NCAA & The Fab Five
Despite college athletes being closer to getting paid after the NCAA Board approved recent plans, are athletes getting fair market value and what their star is worth? Specifically, are college athletes being exploited financially, and what are the alternatives? Unequal contractual agreements and inequality in bargaining power play a massive role here as historically disadvantaged youth are getting an opportunity to play collegiate sports. However, they are not receiving fair market value as agreements they make with big-name colleges do not often include a fair compensation structure if any, in exchange for their talents (lack of consideration).
An overview of the hardships that NCAA college athletes and athletes in general, such as the “Michigan Fab Five” involving Ed Martin shed light on issues that college athletes face. Ed Martin was the former booster whose payments to Chris Webber and other members of the Fab Five, led to one of the most high-profile investigations in NCAA history. Student-athletes from low-income backgrounds require economic support. Taking away their right to earn an income or giving them a smaller piece of the pie marginalizes inner-city youth, who then are forced to turn to alternatives such as boosters. There are instances where former National Basketball Association (“NBA”) players like Jalen Rose and other “Michigan Fab Five” members explain their hardships in relation to the food and diet they had to resort to in order to survive. Stories like this stand in stark contrast to the 1-billion-dollar industry that the NCAA has a stronghold over. There is a lack of diversity and representation in college coaches.
Instantly as the Freshman Fab Five gained popularity and attention through the media, their cultural identity was appropriated, commodified, and furthermore distributed as a brand. Noel described this as “something that could be adopted by the dominant culture and just as easily abandoned.” This persona and semblance of cultural identity is a supposed affiliation in an ethnicity that is “enacted in the appropriate and effective use of symbols and cultural narratives.” The Fab Five was able to form their identity through a cultural sense through the use of popular rap & hip-hop stylishness of their time period to the game of basketball with their “attitude and style.”
Culturally, trash-talking and boisterousness were a part of that specific era of basketball, including the Madison Square Garden altercations between Spike Lee and Reggie Miller. The same attitude and style were used by the multi-billion-dollar corporations for commercial purposes and branding. Students who were living below their means and coming from the inner city were attempted to be stripped of their cultural persona, the same persona that was used to sell merchandise and must-see basketball on live television. An example of Jalen Rose (“Rose”) incorporating the hip-hop style crossed between basketball culture, occurred after Rose took criticism for a quarrel, he had with a Duke basketball player, which he perceived to be as maintaining the rule to “never, ever, let anyone embarrass you in your house.” Many inner-city, turned college athletes, took homage during their play against big named schools, to prove their worth and cement that they belonged there, despite being minorities. The Geto Boys, Ray Jackson’s favorite rap & hip-hop group, helped formulate and create the team's pre-game chant, which is a testament to the harmony of culture between sports and music, which has been commodified continuously whilst being simultaneously demonized in mainstream culture.
What enticed the most attention and attraction to the group and represented their rebellion to the furthest extent, were the depiction and statements which were the teams’ basketball shorts. Michael Jordan and his clean-shaven head along with baggy shorts “look” had made its debut, and this non-conformist style had garnered a lot of attention. This included bald heads, black socks, and long, baggy shorts, the Fab Five had fashioned their own signature style. Various sports teams including Junior highs and high schools across the United States were “reordering their own uniforms to look more like Michigan’s baggy, loose, long shorts, telling their sales reps, ‘We want the Fab Five look’”. Assistant Coach Brian Dutcher had spoken to a comparison that in many respect had come true at the time: “the Fab Five were the MTV of college basketball: parents couldn’t stomach them, and kids couldn’t do without them.” The enigma surrounding the Fab Five was that they were adored and despised, disapproved and yet followed with a desire, called the personification of what is immoral with a lot of basketball players by commentator Bill Walton and yet imitated by youth across the nation.
As embodied with the example of the Fab Five, cultural commodification occurs “when the cultural identity of a particular culture or race that is often objectified and or subjected to racism is adopted by an opposing race to embody certain envied qualities but can just as quickly be abandoned.”
References
Brakkton Booker, “College athletes are now closer to getting paid after NCAA board oks plan”, (29 April 2020), online: NPR: National Public Radio <https://www.npr.org/2020/04/29/847781624/college-players-are-now-closer-to-getting-paid-after-ncaa-board-oks-plan> [Booker].
Carl Martin, “Fab Five scandal doesn’t tell full story of Ed Martin: ‘He helped everybody’, (30 April 2018), online: Detroit Free Press <https://www.freep.com/story/sports/college/universitymichigan/wolverines/2018/04/30/fab-five-ed-martin-booster-book/548714002/> [Martin].
Partin, Jaclyn Noel, “The pressures of collegiate athletics: Proactive internal measures to alleviate NCAA violations” (Nacogdoches, Texas: Stephen F. Austin State University, 2014) [Noel].
