The Sporting Life:
The Public Professor’s
Saturday Sports Column
I got my Ph.D. at the University of Nebraska. One of my earliest memories after moving to Lincoln in the Summer of 1995 was walking into a pawnshop in hopes of finding a cheap bike. When I casually looked down at the jewelry case, something caught my eye. It was a large diamond ring. Nebraska had just won the national football championship, and there behind the glass, in a grungy, downtown pawnshop, was one of those championship rings which are given to players and coaches.
Such a sight is shocking when one considers how much money is floating around major college sports, which is a multi-billion dollar industry. For example, the NCAA vacuumed up nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars for television rights to the recent men’s basketball tournament. Men’s football programs also rake tremendous fortunes. Yet the workers most integral to generating these ungodly sums of money, the players, are paid no money for their labors.
How is this justified? Some note that the money from big time college sports subsidizes all the other college sports, which operate at a “net loss.” But that kind of logic only betrays the hypocrisy of the situation. After all, a school is a not-for-profit educational institution, not a business. You know what else operates at a “net loss?” Classes. But of course it’s very tempting to use business terminology when talking about big time college sports, because they are a de facto business.
Another common justification is to talk about scholarships, while sanctimoniously and disingenuously claiming that education is more important than money. Tell it the billionaires and millionaires, from Bill Gates on down, who never went to college or dropped out. Tell it to the parents who view college as a financial investment and who want their children to major not in history or philosophy, but in something that can better help them get a high paying job.
But even if you accept the scholarship argument, remember that only some players get them anyway. 
Why? There are actually limits on the number of athletic scholarships a school can offer. So many receive little or no compensation for their work whatsoever. And for those who do get compensated, payment comes in-kind, not in cash. That is, eligible athletes don’t get paid money; in an arrangement that would sound like feudalism if taken out of context, in exchange for their labor, adults are given free room and board and their tuition fees are waived. Meanwhile, the coaches and administrators earn six- or even seven-figure sums each year.
Why are college players forced to pursue their chosen careers (professional football and basketball) without salaried payments despite all the revenue they produce? Because the NCAA clings to the quaint 19th century notion that amateur athletes are pure and should never be sullied by money. It is a concept so outdated and so ludicrous that even that bastion for backwards thinking, the Olympics, has long since abandoned it. But then again, it’s a concept that allows schools to rake in millions of dollars by dabbling in the entertainment industry while still maintaining their non-profit, tax-free status. The whole affair is truly scandalous.
Of course, such meddling with basic economic precepts typically results in a black market. As a couple of readers pointed out just last week, Michigan’s Fab Five infamously brought in some illegal loot during 
the early 1990s, and in fact, most big time programs feature an underground economy through which top players are paid off in one way or another by boosters and other supporters. Indeed, the practice is as old as college sports itself. So what to do about it?
On Wednesday, Patrick Hruby of The Atlantic wrote a short article grappling with the issue. In it, he offered a novel solution to the problem. Colleges should not pay college players outright, he wrote, because it would create tremendous legal and financial hassles for the institutions involved. Rather, he suggests that the current, longstanding underground economy should simply come into the light of day; that the many people around the nation who already funnel money, cars, and lord knows what else to players on the sly, should be allowed to do so legally. That anyone who feels the urge to pay them, including corporations that might want them to endorse products, be allowed to do so.
From a personal standpoint, I’m a bit of an absolutist on this one. My experience attending and teaching at big time sports schools leads me to believe that they rot colleges from the inside by betraying the school’s purpose, promoting incongruent values, and dampening the intellectual atmosphere. I 
want them gone. Intramural sports and local intercollegiate competitions are wonderful, and they should be supported within reason, despite “operating at a loss.” But I believe that the massive industry of big time college sports needs to professionalize and move onto the private sector where it belongs.
That being said, however, I think Hruby has offered a brilliant compromise that elegantly solves the most egregious problems of this century-long fiasco. Either way though, something needs to be done. Enough is enough.
You can also find me every Saturday at Meet the Matts.