Let’s Start Paying College Athletes, by Joe Nocera in the New York Times.
The hypocrisy that permeates big-money college sports takes your breath away. College football and men’s basketball have become such huge commercial enterprises that together they generate more than $6 billion in annual revenue, more than the National Basketball Association. A top college coach can make as much or more than a professional coach; Ohio State just agreed to pay Urban Meyer $24 million over six years. Powerful conferences like the S.E.C. and the Pac 12 have signed lucrative TV deals, while the Big 10 and the University of Texas have created their own sports networks. Companies like Coors and Chick-fil-A eagerly toss millions in marketing dollars at college sports. Last year, Turner Broadcasting and CBS signed a 14-year, $10.8 billion deal for the television rights to the N.C.A.A.’s men’s basketball national championship tournament (a k a “March Madness”). And what does the labor force that makes it possible for coaches to earn millions, and causes marketers to spend billions, get? Nothing. The workers are supposed to be content with a scholarship that does not even cover the full cost of attending college. Any student athlete who accepts an unapproved, free hamburger from a coach, or even a fan, is in violation of N.C.A.A. rules.
Meanwhile, hypocrisy of another form is charted by Summers: The malevolent career of J. Edgar Hoover. Where were anarchists like Leon Czolgosz when we really needed them?
The secret life of J Edgar Hoover, by Anthony Summers in The Guardian/The Observer.
J Edgar Hoover was a phenomenon. The first Director of the FBI, he remained in office for 48 years, from his appointment after the First World War to his death in 1972, achieving fame and extraordinary power. For public consumption when he died, President Richard Nixon eulogised him as: "One of the giants… a national symbol of courage, patriotism and granite-like honesty and integrity." He ordered flags to fly at half-mast and that Hoover's body lie in state in the Capitol.
In private, on hearing that he had died, Nixon had responded merely: "Jesus Christ! That old cocksucker!" Months earlier, closeted with key advisers, he had held forth on the need to persuade the elderly Hoover to resign. "We have on our hands here a man who will pull down the temple with him, including me."
Why make college football and basketball players be students at all? Universities often provide some sort of reduced tuition scheme to other employees as an incentive but typically don't force them to enroll in a certain number of classes, maintain a certain GPA, etc., outside of academic appointments. If anything, his scheme is more applicable to graduate students whose work actually advances university missions.
ReplyDeleteWhat Kocera is pushing isn't really reform and doesn't actually address the most central hypocrisy-- that the players are there for academic purposes -- thus his need to misreport football and basketball players as not having other paying options similar to the minor leagues in other sports.
And, from the sort of free market perspective he espouses, why start paying athletes or offer increased benefits when it's obviously not necessary to attract top players? The only reason a financially motivated athlete would choose even a single college season over immediate remuneration is because he or she thinks the exposure is an overall better deal.
Agreed that money has corrupted college sports but "nothing" for the athlete is not true. A college education that is worth $100,000 or more is not "nothing". Also, there are a lot of "non high profile" college athletes getting all or part of their college education paid for because of football and basketball. I've had two nephews get most of their college education paid for by golf scholarships.
ReplyDeleteAgain, there are problems but saying that the athletes are getting nothing is just hyperbole. And, it's not only Chick-fil-A et al that try to profit off the "exploited" college athlete.
Physician heal thyself.