College players accepting perks is as common as restaurant servers taking tips. Indeed, it’s an open secret that “boosters” ply football players with perks. And they do this for one simple, unvarnished reason: to boost players’ performance on the field.
Yet the NCAA never fails to feign moral outrage anew every time this open secret makes news. Such was its reaction last week when Yahoo Sports published an investigative report on booster Nevin Shapiro.
Like imposing the death penalty for speeding
According to Yahoo, booster Nevin Shapiro used proceeds from a $930 million Ponzi scheme to provide perks to University of Miami Hurricanes football team players. He reportedly boosted as many as 72 players over nine years, ending in 2010. And the perks included cash, cars, and prostitutes.
Shapiro’s rotting in prison for 20 years for his Ponzi antics. He’s dreaming that ratting on Miami’s football program will buy him some time.
That’s hardly surprising. But it’s a damn shame. After all, Shapiro wasn’t just another Bernie Madoff. He spent nearly a decade living vicariously through young studs. Now he’s singing like a stool pigeon and throwing them under the bus.
Yet, based on his self-serving testimony, the NCAA is considering the dreaded “death penalty” for Miami. And, to appreciate what that portends, we need only recall the death penalty it imposed on Southern Methodist University (SMU) in 1986 for similar violations.
Among other things, the NCAA banned SMU from competition for a year. But that effectively destroyed SMU’s once-storied football program.
NCAA President Mark Emmert says he’s willing to back up his tough talk on punishing rule-breakers — even using the ‘death penalty’ as a deterrent.
(Associated Press, August 19, 2011)
NCAA hypocrisy and racism
With all due respect to Yahoo Sports, the real story here is not the sordid details of Shapiro’s boosterism. There’s nothing new there. Nor is it what sanctions the NCAA will impose on Miami. The SMU precedent speaks volumes.
Instead, it’s the abiding hypocrisy and racism. After all, most of the players involved are poor and Black, and the boosters are rich and White. And everyone knows whatever perks are involved in this scheme are peanuts. That is, given the windfall colleges get from exploiting the free labor of these college athletes.
Yet reports are that the NCAA is even considering reaching into the NFL to penalize the few Hurricanes who survived their indentured servitude.
Frankly, I vented all the outrage about this hypocrisy and racism I care to in “Reggie Bush forfeits Heisman Trophy” on September 16, 2010.
But it’s one thing to strip one player of a trophy or suspend a few “rule-breakers” for a few games. It’s quite another to destroy a big-time football program like Miami’s. Let’s face it; the Hurricanes are a money-making machine. They make millions for the university and NCAA and juice the local economy.
That’s why I predict the NCAA will finagle a way to spare this goose that lays so many golden eggs. It will not impose the death penalty.
Instead, it might impose a relatively modest fine, suspend Miami for a few games, and demand the scalp of a few expendable players. But that will only reinforce the hypocrisy governing college sports.
Players should go on strike
In any event, I urge the star players on all NCAA Division 1 Football teams to organize a wildcat strike this fall. They should demand fair compensation for the services they provide.
Dare the NCAA and university presidents to take legal action. Why? The players’ moral and equitable arguments would far outweigh any contractual argument.
Quantum meruit, a principle universally recognized, stipulates that one should receive fair compensation for services rendered. These football players are generating billions in revenue for colleges and the NCAA.
A degree not worth the paper it’s written on hardly amounts to fair compensation for these players. And it would be unconscionable for colleges and the NCAA to argue otherwise.