Evergreen Sportsblogging
Thanks to Pete Carroll and Mark Sanchez, the perennial topic of sports bull-sessions – Should college athletes be paid? – is open again. My answer is, of course they should. If a lit major writes some nice stories and gets an agent, we call it precocious. If an athlete has some nice games and gets an agent, we call it an eligibility scandal. That’s absurd. I believe in the larger Triumph of Geek Culture, but the collegiate status quo is simply Revenge of the Nerds: petty, resentful and, in practical terms, racially tinged.
Yes, I reject out of hand any cavil about big-time athletics not being part of the University’s “core mission.” Seriously, shut up. Most big-time sports programs are at land-grant universities whose assigned and self-chosen missions are so many and various that “core” becomes a meaningless descriptor of any one of them. I submit that a University’s core missions are whatever it devotes a lot of budget and attention to.
I think the NCAA should greatly relax the restrictions of booster contact with individual athletes. In what other area of college endeavor does the university try to prevent students from reaping the benefit of the interests of rich alumni? For elite schools, rich alumni are part of what the school is selling prospective students. If athletic departments and administrations are genuinely concerned about exploitation, let them instead work to structure booster programs to foster genuine mentorship. Your most successful college athletes are going to become very rich at a young age. Who better to help them prepare for and manage that transition than very rich people. The rest of them are going, like any other undergraduate, to need jobs. Let them make useful contacts toward that end.
The above is an absurdly hard sell. At bottom, universities get a lot of financial benefit out of staffing their sports teams with free labor. Not only does The University in corporate save a lot of potential expense this way, not paying players leaves a bigger pool of money for coach and athletic-director compensation; it finances a corrupt bargain up and down the organization. Nobody currently getting money has a class interest in changing the status quo.
For many programs at many schools, the “athlete” part of “student athlete” is a full-time job. If you don’t perform well enough, you lose your scholarship and might be out of college anyway. So despite lip service, the athletics take priority. (This phenomenon gives the lie to the claim that the scholarship is itself fair compensation for the athlete’s labor. Many athletes can’t take full advantage of the scholarship because they are athletes.) Eligibility runs out and the student still hasn’t graduated for various reasons. Sometimes this is because the student has gone pro. Other times not. (See “Why College Athletes Fail.”) Even athletes who turn pro may have very short careers making money that doesn’t last.
And a new study from an admittedly interested party, the National College Players Association, argues that “full” athletic scholarships are not even genuinely full scholarships in most cases:
Staurowsky partnered with NCPA in the study, which calculates the estimated scholarship shortfall at every Division I university that offers athletic scholarships. The data in the NCPA study revealed that NCAA scholarship limitations can leave a full-scholarship athlete with expenses ranging from $200 a year to more than $6,000 per year. The average amount an athlete on “full scholarship” would be required to pay out of pocket amounted to $2,763 per year, or more than $13,800 over the course of five years.
So, I have a fallback proposal: double-credit, genuinely full scholarships. For every year you play, you get two years of (truly full) scholarship support, the year you are playing and one additional year later in life. Play four years, get eight years of scholarship support. These days only 36% of all students graduate in four years, even leaving student athletes aside. Four years of support for people who don’t have the time to take full advantage of it is just not that good a deal. But a four-year ride as a “student-athlete” and a later four years as a student-in-earnest starts to look like the deal the NCAA at least says it is providing now.
Comment by Chris —
January 10, 2010 @ 5:53 pm
I agree completely, Jim, and have long made similar arguments. It’s hard enough for students who are working jobs to get the full educational (and social) benefit of college. In all but the most exceptional cases, the athletes, even those who are trying, receive only a shadow of the education they should get. I’ve seen many bright student-athletes work under this system, and I can’t call it a success.
A related alternative to your double scholarship would be to pay the students while they play without requiring coursework but then guarantee four or five years of education through full scholarship afterward (good for some period of time after they play). Those who make the big bucks in the pros could forgo the latter part if they choose. Those who don’t make the cut or who are injured or who change their minds get the full value of their education. Students could take courses during their playing time for credit as they are able, without any expectations of finishing in that time. I prefer to see the students receive remuneration for what is effectively a job, reduced to some extent to account for the the later scholarship or big-bucks-pro opportunities that that the job offers.
Hard sell all around, I know. Your point about mentoring is also excellent.
Comment by jpd —
January 10, 2010 @ 6:32 pm
you are kidding right?
why is there any college sports?
if they want to be pros, join the pros.
Comment by Thoreau —
January 10, 2010 @ 7:32 pm
Hey, who said you could take over the academic blogging beat?
As far as the big-money college sports (primarily football and men’s basketball, but certainly there are others) go, your analysis is spot-on, as is your compromise solution of providing a scholarship for use after they finish their time in the sport. The reality is that these students are doing a job that makes money for the school. Pay no attention to university Presidents who assure you that football loses money. If football wasn’t bringing in lots of money, they wouldn’t fund football at the level that they do. They base their case on the direct revenue from football, but what about all the people who have never gone to the school but nonetheless go around in school apparel? They don’t buy those shirts because they admire the sheer brilliance of the faculty. And while alumni have a wide range of reasons for donating, athletic performance is certainly one of them. And successful football teams, and a culture of weekend fun at the football game, are major draws for tuition-paying undergraduates.
