I can’t imagine any student-athlete reading the following without feeling like an indentured servant having salt slathered in open wounds:
Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh is making $9 million this year, overtaking Alabama coach Nick Saban at $6.9 million…
Rounding out the top five are Ohio State’s Urban Meyer at $6 million, Oklahoma’s Bob Stoops at $5.5 million and Florida State’s Jimbo Fisher at $5.25 million…
Thirty-six FBS coaches are earning at least $3 million this year, up from just nine in 2011.
(ESPN Sports, October 27, 2016)
I’ve been decrying this injustice for years in such commentaries as “The Categorical Imperative to Pay Student-Athletes Just Got Stronger,” March 28, 2014. These salaries only validate my longstanding contention that college coaches are using the free labor of student-athletes to live like plantation owners. The only precedent for this is the Founding Fathers, many of whom were in fact plantation owners, preaching about all men being created equal while owning slaves.
Instead of beating this dead horse anew, however, I will suffice to reprise this excerpt from “Student Athletes Make Billions (for Colleges) but Most Graduate Poor … and Dumb,” January 14, 2014.
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[U.S. News and World Report summed up] “The Case for Paying College Athletes,” in a January 6 report as follows:
The college sports industry generates $11 billion in annual revenues… These college sports revenues are passed along to NCAA executives, athletic directors and coaches in the form of salaries…
Nevertheless, the NCAA member colleges continue to vote to forbid the sharing of revenues with student-athletes.
In other words, why pay students to do what you can get them to do for free: not exactly slavery but clearly a form of indentured servitude. This is why I’m exceedingly encouraged that this powerhouse news organization has taken up the cause for student-athletes to be compensated, which some of us have been championing for years:
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, athletics 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 colleges 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 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 the players to enable them to perform better … out on the field…
The hypocrisy inherent in this exploitation is beyond shameful.
Colleges should compensate student-athletes in direct proportion to the way NFL teams compensate their players. They could then reallocate the scholarship money they spend recruiting jocks to fund financial aid for poor (black) students who aspire to be more than professional athletes.
(“Reggie Bush Forfeits Heisman Trophy,” The iPINIONS Journal, September 16, 2010)
Granted, barring injury, top college athletes can bank on professional careers, during which they can make tens of millions. Unfortunately:
While many young people every year set their goals on becoming NFL players, it is extremely difficult to reach that level. Statistically of the 100,000 high school seniors who play football every year, only 215 will ever make an NFL roster. That is 0.2%! Even of the 9,000 players that make it to the college level only 310 are invited to the NFL scouting combine, the pool from which teams make their draft picks.
(NFL Players Association, nflplayers.com) …
Which is why, in addition to condemning colleges for this form of indentured servitude, I’ve recommended the following way for student-athletes to redress this exploitation:
I urge the star players on all NCAA Division 1 Football teams to organize a wildcat strike this fall and demand fair compensation for the services they provide. Dare the NCAA and university presidents to take legal action. Because whatever contractual arguments they make would be far outweighed by the moral and equitable arguments these players could make.
Foremost in the players’ favor is the legal concept of quantum meruit, which holds that a person should be fairly compensated for services rendered. Hence, it would be unconscionable and utterly unsustainable for the NCAA and university presidents to argue that they should be forced to continue generating billions in revenues, in exchange for nothing more than a college degree that, in most cases, is not worth the paper it’s written on.
(“Death Penalty for University of Miami Hurricanes,” The iPINIONS Journal, August 23, 2011)
I hope they take heed.
For the record, let me hasten to clarify that damning colleges for exploiting student-athletes who can barely read or write does not excuse their parents and teachers (from kindergarten through high school) for failing them so unconscionably.
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I will only add that nothing was more infuriating and disheartening than listening yesterday to ESPN’s Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic, pioneering sports commentators, justify these salaries.
They argued that Football coaches are every bit as entitled to their outrageous salaries as professional athletes or Hollywood actors. But this ignores the fact that these athletes and actors do not systematically exploit anyone’s labor to earn their salaries.
Related commentaries:
Categorical imperative…
Reggie Bush forfeits…
Death penalty…
Tebow’s career sacked…
Student athletes…