It’s time to end the NCAA’s big lie
“When the players do benefit financially for their play it’s in violation of the NCAA’s hard and fast rules, rules that protect their monopoly, the money printing machine that it created under the guise of assisting “student athletes”.”
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It’s March and the madness is set to begin. All around America devoted fans of NCAA basketball as well as more casual observers are making their basketball tournament predictions and filling in their “brackets” in anticipation of the “big dance”, the annual college basketball tournament during which 64 teams become 32 which become sixteen which become four. It’s among the most highly anticipated television events among all sports and the dollars the tournament generates are beyond staggering.
It is estimated that the NCAA tournament is worth in excess of a billion dollars in broadcasting revenues alone. That number doesn’t take into consideration the massive income the organization enjoys from sales of advertising, merchandise and kickbacks of various kinds. These dollars benefit the NCAA’s member schools to a degree, but mostly it’s the cartel its self that benefits from the wild popularity of the tournament.
The most shocking aspect of the cash grab that is Division One college athletics is that the labor is almost entirely free. Aside from coaches whose incomes are massive, the cost of talent to the NCAA is zero, making the overall profit margin on big time amateur athletics impossibly juicy.
The players who take the court to dazzle during March Madness are presumably unpaid. The same holds true for Division One college football, another revenue-producing sport that generates dazzling dollars. When the players do benefit financially for their play it’s in violation of the NCAA’s hard and fast rules, rules that protect their monopoly, the money printing machine that it created under the guise of assisting “student athletes”.
The NCAA does oversee sports that don’t produce revenue. In fact, aside from high-level basketball and football, every college sport loses money. Facilities and staff aren’t free so lacrosse and golf teams, even hockey teams produce negative revenue for their schools. The NCAA justifies the billions it generates through the popular TV sports by stating that those fund the others. But really it’s rich old white men who are profiting.
As long as there are massive financial gains to be earned through college football and college basketball and the interest they garner the NCAA can will fight to preserve its big lie – that the players who make up the top teams are actual college students. Most aren’t. They are ringers – born, bred and raised as athletes and scouted from time they are tots to the time they are teens to come to college and essentially “major“ in sports.
Most big time college are incapable of passing a basic entry exam on their own. Classes and curriculum are specially crafted just for them. The big men on campus often leave school with lesser skills than the typical American high schooler. One need look no further than Twitter to see this demonstrated on a daily basis. Players who once represented proud universities aren’t even able to spell. Somehow these “student athletes” manage to make it through one or more years of school without learning much of anything. It’s because they are part of the lie. But they’re only the pawns. The kings, queens and rooks are the ones cashing the checks.
Fans of Division One college football and college basketball know that that the NCAA system is corrupt and crooked and that the participants often are “students” in name only but most of them don’t care. To them it’s entertainment pure and simple. But more and more people are sick of having the wool pulled over their eyes by a massive money hungry institution.
A day of reckoning is coming for the NCAA and its big lie. At some point the public is going to demand that sweeping changes be made that level the financial playing field and recognize big time athletic conference as what they are – semi professional leagues in which all the money flows to rich white guys while the players work for free.
The argument that players are compensated through a free education no longer hold water. It has grown increasingly obvious that providing book learning is not the purpose of these programs. They exist to make money and to draw attention to their schools – so that they can make more money. All of this on the backs of athletes who have as little interest in school as the schools have in their educations.
The upcoming NCAA basketball tournament will produce more television revenue than the NFL and NHL post-season tournaments combined. The professional leagues must pony millions for top talent – yet they‘re plenty profitable. The NCAA gets its stars for free. Just imagine how beneficial that must be.
The idea that Johnny is a hard working college student who plays sports as an elective is long dead. Johnny is an unpaid hired gun.
It’s time to end the NCAA’s big lie. If college sports are to be college sports then schools should recruit from the ranks of students who qualify to meet their admission standards and scrap recruiting almost entirely. If they’re actually semi-professional developmental leagues for the pros then the players should be paid and disassociated from the universities altogether.
