The Shame of College Sports

[mfcorey1]

A litany of scandals in recent years have made the corruption of college sports constant front-page news. We profess outrage each time we learn that yet another student-athlete has been taking money under the table. But the real scandal is the very structure of college sports, wherein student-athletes generate billions of dollars for universities and private companies while earning nothing for themselves. Here, a leading civil-rights historian makes the case for paying college athletes—and reveals how a spate of lawsuits working their way through the courts could destroy the NCAA.
By Taylor Branch
Evan Kafkha
“I’m not hiding,” Sonny Vaccaro told a closed hearing at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., in 2001. “We want to put our materials on the bodies of your athletes, and the best way to do that is buy your school. Or buy your coach.”

How to Fix College Sports Vaccaro’s audience, the members of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, bristled. These were eminent reformers—among them the president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, two former heads of the U.S. Olympic Committee, and several university presidents and chancellors. The Knight Foundation, a nonprofit that takes an interest in college athletics as part of its concern with civic life, had tasked them with saving college sports from runaway commercialism as embodied by the likes of Vaccaro, who, since signing his pioneering shoe contract with Michael Jordan in 1984, had built sponsorship empires successively at Nike, Adidas, and Reebok. Not all the members could hide their scorn for the “sneaker pimp” of schoolyard hustle, who boasted of writing checks for millions to everybody in higher education.
“Why,” asked Bryce Jordan, the president emeritus of Penn State, “should a university be an advertising medium for your industry?”

Vaccaro did not blink. “They shouldn’t, sir,” he replied. “You sold your souls, and you’re going to continue selling them. You can be very moral and righteous in asking me that question, sir,” Vaccaro added with irrepressible good cheer, “but there’s not one of you in this room that’s going to turn down any of our money. You’re going to take it. I can only offer it.”
William Friday, a former president of North Carolina’s university system, still winces at the memory. “Boy, the silence that fell in that room,” he recalled recently. “I never will forget it.” Friday, who founded and co-chaired two of the three Knight Foundation sports initiatives over the past 20 years, called Vaccaro “the worst of all” the witnesses ever to come before the panel.

But what Vaccaro said in 2001 was true then, and it’s true now: corporations offer money so they can profit from the glory of college athletes, and the universities grab it. In 2010, despite the faltering economy, a single college athletic league, the football-crazed Southeastern Conference (SEC), became the first to crack the billion-dollar barrier in athletic receipts. The Big Ten pursued closely at $905 million. That money comes from a combination of ticket sales, concession sales, merchandise, licensing fees, and other sources—but the great bulk of it comes from television contracts.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/10/the-shame-of-college-sports/8643/

[MadHound]

1. "While earning nothing for themselves." I beg to differ

They earn a college education, nothing to sneeze at. At least they earn one if they apply themselves and take advantage of the study programs offered by colleges.

Given that athletes' careers last twenty years, at tops, then having a college degree in your back pocket comes in real handy.

Furthermore, given that the vast majority of college athletes, even in the big sports like football and basketball, don't go on to play in the pros, a free degree is a good thing.

[taterguy]

2. LOL

Do you really think football and education can coexist?

You spend well over 40 hours a week getting your head bashed in and brutalizing your body. How much do you think you'll be able to learn at the same time?

There are sports that you can participate in and still get an education. Big-time college football isn't one of them.

If you worked a minimum wage job for the amount of time kids spend on football you'd come out ahead, except for those really pricey colleges that tend to not have decent football teams anyway.

[MadHound]

3. Wow, I guess I should completely disbelieve my lying eyes then

Since the graduation rate for college football is running at sixty nine percent overall. <http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/2010-10-27-ncaa-graduation-rates-study_N.htm>

That's a full sixteen points above the overall graduation rate at colleges
<http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-06-03-diploma-graduation-rate_N.htm>

Then there are those schools in Division III and such, where there are athletic scholarships. And guess what, a lot of the athletes get academic scholarships.

Let me guess your next fallacy, you're going to state that football players get weak degrees, or something similar. Go ahead, you know you want to say it, now that facts have slapped you in the face.

[taterguy]

4. Comparing athletic graduation rates to the general student body is meaningless

The number one reason that people drop out of college is that they can't afford to keep going there. That doesn't apply to people on scholarship, especially scholarships that include housing and food.

A mere degree does not give any indication of how much education you received. In case you've forgotten, W got a degree from Yale. How educated is he?

:toast:

[MadHound]

6. So by your very words you show that athletics provide a means for students to stay in college,

Students who wouldn't otherwise be able to afford a college education, or stay in college. Thanks for proving my point so well.

