Malcolm Gladwell, whom I always enjoy reading, blogged about former OU quarterback Rhett Bomar recently. Gladwell seems like a pretty smart fella and he usually writes about stuff so above me that I am too ignorant to disagree with him. But then, he blogs about college football, the NCAA, and Rhett Bomar...which is weird because that's the type of stuff that my friends and I talk about. Draw whatever conclusion you want from that. Back to Gladwell, though. The background story is that a local car dealership "employed" star OU quarterback Rhett Bomar and paid him thousands of dollars over a period of time for work he never did. Bomar got busted and eventually kicked off the team. Gladwell's point is that it is ridiculous for the NCAA to regulate what Big Red Imports chooses to pay to Rhett Bomar for however much or little work he did for them:
Was that sleazy? Of course it was. Was it an underhanded way for a booster to get money to a star player? Totally. But working at a car dealership is not playing football, and football is the only thing over which the NCAA rightfully has jurisdiction.
That's where I have to disagree with my 'fro-headed hero. So long as it exists, the NCAA has every right to regulate how it's member schools compete in it's sports. Bomar's illegal salary directly impacts how OU competes in college football. That's why there are scholarship limitations, to prevent the big, wealthy, attractive state schools from monopolizing top players...thereby making it impossible for the poor, unattractive agricultural schools located in the backwoods from competing.
That's why there are rules that make paying college athletes illegal. It's not just the desire to maintain an "amateur" status (I agree with Gladwell that this is a total sham). It's also to preserve as level of a playing field and a sense of competition that would cease to exist if there weren't rules to prevent payment of college athletes. That's also somewhat laughable, as the term "competitive balance" is as far from what we see on the field each Saturday as can be. But the situation would be even worse without these rules. We'd see schools like Ohio State and UT (whose athletic departments last year brought in over $100 million and $94 million respectively) "hiring" the best players. It then becomes a battle of budgets, not one of skill, training, coaching, and desire. That would be bad. Incidently, I do think that the NCAA is the greediest organization in sports and that it NEEDS to adopt some sort of rule change to share some of its multi-million dollar revenue with the athletes. Abolising the NCAA is not rooted in reality, either. Instead, we should be talking about some form of monthly stipend given to athletes. Then again, when all is said and done, I'm still an idiot and Malcolm Gladwell did write Blink.
By the way, here's an interesting article from the Indianopolis Star about this issue.
3 comments:
Dennis –
Many people don’t understand that the NCAA gives nearly 95 percent of its revenue back to its member institutions. When people suggest those funds should be used to pay student-athletes, I have to ask where the money for Division II and III championships would come from. While Division I men’s basketball certainly fills the coffers of the Association, it’s not as if that money is used as wallpaper around the national office. If every football student-athlete at the Division I-A (now Bowl Subdivision) level received only $1,000 a year, each team would need to payout about $100,000 to its athletes. That gets up to $10 million fast and we haven’t even discussed paying men’s basketball players. Isn’t it important to put on some of the other 88 championship events, despite the fact that those events don’t earn the NCAA any revenue? I was a Division III baseball student-athlete and was grateful to play in the NCAA tournament twice during my career. Rest assured, putting on that event costs a lot of money and there aren’t millions of fans buying tickets and merchandise to support it.
Thanks for your thoughts, Josh. I confess to being far from an expert on this subject. You also bring up good points in regards to Division II and III. I don't have good answers for that question or others like Title IX sports. With that said, I consider the central question here to be one of accurately reflecting the value of an athlete to his school. I am in favor of increasing the value of an athletic scholarship to reflect the "full cost of attendance".
I should have expanded my criticism of the NCAA's greed to include schools and their athletic departments. When you ask where the money will come from, I imagine that part of the answer has to be from the total budget of the atheltic departments. I find the notion (held by most administrators) that any form of "pay for play" is using a professional model and therefore unacceptable for college athletics to be duplicitous. In almost every way EXCEPT the compensation of athletes, athletic departments operate under a "professional model". Everything from marketing (jerseys, for example) to coaches' salaries (Mack Brown's salary is up to 2.55 million per) to stadium upgrades (UT's "godzillatron"...the world's largest HD scoreboard, totalling over 7000 sq ft...a signficant portion of which is devoted to advertisements...which generate more money). It's a pro model of business all the way, except for how players are compensated.
where's your kudos to Ohio State post?
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