It has become axiomatic that as goes California, so goes the nation. Sure enough, just weeks ago California made it legal for student-athletes to hire agents to help them profit from their names, images, and likenesses. Now comes this:
The NCAA’s top decision-makers voted unanimously Tuesday to start the process of modifying its rule to allow college athletes to profit from their names, images and likenesses ‘in a manner consistent with the collegiate model.’ …
U.S. Congressman Mark Walker (R-N.C.) proposed a bill to change the federal tax code in a way that would likely force the NCAA to give all student-athletes the right to sell their names, images and likenesses. The current proposal would create an unrestricted market for college athletes to seek endorsement deals.
(ESPN, October 29, 2019)
As it happens, I was in the vanguard of those championing this cause. The following titles attest to this:
- “Reggie Bush Forfeits Heisman Trophy,” September 16, 2010
- “Student-Athletes Make Billions (for Colleges) but Most Graduate Poor … and Dumb,” January 16, 2014
- “Cardale Jones, Ohio’s Superstar QB, Shows Why Colleges Should Pay Student-Athletes,” March 4, 2016
- “Salaries of College Coaches Reflect Enduring Master-Slave Relationships,” October 28, 2016
The first of them includes this instructive excerpt:
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There’s nothing amateur about college Football. It’s a multibillion-dollar business for Christ’s sake!
More to the point, the people generating its revenues are not the university presidents, athletic directors, or coaches who, incidentally, make millions of dollars in salary and endorsement deals. Instead, they are the poor, mostly black athletes whose raw talent colleges exploit to pack 100,000 fans into their stadiums on game day.
I have always felt that it’s tantamount to modern-day slavery for universities to recruit poor and, all too often, uneducated athletes just to play football and not compensate them for their services, especially considering they rarely get an education. …
But this indentured servitude is made much worse by branding these poor players – who generate tens of millions for their respective universities – as cheaters for accepting a little cash on the side. Mind you, those offering the cash are often boosters just trying to make life easier for players to enable them to perform better. Not to mention that, if the NCAA were to penalize all college players who accept such gifts, there would be no college football (or basketball) worth watching.
The hypocrisy inherent in this is beyond shameful. Universities should be required to compensate student athletes in direct proportion to the way owners of professional Football teams compensate their players.
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That excerpt should help you understand why this allowance is just a modern-day equivalent of emancipating slaves only to keep them shackled in Jim-Crow laws. The NCAA is still placing too many restrictions on the ability of student-athletes to get a fair share of the revenues their labors generate.
Most notably, only superstar-student athletes will benefit from this new rule. Even the California law does not go far enough. Because basic fairness would guarantee all student-athletes a salary commensurate with individual performances and team revenues. And, lest NCAA officials forget, students have been working and attending school at the same time, well, since time immemorial.
And so the fight for equity and fairness in college sports continues …
Related commentaries:
master-slave relationships…
pay student athletes…