By: John C. Lesher
The NY Times had a sports section article about a growing controversy concerning collegiate athletics. In simplest terms: should the NCAA drop its insistence that college athletes be uncompensated amateurs while competing for their respective institutions? The question is pretty much moot when it comes to sports such as volleyball, crew and wrestling—sports that lack successful professional leagues or have a low probability of an athlete signing a lucrative endorsement contract. However, for collegiate athletes participating in the Big 3 of football, basketball and baseball, as well as golf and professional track and field, the question takes on a new dimension. College is where young athletes develop their skills to a level where highly paid professional careers become viable. Should those college years be an unpaid apprenticeship for the future?
Many states are debating the right of an athlete to receive remuneration for playing on a college varsity that goes beyond the traditional scholarship trinity of room, board and books. Some, such as California, already have passed legislation advancing the rights of their athletes to be compensated for representing state institutions in athletic contests and using the athlete’s likeness or speech to do so. The reasoning is hard to dismiss. College athletics has become a multi-billion dollar business, with money being received from numerous TV venues, equipment suppliers and corporate bowl game sponsors, as well as the traditional ticket sales, parking fees and concession stand receipts. Successful college coaches in major sports throughout the United States make seven figure salaries supplemented by product endorsements and radio and TV shows. Why shouldn’t the performers in these entertainments—the athletes—be given a slice of this very large pie? Why shouldn’t they receive salaries and be permitted to seek endorsements?
Evidence that money has come to dominate collegiate athletics is not hard to find. In the 2019/2020 football bowl season, star players from several bowl-qualified teams refused to play in the bowl games, fearing that a possible injury would shorten or terminate a lucrative career. The NCAA seems to have given up on stopping the movement toward compensating athletes and has begun to take the posture that this is a federal issue that needs a uniform, nation-wide standard. The NCAA argues that having 50 separate states pass compensation laws will only lead to a chaotic recruitment process and, possibly, restrict inter-state competition. By this reasoning, Congress must get involved and bring order to a confusing set of facts and claims.
The arguments just noted look at one side of an issue: the fairness of having large sums of money being earned by institutions and employees of those institutions while the individuals who are largely responsible for earning that money are given a virtual pittance as compensation. That is a relevant debate, but this blog asserts that there is a second matter that must be evaluated.
For many decades professional baseball has sponsored minor leagues and development leagues throughout the United States and other areas of the world, notably the Caribbean. The National Basketball Association has its international developmental leagues (approximately 50 current NBA players are foreign-born); the National Football League has flirted with sponsoring football programs in Europe and has scheduled multiple games in London. Regardless of those efforts at producing and evaluating raw talent, the truth is that new entrants into professional athletics come, in the main, from America’s collegiate ranks. Professional interests contribute very little to the development of those collegiate athletes.
To the businesses that collectively represent professional sports this is the equivalent of free research and development. Pharmaceutical companies can make billions in profits from a hot new drug, but only after spending huge sums and many years in developing and testing a new product, followed by a lengthy federal approval process. The “pros” have no R & D budgets in the mode of industry. For the most part they can watch their future assets mature without cost and with an ample pipeline of future supply. Is there something wrong with that picture?
Why aren’t America’s professional sports franchises contributing more to the enhancement of the athletic skills of their future employees? Granted, only a modest percentage of college athletes signs a pro contract and makes the huge money constantly flaunted by our newspapers and other media. But the percentage isn’t the point. The issue is that professional sports leagues and franchises get a free ride when it comes to player development. The colleges of the United States are, in effect, a cost-free minor league system, primarily for the NBA and the NFL and, to a lesser degree, to Major League Baseball. Many of these colleges are state-affiliated, which means taxpayers are funding to some degree the cost of doing business for professional sports.
This blog suggests that pro sports open their ample wallets and give something back to the institutions from which their assets evolve. Try this on: when a player makes a pro team, the league will make a one-time payment to the institution for which the athlete played of $50,000 for each year the athlete competed for that college or university. In the case of “one and done” basketball players, the cost to the league would be $50,000 for each one and done player. For a five year redshirt footballer, the cost would be $250,000.
Good idea? Maybe. Really bad idea? That too. The point is to talk about this and accept the fact that all bastions of collegiate amateurism have been breached. Once a payment for services concept gets adopted by university athletic departments who knows what the recruiting rules and payment schedules for linebackers or point guards will be. At the very least, the professional sports businesses that benefit from this new world should contribute to its cost.