No, a degree doesn't give any indication, one way or the other, of how much education you've received. There are college athletes who certainly squandered their degree, just as there are athletes who have used their degree to build a better life and contribute towards the betterment of society. But, a college degree certainly does open doors for a person that otherwise wouldn't be open to them. You know that as well as I do, just as you know that your casual dismissal of the value of college degree is rooted in the fact that you also know you've lost this debate. Cheers.

[JVS]

5. The Spring and Summer semesters have an easier schedule.

[MadHound]

8. You obviously don't know about college sports

For football, there is the spring practice season. For basketball, summer is reserved for playing on various amateur leagues.

And as a college graduate myself, having taken both spring and summer courses, there is nothing that is inherently easier about them.

[tabasco]

10. Exercise and athletics are good for the mind.

Laziness and sloth breed stupidity.

[taterguy]

21. My post was specifically about big-time college football. That's not good for the mind

Almost everyone who plays at that level will receive some form of brain trauma.

And it's kind of a useless activity for promoting general health. You can only do it with tons of equipment in a very structured setting.

There are much better ways of getting exercise.

[tabasco]

22. I'm not so sure about your claims.

They seem kind of spurious.

[Blue_Tires]

7. I used to agree with this

but the numbers now have gotten so far out of whack that full tuition is now pennies...

[MadHound]

9. Relatively speaking sure,

But the fact of the matter is that for poor students who have athletic talent, athletics provide a way to obtain a college degree, something that they are still unable to afford, especially since grants have been gutted and loans have become a racket.

[progressoid]

12. I've had three relatives drop their full ride athletic scholarships because

the immense amount of time required to do their sport was interfering with their education. None of them regretted giving up the sport for a better education.

By the way these weren't stupid kids either. Two were valedictorians.

[MadHound]

13. And I had three relatives who played football in major college programs,

Who excelled both on the field and in the classroom, getting an education they couldn't have achieved otherwise.

[progressoid]

14. So we should encourage a corrupt system that misuses students for billions in corporate profit?

As long a it gives a few kids a degree?

What a brilliant educational system!

[MadHound]

15. So reform college sports then,

But don't throw the baby out with the bath water, far too many people have benefited from getting college athletic scholarships.

[progressoid]

16. Exactly. Reform it.

Which is a lot of what the Atlantic article is about.

But throughout this thread you seem to be defending the system.

[MadHound]

18. No, I originally started by disagreeing with the article's statement that a student/athlete

Gets nothing out of this deal. The rest has just spun out from there, talking with various posters and pursuing various tangents.

College sports do need to be reformed, I agree with that. Hell, my favorite college team is in the teeter tottering Big XII conference, a conference where big money has upset the apple cart. But I don't agree with various other propositions around here that go to one extreme or the other, either eliminating college sports completely, or paying college athletes for their services.

[progressoid]

20. Sadly it won't get reformed anytime soon.

It's too convoluted and there is too much money at stake. The college sports program has nothing to do with education - It's all about the money.



"Hi, I'm from xxxxx College and we'll give you $52,000 a year to play football for us. You just have to give the money back to us every year for your "tuition". Meanwhile we will make millions from your efforts as will many corporations. Oooh, and if you are lucky, you can play pro ball later and get paid lots of $$$ too. But most likely you'll just get a degree in General Studies and a lifetime of physical problems.
Sign here_____________

What's that? Your little brother wants to go to school too? Is he 6'6" and can bench 450 like you? No? Just a regular kid wanting an education?
Sorry, can't help him.

[AndrewP]

17. LOL, I know, right?

[Erose999]

11. College atheletes are paid in the form of the free tuition and tutoring they recieve. If thats not

enough for them, they can take a hike.

I graduated college with $30k of student loan debt. The quarterback of our football team will probably graduate debt free, will have a shot at the big time in the NFL draft, and even if that doesn't work out he will have tons of job opportunities through the "good old boy" network.

Just about every big star player that graduates here has some kind of business (bar or restaurant) open up a year after they graduate.

[Renaissance Man]

19. Unbelievable

I cannot believe some of the posts in this thread. Being a student athlete (especially a football player) is like having a full-time job on top of the academic requirements at a college or university.

These students receive scholarships and are fed into machine of money to enrich private wealth interests, and I saw this happen at my university in the late 90s. Private foundations come in and run the ticketing and athletics departments at many of these big name schools (in sports) in the name of profit, and these student athletes do not receive any of the merchandising or any increase in profit from ticket sales that go directly to these private, for-profit foundations.

Ever looked at the college bowl system? The advertisers and universities make millions from these bowl games from the labor of these students at pennies on the dollar. It's the same thing as exploiting the economic situation of the poor to enrich wealth interests, something I thought was a very anti-progressive position.

[WinkyDink]

23. Well, then we'd call them pros, wouldn't we?