THE FINAL SAY
I imagine Williams says something to the
effect of, “There’s more to this than just winning
titles and getting you to the NBA, son. It’s also
about setting you up for life. Basketball won’t
be around forever. You’ll get an education and
be ready for the real world when it’s time.”
By Zach McCrite
Everyone Else Has
The Power Except
The Student-Athlete
In College Sports
It’s a wonderful thing… if used properly. The
problem with college athletics is that “power”
and “properly” are never used in the same
sentence.
We’ve lived in this world for quite some time
now where the coach (and by extension, the
athletic director who hired the coach) at a big
conference school gets a ton of the money. Yet,
the both of them are only mildly responsible for
the product we pay to watch.
They are only mildly responsible for, let’s say,
the $8.8 billion — with a “b” — contract that the
NCAA made with CBS and Turner Sports for
the rights to broadcast all of the NCAA Men’s
Basketball Tournament games. A lion’s share of
that revenue trickles back down to the member
institutions.
The ones largely responsible for the
entertainment that makes March Madness a
multi-billion-dollar industry? You guessed it.
The student-athletes, most of whom aren’t old
enough to legally have an adult libation.
Instead they are paid in education. They get
to leave their university without being buried
under a mountain of student loan debt. That’s
certainly a blessing. And for a lot of you reading
this, that’s a fair deal.
Well, not from where I sit.
Imagine Roy Williams, head coach of the
national champion North Carolina Tarheels,
has a blue-chip recruit in his office, trying to
woo him to come continue to championship
legacy in Chapel Hill.
But, if you strip away the pomp and
circumstance, I envision a truth serum-infused
Roy Williams sounding more like this: “Son, if
you come to North Carolina, you’ll be under
my control for as long as you want to wear the
Carolina Blue, and I truly think you’ve got the
talent that will help me make millions of dollars
and keep my legacy intact.
“Oh, and you’ll get to go to school for free.”
Look, I’m just using the Tarheels’ coach as
an example. After all, according to USA Today,
Williams just received a total of $925,000 in
bonuses from the University of North Carolina
during his run to a national title last month. But
this happens all over college basketball. Rick
Pitino earned an extra $425,000 in bonuses
from the University of Louisville when the
Cardinals won the 2013 championship (and
another $375,000 from team outfitter Adidas).
These bonuses may vary in value, depending
on what program the coach oversees, but they
are commonplace in the sport.
The coaches have the power.
What else is commonplace? The economic lift
that Final Four host cities receive. The Arizona
Republic reports that the city of Houston, the
host of the Final Four in 2016, “benefitted from
$300 million in direct economic impact.”
This is all on the backs of the unpaid, barely
of-age labor.
Well, let me back up for a second. I guess
the players do get a stipend over and above the
benefits of a scholarship – as much as $5,000,
according to the Kansas City Star. That’s with
one comma.
Let’s call it what it is: “shamateurism.” Stay
in our minor-league system for the NBA (the
league that is in lockstep with college basketball
so much so that they make sure no games are
being played concurrently with the national
championship game) for anywhere from one
to four years. By the way, your coach can leave
whenever he wants without penalty. If you do
it, you’ll have to sit out a season.
amateurism rules were written, television was
barely even a part of societal consciousness.
“Television deals” weren’t even a thought.
“March Madness” was probably something
more associated with St. Patrick’s Day.
And when those rules were written, players still
received full scholarships while the schools and
conferences for which those players played got
next to nothing in terms of television revenue.
In other words, the value of a scholarship for
a student-athlete was a much bigger piece of
the overall pie in the 1950s and 1960s. It was
far more fair.