incredible power imbalance between banning these athletes from making money, and then turning around and doing it yourself while being judge, jury, and executioner, makes a mockery of the talent.
These are barely "amateurs" in any real sense, the system exploits that fact and the seal of approval "amateur" status brings to rake in money.
No. It's a bad system for some athletes.
Its a good system for athletes that are not stars and don't play big money sports. Free education, free trips, play something you really like to do.
For other they are forgoing money they could earn.
If the system changes, I am sure it will be good for some athletes, not so much of others.
Honestly, for the author, she was playing tennis and got an education out of it on the backs of those playing revenue sports. I don't fault her for this--she didn't make the system--but it doesn't look like she went pro, and it she wasn't kicked out while she was in school, so the only damage she's suffering is the NCAA saying she wasn't on the team. Unless she's coaching, and being a college athlete is almost a qualification, she seems to have done OK.
That said, I still think she's right for calling out the NCAA.
She graduated; they're not taking her degree away. And honestly nobody cares about the college record of a professional tennis player -- the fact that it was vacated on a technicality like this is not going to hurt her professional career at this point. Likely she could coach as well, there are coaches in the NCAA who have done far worse (intentionally, not accidentally) and still get jobs.
I stand corrected. When I googled her to check that statement, I didn't see anything promising on the first page. I should have looked harder.
Also to your point about enforcement, you'll see that the money-making programs (i.e. Football and Basketball) at the big D1 schools get away with a lot more operating in the gray area than small schools and non-revenue sports. The NCAA isn't going to shit in their gravy train. They save the virtue-signal enforcement for schools and sports that don't make any money anyway.
Sounds like an anti-monopoly case in the making.
As to the author's stand on Name Image and Likeness, I don't know much about being a college athlete, but I don't think that should be allowed. At all.
The NCAA is trying to rein things in and at least provide guidance right now, but their power is crumbling on this and many other issues.
Mixing institutions with an education and research purpose with sport tribalism seems like a terrible idea to begin with, adding tons of money to the mix surely can't result in anything that has anything to do with education...
But the level of strange commercialisation is just different from rest of the world. Insane amounts of money spend and revenues generated, but nothing really end up at athletes.
The only harm that has been done is that the NCAA has written her out of its internal records (it's dishonest to say "My Career" when it explicitly refers to her achievements as a professed amateur).
The NCAA does things that seem exploitative and wrong to me. But it also helps a lot of people. This young lady's outrage is not a good argument for the former.
NCAA's claims of "amateurism" are blatantly dishonest in the first place. They control what are pro minor leagues in every way except for the denial of straightforward compensation to the players.
For the three other athletes mentioned by name, in each case the story is that they had medical issues caused by, exacerbated by, or at least neglected by the NCAA. That's a real injustice and a real story. What happened to the author is meh.
So ignore it. Any time you find one part of an argument or its presentation lacking, just look past it. You'll find that it often doesn't affect the validity of the whole, and when that's the case picking on the non-essential part just shows bad faith.