The hypocrisy that “permeates big-money college sports takes your breath away,” and the best approach “is to openly acknowledge their commercialization -- and pay the work force,” according to Joe Nocera of N.Y. TIMES MAGAZINE. Student-athletes are “supposed to be content with a scholarship that does not even cover the full cost of attending college.” This has “bred a deep cynicism among the athletes themselves.” Paying football and basketball players “will not ruin college sports or cause them to become ‘subcontractors.’” Given the way “big-time college sports are going, paying the players may be the only way to save them.” Nocera introduces five elements as part of what he believes “to be a realistic plan to pay those who play football and men’s basketball.” The first is “a modified free-market approach to recruiting college players.” The second “is a salary cap for every team, along with a minimum annual salary for ever scholarship athlete.” All things considered: “$3 million for the salaries for the football team, and $650,000 for basketball, with a minimum salary of $25,000 per athletes.” Nocera noted he would “keep the number of basketball scholarships the same, at 13, while reducing the number of football scholarships from 85 to a more reasonable 60, close to the size of NFL rosters.” The third element would be every player “who stays in school for four years would also get an additional two-year scholarship, which he could use either to complete his bachelor’s or get a master’s degree.” Under the fourth element, each player “would have lifetime health insurance.” And the fifth would be an organization “to represent both current and former college athletes” (N.Y. TIMES MAGAZINE, 1/1 issue).
CAPTIVE LABOR FORCE? The N.Y. TIMES’ Nocera previewed his piece in a Saturday op/ed, noting in a few weeks in Indianapolis the NCAA “home-grown cartel will hold its annual meeting.” The NCAA’s “real role is to oversee the collusion of university athletic departments, whose goal is to maximize revenue and suppress the wages of its captive labor force, aka the players.” In all likelihood, the NCAA “will roll” many rules back. However benignly “it characterizes this actions, it will be as clear-cut an example of price fixing as anything that goes on at an OPEC meeting.” Nocera asked, “How can it be that the NCAA can define amateurism in one moment as allowing a $2,000 stipend and in the next moment as forbidding such a stipend? … How can the labor force that generates so much money for everyone else be kept in shackles by the NCAA?” The organization claims it “has the legal right to do all of the above and more.” And “maybe it does.” But it “certainly would be nice to see someone challenge it in court and find out once and for all.” The “inevitable rollback of the $2,000 stipend and the four-year scholarship would be an awfully good place to start” (N.Y. TIMES, 12/31).
GETTING INTO IT ON TWITTER: CBS Sports and SI's Seth Davis posted several tweets regarding the N.Y. Times article. He wrote, "Another lengthy magazine article arguing college athletes shd be paid omits basic fact that vast majority of schools lose money on sports. ... Joe Nocera wants open bidding for recruits, contracts, salary cap. So now college athletes can be traded too? Can't have 1 w/o other. ... Let's treat fb and bkb players differently and pay them. With what money? Would have to shut down all over sports. An inconvenient truth. ... Nocera actually wrote that he wants a $3m salary cap for cfb and a $650k cap for bkb. Why the Times prints this crap is beyond me. I'm done.” That prompted a response from SB Nation's Bomani Jones, who wrote, "using the preservation of sports who live off the backs of revenue athletes as why? it doesn't hold, man." Davis and Jones then got into a back-and-forth discussion on the topic.
Davis: “They are rightfully paying players. If they want to make more $$ they can turn pro. Nocera didn't even mention that option."
Jones: "and why is preserving these other sports so important as to stop from rightfully paying those who make them possible?”
Davis: "I believe preserving other sports is important. U may disagree. But failing to acknowledge they'd be eliminated is dishonest.”
Jones: "given that no one has ever TRIED to pay players, why are you so sure the current layout absolutely prevents it?”
Davis: "Emmert tried to pay them more $$. Smaller schools revolted (which I find revolting.) The money isn't there, B. It just isn't.”
Jones: "there are clear limitations to turning pro. that's a con, and you know it. and paying an unprepared student with a scholly?”
Davis: "Why is it a con? The limitations are: You're not good enough. U make free market argument until it's inconvenient.”
