Fixing College Sports: A Few Suggestions

This doesn’t have much to do with my article, I just think the t-shirt is funny and I needed a picture. When rape culture is at odds with capitalism.

The NCAA is not broken. It’s working exactly how it was designed. As a corporation in a capitalist society, your duty is to accrue as much profit as possible. Make no mistake, despite their non-profit status, both the NCAA and its member institutions are very much corporations. Basic economics would denote that one of the easiest ways to accrue said profit is to reduce labor costs. Luckily, we have this wonderful fallacy called amateurism that reduces labor costs to free. The best thing about amateurism is that the NCAA basically invented its contemporary definition, and exists solely to enforce the integrity of this made-up definition. College sports are dumb. I have a few suggestions to make it better. As always, I don’t consider any of them to be realistic, only correct.

1. Let  the athletes profit off of themselves

I’m not gonna waste a lot of words on this one because the rule is so dumb that it doesn’t require much critique. Not only are college athletes not paid, but they are FORBIDDEN to receive compensation from anyone in any way, shape, or form. The implications of these restrictions range from the inability to accept a free dinner to the inability to profit off of… their own image. You think Johnny Manziel couldn’t be making bank off of commercial appearances right now? Ohio State football players were villainized for trading jewelry and trophies that THEY WON for tattoos—not even cash!

Objection! But won’t this disproportionately favor large schools with wealthy donors and bigger platforms to showcase athletes

Response: Of course! But how is this ANY different than the way it is now? This will effectively do nothing to parity in college sports because there is very little in the first place

2. Take away all requirements to stay in school for a certain amount of time

This is actually more on the pro leagues than the NCAA. A player should have the ability to be drafted at any time, at any age. Every person in the world should automatically be eligible to be drafted at any given time. If a drafted player doesn’t want to go pro, then they don’t have to. If they get drafted and make a roster, they lose their NCAA eligibility. The only reason age restrictions exist is so that professional sports leagues can be protected from their own bad investments. College sports serve as a free filter to decrease the likelihood teams waste money, it’s not about what is “best for the athlete” like they claim.

Objection! But most athletes don’t make it on the pros, shouldn’t we be encouraging them to get degrees?

Response: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. You know what the average salary for someone with a bachelor’s degree is? $55,000. The 30^th pick in the first round of the NBA draft will make almost $1 million dollars (the top pick will make almost $5 million) during his FIRST YEAR. A 3-year NBA career for an average player likely garners more guap than someone with a bachelor’s degree gets in a lifetime. Even if you don’t make it in the NBA, playing in a European league will still be more financially prosperous than 98% of jobs. Same goes for football without the alternative leagues, but then again far fewer players enter the NFL without a degree.

Bonus Objection! Yeah but I just saw that documentary “Broke” and it says that most athletes blow all that money they make in The League

Bonus Response: Yes, this is unfortunately extremely common, but this isn’t an issue exclusive to pro ball players. A large percentage of major athletes are from working class background, and typically when working class folks get a lot of money at once, they spend it because saving is a foreign concept (see: lottery winners). Plus, you gotta put the whole team on–friends, families, boo thangs and all. Conversely, when working class folks get college degrees, they end up in six-figure debt and spend most of their lives paying it off. Neither of these are absolute outcomes, but if you’re choosing between one or the other, take the millions.

3. Create an “Athletics” major

First of all, I want to say up front that I did not come up with this idea, I actually got it from one of my college professors. This might seem like the most radical of my suggestions, but it actually basically exists already. The schedules for major college athletes are so restricted that there are only a certain set of classes one can feasibly take anyway. There is a reason athletes seem to travel in packs around college campuses. The notion that these athletes are “students first” is idiotic when it’s virtually impossible for them to be students in the same way as everyone else. I propose that we just let them come to school and focus entirely on sports. Their academic schedule would consist of working out, going to practice, and gameplanning—in other words, exactly what they do now. You could even incorporate academic courses that increase knowledge of the game and educated around coaching strategies. Design a curriculum that helps these athletes be professionals in the field of their choice. There is no difference between this and what Art and Music students do.