I’m not sure that the situation is as badly in need of fixing for the sports that don’t bring in much revenue, especially the ones for which the post-collegiate career opportunities are not as lucrative. I have a student who’s on the track team, and while she clearly puts a lot of time into it, I’d say that the discipline, confidence-building, teamwork, etc. benefits are worthwhile. If there’s a scholarship attached as well, that’s great, but track doesn’t seem to be fundamentally incompatible with school for her. The school doesn’t put the same demands on her that they’d put on her if her sport could bring in millions of dollars.
So, for non-revenue sports, I’d say that the system might need tweaking but does not need fundamental change. Students are getting scholarships to participate in character-building activities that can be juggled with academics if the student is well-organized. It’s just a really intense extracurricular activity, and many people find their extracurricular experiences to be at least as valuable as their classroom experiences on a personal and professional level. But for the revenue sports, well, +1 what Jim said.
Comment by Thoreau —
January 10, 2010 @ 7:36 pm
BTW, your point about letting students interact with rich alumni is also an awesome one. If rich alumni doing things for well-regarded students is a scandal, then why does Skull and Bones exist? I’m a member of a similar organization, and it’s all about rich and enthusiastic alumni mingling with and mentoring promising seniors and bringing them into the club. Bug or feature? The question answers itself.
Comment by jpd —
January 10, 2010 @ 8:14 pm
they dont “make money for the school”,
they make money for the athletic department
Comment by Thoreau —
January 10, 2010 @ 8:22 pm
If the athletic department wasn’t making money for the school, they would not be powerful.
The athletic department makes money for the school via:
1) Whatever the direct revenue for the school is from the sport (tickets, etc.).
2) Merchandising. People who haven’t studied there (or sent kids there) don’t buy school sweatshirts because they are impressed by the brilliance of the faculty.
3) Luring tuition-paying students.
4) Keeping the alumni happy and in a mood to donate.
Comment by Jim Henley —
January 10, 2010 @ 9:05 pm
jpd: Would you agree that there should be history in school? History tells us that football was invented in American colleges. Go figure.
Comment by John Emerson —
January 10, 2010 @ 11:48 pm
You forgot world piece. And the pony.
Comment by John Emerson —
January 10, 2010 @ 11:48 pm
Peace. Bro.
Comment by Gene Callahan —
January 11, 2010 @ 12:52 am
“you are kidding right?
why is there any college sports?
if they want to be pros, join the pros.”
jpd, do you have any explanation as to why you think it is only college athletes who can’t make money off of their college skills. Music majors can give lessons and take paying gigs. Chemistry majors can work for Dow in the summer. Computer Science majors can program part-time. Art majors can sell paintings.
Why is it that it’s only the athletes whom you think shouldn’t be able to do this?
Comment by dhex —
January 11, 2010 @ 1:04 am
i like the two years of scholarship for one year of playing angle. actually selling that, as you note, is probably fucking impossible…but still. it’s eminently fair, encourages lower dropout rates, is a pr boost for the institution, etc.
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January 11, 2010 @ 8:36 am
[...] This is a damned good idea. [...]
Comment by Uncle Kvetch —
January 11, 2010 @ 11:59 am
As long as we’re in the realm of “never gonna happen but it’s nice to think about,” here’s my question, as a non-sports fan whose views on the subject have generally tended to be closer to jpd’s than to Jim’s:*
Why couldn’t football and basketball have minor leagues? It seems to work perfectly well for baseball: it decouples the development of pro athletes from higher education, the developees are paid employees, and the collegiate sport is basically just another extracurricular activity and not a multi-zillion-dollar industry.
Seriously–beyond mere historical precedent, is there a good reason for the discrepancy between baseball and football/basketball? I’ve always wondered.
*Although I will readily concede that Jim’s argument here is pretty compelling and has given me a lot to think about.
Comment by Tom Scudder —
January 11, 2010 @ 12:01 pm
My blue-sky ideal would be to ditch the whole linkage between educational institutions and big-time sports and cause a thriving junior-level professional league or several to appear de novo in both football and basketball. Plus ponies. That failing, Jim’s idea seems unlikely to do much harm and might help someone somewhere at the margins.
Comment by Tom Scudder —
January 11, 2010 @ 12:04 pm
Uncle Kvetch: the main obstacle is that (as far as I know) there isn’t any sport anywhere in which junior/minor professional leagues have anything like the commercial success that big-time college athletics does in the US.
Comment by Jim Henley —
January 11, 2010 @ 12:08 pm
Hasn’t college baseball become a somewhat bigger deal for player development in the last decade or so? I don’t follow any level of baseball intently, but my impression is, the draft has become more important, and more skewed to college players.
Comment by Tom Scudder —
January 11, 2010 @ 12:13 pm
Jim, I think pro teams increasingly tend to prefer to allow pitchers, who tend to hurt their arms a lot, and often irretrievably, from ages 18-21, to get their arms hurt in college when the team isn’t paying them. The idea being that for every Kerry Wood or Josh Beckett there’s a Ryan Anderson. It’s one of the ideas that has trickled out of the stathead community into the mainstream of baseball by way of teams like the A’s and Red Sox.
