Declaring War on the NCAA

I like to think that I’m a relatively open-minded person; someone who is generally flexible and willing to hear the opposition’s side in an argument. I think that far too often people only look at the world through only black or white lenses, when most of the time there’s a massive gray area where we can all coexist. However, there are a handful of things that I’m completely unwilling to even entertain or listen to a counterpoint that is made which goes against my own personal beliefs. One of these topics is on the docket for today. Although I’m not a former college athlete, I consider this to be a very personal vendetta against the National Collegiate Athletic Association. So, please take note that I’m dead fucking serious and deeply passionate about this issue, and when I say …

It’s bullshit that the NCAA masquerades as an organization that “manages programs that benefit student athletes” when they have not only done all they could to prevent student athletes from being compensated for the labor they providing to a billion-dollar-per-year company, but also actively go out of their way to find additional ways to profit off of and make life more difficult for collegiate athletes.

… it is an official declaration of War against the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

Now let’s get some things straight. I don’t want to “cancel” the NCAA or specific NCAA-affiliated events. I don’t plan on abstaining from doing Bracketology projections for Hardwood and Hollywood on the path to March Madness, nor do I intend to stop watching College Football every Saturday during the fall. I simply want to change the public discourse. We need to commit to a massive shift in the way that we discuss the NCAA and College Sports.

(By the way, I hate Cancel Culture, but I wouldn’t be opposed to “Cancelling” the people currently running the NCAA; we can remove them from their positions and replace them with individuals who share my beliefs of what the NCAA should stand for and be attempting to accomplish. Additionally, all of these former NCAA higher-ups should be quarantined and forced to watch footage of various sports media personalities publicly shitting on the NCAA on a loop for the rest of time.)

There’s still a long way to go until the idea of compensating collegiate athletes is one that is nearly universally agreed upon; unfortunately, because this country is so polarized on just about every issue, the idea of there ever being universal support for anything is a fairy tale notion, no matter how simple the fix for issue at hand may seem. At this moment, it feels pretty safe to say that it’s about a 50/50 split as to how this issue should be handled, and like most issues in this country, there are clear-cut political and racial lines that have been drawn. Surprise, surprise.

According to a 2017 poll from the Washington Post and University of Massachusetts Lowell, the percentage of Republicans who felt that collegiate athletes shouldn’t be compensated beyond scholarships was 11% higher than that of Democrats. A 2015 HBO Real Sports/Marist poll found that 59% of African Americans supported paying college athletes while only 26 percent of whites polled agreed.

Now that’s not to say that this is definitively a race issue or a class issue or political issue. But it is an issue, and it’s an issue that needs to be talked about differently than it has in the past. Fortunately, from what I can tell, that change is underway. Slowly but surely, there seems to be more widespread and mainstream support, but we’re only five years removed from FS1’s Colin Cowherd — at the time, he was an ESPN employee — offering the following bullshit take on the idea of Collegiate Athletes being compensated for their Name, Image and Likeness:

“Listen, 90 percent of these college guys are gonna spend it on tats, weed, kicks, Xboxes, beer and swag. They are, get over it!”

Now in fairness to Colin, he hasn’t been the only media personality with a platform who has spouted this sort of racially coded, one-sided nonsense. But there’s some good news: The Fair Pay to Play Act passed in California, and before long collegiate athletes all over the country will be eligible to be paid, have agents, and be able to endorse products that they choose. I hope Colin and all other detractors will be able to get over it.

The Fair Pay to Play Act is a very good start to solving the many problems of the NCAA, and fortunately Florida, New York, Illinois, Washington and New Jersey all have their own versions of the California Bill that passed in 2019. Colorado, Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania and South Carolina are reportedly putting together the framework to their own proposals.

It seems like a no-brainer than collegiate athletes should be able to profit from their likeness in video games, sign photos of themselves and sell autographs, partner up with specific brands and do advertisements for them, etc. They should also be making money from apparel that includes their name or even their number. Yes, college athletes should be compensated for jersey sales that include their number, even if their name isn’t on the upper back of the jersey, because as Jay Bilas brilliantly pointed out back in 2013, there was once a time where on the NCAA Shop website, if you searched an athletes name, their jersey would come up available for purchase. To no one’s surprise, that function has been changed since Bilas put the NCAA on blast.

But the question remains, do we need to do more than just compensate athletes for their Name, Image and Likeness? My feeling is and always has been that more needs to be done, but here’s the thing: I’m smart enough to know that I’m not smart enough to come up with the perfect solution. I didn’t study Business or Economics or anything in college that would allow me to put together a realistic and comprehensive plan that combats this problem. I’m just a simple Communication major who fancies himself as someone who can write about the concept. I’m not the fixer. But it doesn’t take a college grad to know that this broken system needs to be fixed.

It’s not just that some of the greediest individuals in the world are sitting atop the National Collegiate Athletic Association, it’s that the athletic directors and head coaches that run these collegiate programs all across the country are just as bad. The NCAA makes billions of dollars every year just on Football and Basketball television deals alone. The majority of that money is redistributed back to schools — either in the form of coaching contracts, coaching bonuses, or ridiculous, outlandish locker rooms/practice facilities/stadium upgrades that put NFL and NBA renovations to shame. God forbid players ever see any of that money though.

Ahead of the 2018 season, a poll showed that 48 percent of college football coaches didn’t support players profiting from their name, image and likeness. Even some who responded that they were theoretically in favor were skeptical of how it could be done without disrupting the amateurism model that the NCAA likes to boast about. And as you know, nothing says “amateurism” like 83 college football head coaches making at least $1 million during the 2019 season, and that doesn’t even factor in the 23 who accumulated over $100,000 just in bonuses for their team’s performance during the season.

Among the coaches who don’t support players being compensated for their NIL is Dabo Swinney. Clemson’s head coach signed a 10-year, $93 million contract ahead of the 2019 season, but boy oh boy, if college athletes ever start making money, he might be willing to walk away from that big contract to “go do something else.”

“But as far as paying players, professionalizing college athletics, that’s where you lose me. I’ll go do something else, because there’s enough entitlement in this world as it is.”

Nothing says entitlement like “I’ll walk away from tens of millions of dollars if college athletes start getting compensated at all.” And before anyone reading along inevitably shouts, “WELL WHAT ABOUT SCHOLARSHIPS,” please keep in mind that while schools do provide scholarships to athletes, the amount of money that many big name, prestige schools allocate via scholarships are a tremendously small fraction of the money that the school brings in annually on the backs of those athletes.

Additionally, don’t forget that scholarships are still of the one-year renewable variety. A coach can refuse to renew a scholarship if a player isn’t healthy enough to play, and the NCAA and the school itself aren’t required to provide health insurance to their players. If a player suffers a catastrophic injury, they’re just shit out of luck. And if you’re thinking to yourself, “well that’s pretty cruel,” well then you’re starting to get it. This is the same organization that gleefully blocks players from transferring to schools closer to their home and playing immediately because they want their sick family members to be able to watch them play.

In the end, the good side will win. I’m convinced of it. But we all need to be ready to go to war. So, if you’re at the bar watching the College Football Playoffs this weekend, make sure you remind everyone you cross paths with that while they can enjoy the game, they should also be thinking about the bigger issues at hand here. It doesn’t matter if they look at you like you’re a crazy person and walk away. Take solace in knowing that you did the right thing.