About 19 million people are expected to watch the NCAA men’s
basketball championship game tonight. For the privilege of
broadcasting the tournament, one of the greatest sporting events
in the world, CBS has agreed to pay the National Collegiate
Athletic Association $6 billion from 2002 through 2013. Each of
the schools with a team in the final game will take home a cool
million dollars. On top of that, each institution stands to rake
in millions upon millions of dollars from sales of licensed
products and contracts with sporting goods suppliers. How much of
those millions will the athletes get to take home? None.
The NCAA and its member institutions practice what can best be
described as a modern form of slavery. They feed, house (and
ostensibly educate) young men and women in exchange for the
services of their labor. It is true that these young laborers,
whom the NCAA likes to call “student-athletes,” could walk away
at any time. But in doing so most of them would forego any chance
of working their way up to professional or Olympic status in the
sport of their choice. To gain the training and exposure
necessary to make it to the next level, most of them must play by
the NCAA’s rules. And those rules require athletes to sign over
to the NCAA all rights to profit financially from their athletic
performances as long as they are students.
According to the NCAA’s own data, only 1.2 percent of the
nation’s more than 16,500 men’s college basketball players will
go on to play professionally. There are 65 teams in the men’s
basketball tournament. The NCAA allows each Division 1 team 13
scholarships. That makes 845 players, almost all of whom, despite
their great talent, will never earn a dime from playing the game
basketball — while the NCAA, its member institutions, and the
athletic conferences will earn billions from the games those kids
play.
The NCAA insists that it provides these players with something
worth more than cash — an education. But the dollar value of the
athletic performances these players put on vastly exceeds the
value of their scholarships. The NCAA estimates that at a public
college or university the average full athletic scholarship is
just under $14,000. For out-of-state students, it’s $24,000. At
private schools it’s $32,000.
Using those numbers, consider college basketball’s 2008 national
player of the year, UNC senior Tyler Hansbrough. As an
out-of-state student, he would have received somewhere around
$100,000 in scholarship aid for his four years playing basketball
for the University of North Carolina. This year’s Final Four is
Hansbrough’s second. How much would his share of television
royalties, jersey, poster and T-shirt sales, etc. be if the
University of North Carolina, the Atlantic Coast Conference, and
the NCAA didn’t keep it all? Certainly more than $100,000. But
that is not all Hansbrough forfeits. NCAA rules also forbid him
and all other athletes from trading on their own celebrity.
It is easy to understand why the NCAA would ban professional
athletes from playing college sports. Forbidding schools from
hiring ringers, as Groucho Marx’s Professor Wagstaff did in the
film Horse Feathers, does ensure a form of athletic
integrity for the college game. But why does the NCAA ban
students from making some money on the side from their admittedly
brief celebrity?
NCAA rules on amateurism allow athletes to hold regular college
jobs. Tyler Hansbrough could deliver pizzas and still keep his
eligibility. But if he collects “any remuneration for value or
utility that the student-athlete may have for the employer
because of the publicity, reputation, fame or personal following
that he or she has obtained because of athletics ability,” he
would be banned from playing college basketball.
So “student-athletes” may not do a commercial for the local car
dealer or endorse Gatorade. That Guitar Hero: Metallica ad with
NCAA coaches Roy Williams, Rick Pitino, Bobby Knight, and Coach K
dancing in their boxers? Why can’t it feature 2009 Player of the
Year Blake Griffin? How would allowing him to endorse a video
game make his basketball playing impure?
It is hard to see how student product endorsements would
compromise the integrity of the athletic competitions in which
the students participate. Could such contracts corrupt a student?
Perhaps. But the NCAA even forbids students from avoiding such
potential corruption through self-marketing.
NCAA Rule 12.4.4 states: “A student-athlete may establish his or
her own business, provided the student-athlete’s name,
photograph, appearance or athletics reputation are not used to
promote the business.” To see why the NCAA might want such a
rule, consider that last month the NCAA launched its own photo
store on NCAA.com. There, you can buy a picture of your favorite
player, and the NCAA doesn’t have to give the student a dime of
the profits. If the student had his own website from which he
could sell his posters, photos, T-shirts, and trading cards, the
NCAA and its member institutions would lose a sizeable portion of
revenue. At UNC’s student stores, you can buy a T-shirt with
Tyler Hansbrough’s image on the front, or a jersey with his name
on the back. And Hansbrough receives none of the profits.
Even some Southern plantation owners allowed slaves to earn extra
cash through self-employment. The NCAA is not so
enlightened.
NCAA and college officials profess great concern over athlete
graduation rates. Yet they refuse to make the one change that
would guarantee that more “student-athletes” stick around for
four years: let the athletes profit from their athletic
performances or the fame derived from them.
The NCAA constitution states: “Student-athletes shall be amateurs
in an intercollegiate sport, and their participation should be
motivated primarily by education and by the physical, mental and
social benefits to be derived. Student participation in
intercollegiate athletics is an avocation, and student-athletes
should be protected from exploitation by professional and
commercial enterprises.”
The constitution, however, says nothing about exploitation by
non-profit enterprises. The NCAA reserves for itself and its
member institutions the exclusive right to exploit
“student-athletes.” Because, you know, we wouldn’t want the
participants in a multi-billion-dollar sporting enterprise to be
tainted by that awful thing called profit.
