Filed under: Basketball, Football
Luchs recently admitted during an interview with Sports Illustrated that he'd been paying college athletes for years. Charles Barkley also said that agents were even paying players back in the days when he was the "Round Mound of Rebound." But are you really surprised? Seriously, do you think that it's even right for us to expect a multi-million dollar commodity to remain in the poor house, while everyone else around him is getting rich off his labor?
The NCAA signed a 14-year deal with nearly $11 billion dollars just for the rights to air March Madness. This mega-deal rivals those of the NFL, NBA and Major League baseball. There are 66 college football coaches who earn over a million dollars per year, and 21 of them earn over two million. They make money because the NCAA pays them from massive corporate sponsorships which come from televised games that get high ratings. Therefore, they get rich because you and I turn on the tube to see athletes running up and down the field.
Are we turning on the television to see the coaches? Mack Brown at The University of Texas earned over five million dollars last year, but I don't even know what he looks like. However, about 100 million Americans knew what his star quarterback, Vince Young looked like. They bought jerseys with his name on them, and play video games with his likeness. They watched commercials featuring Young's athletic ability being aired to promote the games. They made a killing off of Young and his family.
With the massive amounts of money that the NCAA earns off of athletes like Vince Young, why in the heck are we so warped in our thinking that we believe it should be illegal for the athletes or their families to get a share of that revenue? If the NCAA expects athletes to remain broke while earning millions, then they themselves should be required to return every penny of the billions they earn to the American tax payer. If one group must remain poor, then every group should be poor. End of story.
Let's grow up and become realistic. Not only is the agent who pays college athletes not a bad person, he is actually doing the right thing. Any of us, were we earning millions of dollars in a blockbuster film, would be irritated to death if our salaries were artificially restricted to just $40,000 per year. Perhaps that flies in a socialist country, but not in a place that is allegedly free. Tom Cruise, Martha Stewart, Oprah Winfrey and other celebrities on television earn millions because they have the right to negotiate salaries that are consistent with the massive revenue they generate for entities with whom they work. College athletes are also on television, and deserve to have the same rights as the rest of us.
So, let's be clear. I do not argue that college athletes should be paid. Instead, I argue that college athletes should have the same labor rights as you, me and the coaches earning millions from their labor. They should not be forced to deal with an entity (the NCAA) that is consistently allowed to violate antitrust law with the sole and specific purpose of keeping athletes broke while they get rich. In fact, the less money they are required to share with the athletes, the more they can keep for themselves. The NCAA is not driven by education, and it is not driven by any sort of concern for the athletes' well-being. It is driven by greed, and nothing less. They are no better or worse than the sports agents they are trying to vilify. Their outrage is only driven by the fact that they no longer have a monopoly on college athlete exploitation.
Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition and a Scholarship in Action Resident of the Institute for Black Public Policy. To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here.