Objection! Ok, I get that it’s more financially prosperous to play pro ball than get a regular job, but that doesn’t change the fact that most college athletes aren’t good enough to make a living in sports.

Response! No problem! I have two great solutions. The most feasible one is to allow athletes to come back and get a non-athletic degree at any time. Universities owe them that, which I’ll get to later. The other option is to allow athletes to get their degree while playing sports, similar to what is possible now. Athletes should have the agency to choose the option is most conducive to their success, just like everyone else.

 4. The Brian Harris “Pay the Athletes” plan

A lot of people are in favor of paying college athletes, but generally folks are vague about how this would actually happen. I propose that something like a union negotiates a flat rate to be paid for athletes at various levels of competition (based on market value). For example, all Division 1 football and basketball programs would be required to pay each player $50,000 (I pulled this number out of my ass). Division 2 and non-revenue sports programs would not be required to pay their athletes because they generally have no market value, but the programs would still have the OPTION to compensate athletes in any fashion they so desire.

Objection! They already get paid! A four-year scholarship is often worth up to $200,000

Response: Chile, please. It’s hard to calculate the financial impact of the average college football or basketball player at any given school, but the existence of the team most certainly has a positive impact. At a handful of schools, this benefit comes in the form of direct profit, often up to tens of millions of dollars. At most schools however, major college athletics is a key contributor to the brand of the university (and remember, higher ed=corporation). Outside of the Ivy League, the only schools with major college sports whose academic reputations supersede their athletic programs are Stanford, Northwestern, and Vanderbilt. At any other Division 1 school, taking away their basketball and/or football team significantly enhances the perception of the school for the potential student (you know I’m right Michigan, Duke, and Notre Dame). This is not to say these schools are irrelevant without sports, but there is a reason the Student Activities Building at U of M has a Denard Robinson cutout you can take a picture with.

Even were all this not true, saying that a scholarship athlete costs a university the full cost of attendance for four years is not even close to accurate. To say that the University of Michigan loses $200,000 per athlete is to assume that said athlete is taking a place at the school that would otherwise go to a normal student paying the full cost of attendance. For one, because of either financial need of merit-based aid, very few people pay the full cost of attendance at any school. For two, because athletes are nearly always admitted to the school based entirely off of their athletic achievements, they are not even competing with other students because they have a separate admissions process. Assuming they have the space to house them, U of M could easily offset the cost by simply accepting more students.

Bonus Objection! Most schools lose money on athletics as it is, how can they be expected to pay their athletes?

Bonus Response: Two Options: Either don’t be in Division 1, or lower the cost of/drop your other sports. The only reason schools are able to offer a billion sports is because they take the money from exploiting football players. I would like for wrestlers to have the opportunity to wrestle at the college level, but there is no ethical reason a school should have to offer it (where are the positive externalities?). If a school would rather not cut sports, then cut football or drop a division. Limiting the teams who can call themselves Division 1 effectively does little but change the label some schools carry. Just as allowing athlete compensation will favor existing powerhouses, so will consolidating the size of Division 1.

5. Get rid of Transfer Restrictions

Right now, a coach can take another job whenever he or she wants, even before the season is over (and of course get paid too). A player, on the other hand, must wait a year AFTER the season is over if they want to play at a different school. This is fuckin stupid. Players should be able to leave programs whenever they want and regain eligibility as soon as the semester starts. Y’ALL the ones who created capitalism, I’m just callin it like I see it.

Objection! Athletes make a commitment to the university, and it should not be that easy to dishonor that commitment!

Response: Right now scholarships are already one-year renewable commitments, so schools can renege if they can’t use your body anymore. College athletes are human beings and sometimes they change their minds about things. Their should be no penalty for dipping.