Comment by Tom Scudder —
January 11, 2010 @ 12:14 pm
Attempting the Ryan Anderson link again.
Comment by jpd —
January 11, 2010 @ 1:10 pm
you are already admitting they are pros,
let them be pros. typical pro season
lasts about 6 months. they can take classes
the rest of the year if they want.
or after their probably short career
alumni vanity desires some glory.
hey guess what… your school is just a school.
Comment by jpd —
January 11, 2010 @ 1:12 pm
“Would you agree that there should be history in school? History tells us that football was invented in American colleges. Go figure.”
i am still trying to figure.
Comment by Jim Henley —
January 11, 2010 @ 1:29 pm
jpd, you sound bitter. It’s just hard to figure, at what?
Comment by jpd —
January 11, 2010 @ 1:38 pm
oh, life , stuff, things like that.
Comment by Karen —
January 11, 2010 @ 4:10 pm
I’m a proud Life Member of the Texas Exes, and I heartily endorse Jim and Thoreau’s proposal. All those kids in my older son’s middle school wearing burnt orange No. 12 jerseys — $45 each, mind you — did so because of Colt McCoy, not because the UT drama department produced Matthew Mconnahey. (Who’s a big Longhorn fan as well.)
If there is a scandal here it’s in how the schools spend all that money they make from licensing. All those orange jerseys haven’t caused UT to reduce it’s tuition or offer more scholarships. If the NCAA wants to do something, they should require more transparency in how schools spend THAT kind of cash instead of keeping the athletes away from the alumni.
Comment by The Angry Optimist —
January 12, 2010 @ 3:11 am
There is not any reason for a college to do this, therefore it will not happen. On a joyous sidenote, universities admit these students, who normally would not make into college (which, frankly, is a type of reimbursement enough, if you ask me), and, to top it off, go out of their way to carve out special curricula to ensure that the athletes remain academically eligible.
If college athletes are dropping out or not getting an education even after universities bend over backwards on admissions and academic standards, then all the worse for them.
Comment by Jim Henley —
January 12, 2010 @ 8:52 am
TAO: My views and resentments used to be the same as yours! I don’t think, however, that those things are true.
Comment by Thoreau —
January 12, 2010 @ 6:38 pm
TAO, star athletes in revenue sports might be in college in the sense that they show up to the campus every day, but for those who get special curricula carved out to get them through (or at least keep them in compliance with NCAA rules) I don’t know how much educational benefit they’re getting. Mostly what they’re getting is the chance to hone their skills and make a shot at the pros. That’s great, and if somebody is content with that in exchange for 4 years of generating revenue for the school, so be it. However, let’s not pretend that they are scholar-athletes receiving a free university education. Many of them aren’t.
This would be much easier to address if we separated out the revenue sports, where the worst abuses are most likely to be found, from the non-revenue sports, where abuses are less likely (although I’m sure that if we search hard enough we can find a women’s diving scandal or something). The reason that this won’t happen is that nobody except the revenue sports players would benefit. Coaches and administrators wouldn’t benefit. The number of students harmed is small enough that it is easier for the academic parts of the school to just find work-arounds rather than worry too much about it. And even the players in non-revenue sports would be hurt if their programs were disentangled from the lucrative revenue sports. So, as it stands, college football is 4 years to try for the pros and pretend to get a university education in the process.
Comment by The Angry Optimist —
January 12, 2010 @ 10:21 pm
thoreau – as I posted elsewhere, if we take Ohio State (oh, just picked out of thin air
as an example, the University costs 17K a year. For four years, that’s 68,000. If you take a 20-year, subsidized loan at 4.5%, your final payoff in January 2030 is 103,000. That seems like plenty of compensation to me.
As for the athletes not getting enough education, that, too, is their own fault. Craig Krenzel, who was the winning quarterback in the 2003 National Championship against “the U”, graduated cum laude with a degree in molecular genetics, and was accepted in the draft and played for the Bears for a minute.
So, yeah…not drawing a lot of sympathy out of the “the special curriculum actually hurts the athletes!” argument. They’re the ones who sign up for the courses.
Comment by Thoreau —
January 12, 2010 @ 11:36 pm
I am well aware that there are anecdotes of successful football players who also get good grades in demanding degree programs. However, are they the norm?
If a person who is not really up to par academically is given a scholarship to a program for which he isn’t really qualified, is placed in a program that significantly impinges on time for study, and is then offered an easy route through, it may be his choice to take it, but the fact remains that he didn’t really get much of an education in exchange for his athletic performance.
As a practical matter, I think that Jim’s proposal could even be flattened farther: Give them 150% scholarships: If they play for 4 years, they get 2 more years for free. As long as they study at least half-time during their four years playing sports of the school, they should have enough credits to finish a degree in the remaining two years.
And, as before, I must re-iterate that if we separated the Big Revenue sports from the rest, the situation would be very, very different.
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January 17, 2010 @ 3:33 pm
[...] It’s never the offseason for talking about paying college athletes. [...]