As any
parent knows, give a child a choice between spinach and ice cream and he or she
will pick the ice cream. That choice isn’t restricted to kids, of course, nor
is it limited to young children, and in the older group it usually doesn’t stem
from any lack of information. Just about everybody’s mom makes the point that
spinach is the wiser option long run or short, and she has a popular cartoon
figure to back her up. Still, in the long run we’re all dead and, meantime, we
might as well have as much fun as we can.
The
purpose of that little observation is the change that’s about to happen to
big-time college sports. After years of defensiveness and internal hand
wringing the NCAA is about to relent and allow college athletes to be paid for
the commercial use of their names, images or likenesses. Although action on the
matter was delayed this week, it should happen this year and maybe by this
fall, in time for the new football season.
The move
will be widely cheered, especially by the “just pay ‘em” crowd that believes
that putting a few more dollars in the pockets of some (not all) college
athletes will cure most of what ails college sports. That would register on the
ice-cream side of the proposition above, an easy fix that won’t change much of
anything. At the same time, it won’t include and possibly could set back more worthwhile
changes that would register in the spinach category. These relate to putting
more college into the college-sports mix and protect the bodies as well as the
futures of the young men and women who make up the particularly American
institution.
This is
not to say that the change is a bad one. College sports may have begun as
healthful outlets for students’ energies but on the big-time level they’ve
morphed into a multi-billion-dollar behemoth that has twisted out of shape their
sponsoring institutions. The notion that this beast is supported by a work
force that has few of the protections of the lowliest civilian employee has,
finally, become more than the courts or general public would swallow. Allowing some athletes to cash in on their
fame amounts to simple justice by any measure, when all around them have been
doing that for decades.
To call
college jocks unpaid isn’t true, however. Their scholarships have value, both
in immediate and long-range terms. The
dollar value of a “free ride” of tuition, books and room and board is
substantial, ranging from about $30,000 a year for in-state students at state
schools like Ohio State University and the University of Alabama to more than
$75,000 a year at private schools such as Duke and Northwestern. Furthermore,
since 2015 scholarship athletes have been given cash “cost of attendance” stipends
of between $2,000 and $6,000 a year to cover such things as travel from home,
local transportation and school supplies their awards don’t provide. Added up,
it’s a tidy haul for what amounts to semi-skilled labor.
Long
term, the rewards of a degree from a four-year institution are much greater, by
various estimates amounting to something approaching $2 million over a 40-year
work life compared with people with only high-school diplomas. And that’s in
addition to the broader cultural horizons higher education permits.
The rub
is that participation in a top-level college football or basketball program
makes it difficult to get the education the scholarships promise. Counting
games, travel, practices and conditioning, it amounts to a full-time job, made
all the tougher because many scholarship athletes are marginal students who
gained admission on the basis of jock cred. Once on campus, they’re steered to
low-content courses by “academic advisors,” and assigned “tutors” who carry
them through academe. The kids often contribute to their own exploitation by
going along with the program, but their youth is a defense. At age 18 or 19 (or
higher), I would have picked shooting baskets (ice cream) over reading some
boring textbook (spinach). Wouldn’t you have?
To the above duties the new rules
would add commercial responsibilities but, in fact, relatively few would have
them. Athletes’ endorsement income is widely overestimated at the pro level and
figures to be spread more thinly at the collegiate; young superstars such as
Zion Williamson or Trevor Lawrence might have been able to earn serious money
as undergrads, but a backup offensive lineman at, say, Purdue wouldn’t cash in
similarly. I’d guess that most endorsement money would come from the likes of a
booster who might book a few players for an autograph session at his car
dealership. The NCAA’s proposed rules would prohibit extra-income offers as
recruiting lures, but that is to laugh.
The rules would ban endorsements of
products that would conflict with school contracts (read that shoes and
apparel) and prohibit kids from using school logos or emblems in their ads or
appearances. They could hire agents but only to handle outside-income
opportunities. The changes would cost member schools nothing.
It’s not a given that the schools
will get their way on all of that. A half-dozen states, including California
and Florida¸ have passed laws opening outside-income doors to college jocks,
and such bills are pending in a couple-dozen more. The NCAA used to regard with
horror Federal legislation touching on its affairs but now it’s
pleading for it, if only to keep from having to cope with lots of different state
laws.
Maybe it should watch what it
wishes for. A bill introduced in the U.S. Senate by several Democrats including
Cory Booker, who played football at Stanford, touches on not only outside
income but many other matters. Among other things it would guarantee athletic
scholarships to graduation, extend athlete medical insurance past attendance, require
independent team trainers and doctors, remove academic advisors and tutors from
athletics-department control and set up a commission (not the NCAA) to oversee
it all.
Chances are it won’t pass—it makes too much
sense—but it’s good to get such ideas into circulation. Maybe some day.
