Filed under: Football
For the sake of full disclosure, I should remind the reader that I am a big fan of the idea of college athletes having the same labor rights as their coaches. I don't understand why a multi-million dollar athlete with a struggling family should be required to make massive donations of labor to the NCAA fat cats who then use the money to build mansions and yachts for their own families. Also, the black community is the greatest contributor to the NCAA financial machine, to the tune of over $1 billion dollars per year. This is not money that our community can afford to give away.
The allegations against Cam Newton are as follows:
1) He's accused of cheating on classwork three times as a student at The University of Florida. Newton later transferred to a junior college, and then came to Auburn, where he plays right now.
2) Newton was caught at Florida with a stolen laptop, which he lied about. This is when he left the university.
3) It is reported that someone claiming to represent him told Mississippi State University that they could get him as a player if they paid him $180,000.
The fact that Auburn University was ultimately the school that landed Cam Newton certainly brings the university under suspicion for having been the highest bidder. If there was an investment in Newton, it certainly paid off, with the school being ranked #2 in the country with a legitimate shot at the national championship. On top of that, Newton is a front-runner for the Heisman Trophy.
To investigate whether Cam Newton received a few thousand dollars for his services is like investigating whether or not Beyonce got paid for her last concert. The point is that if we are going to question whether his family was compensated in any way, it might also make sense to investigate whether Auburn University is set to earn millions of dollars for Cam Newton's play on the field. After all, winning a BCS bowl game brings in $18 million to the university. Most college football coaches receive bonuses of roughly $100,000 for winning bowl games, with special payments for winning BCS bowls. This doesn't include the millions earned each year by selling the jerseys of players like Cam Newton. So, the system is simple: Athletes like Cam Newton (most of whom are black) do all the work and predominantly white universities who tend to only higher white coaches and white professors get all the money. That might be called "Modern Slavery 101" for those who are unfamiliar. At the very least, we can call this an unsophisticated sweatshop.
So, if you want to understand the underpinnings of this system, let's look at it for what it is. Cam Newton is obviously not well-educated, since he seems to think it's O.K. to cheat on his exams. Additionally, the fact that the University of Florida kept him on the team after he was caught cheating in class reminds us that universities are not lining up to educate young players as quickly as they are to make money off of them. Cam will surely get a shot at the NFL, which could quickly become a bust, given that the average NFL career is less than three years. Then, at that point, Cam may become the thing that so many other African American men become when their playing careers are over: an uneducated washed-up athlete with very few professional skills, making him a small piece of the overwhelming percentage of unemployed black men in America. Check the data my friends, black men are more likely to be unemployed or incarcerated than any other group in America. Athletic, economic and educational systems are direct contributors to these serious social problems which link directly to the fundamental demise of the African American family.
If this does not end up becoming Cam's story, it will become someone else's. Obviously, Cam's lack of focus on his own educational development deserves part of the blame. He seems to exhibit the standard recipe of overconfidence and irresponsibility that get a lot of young men into trouble. But another substantial dimension of this destructive partnership between the black athlete and the NCAA is that the universities and coaches being asked to mentor this young man are not fulfilling their expectation to actually educate him. While they make sure he makes it to every practice, they are not taking the time to ensure that he is actually learning something. During my 17-years teaching on college campuses, I've seen how athletes like Newton are quarantined from the rest of the student body and encouraged to think about football 24 hours a day. Some of them spend four years on a college campus without ever learning how to read, and their lack of academic focus is encouraged by coaches who are only thinking about their paychecks. At the age of 18, when you think you're going to the NFL, it's easy to fall prey to this deceptive system of mind control being merrily provided by our universities. They've failed miserably in their fiduciary responsibility to educate our young people and black parents should not accept this.
The primary issue in all of this is not whether or not Cam Newton should be studying, we all agree that he should. The point here is that there is a good chance that after all this is said and done, the only people who will earn a significant amount of money off Cam Newton's performance are Auburn head coach Gene Chizik, the university itself and the NCAA, which has become a professional sports league by creating a slaughter house for the academic potential of young black men. After Cam Newton has been used up, there will be another young man right there to replace him. This is what the NCAA is all about.
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.