This is the third and final part of Dan’s essay on pay for play. You can check out the earlier entries for part 1 and part 2.
I refused to write this article sober.
In ”I’m Not Telling The Pistol Team Their Sport Is Useless”, I used the words football players instead of “Everyone kills People” Pryor, “Sexual Ball’ah” Bush, “I’m a Soldier” Winslow and crew. I’m now talking about the upper-echlon folks at the top BCS programs whose names plaster our ears on College Game Day and fill the highlight reel on Sports Center. The Men in Black - the “best of the best of the best”. These dudes knew they were going pro shortly before puberty. I took a few moments to reflect back and apply all of those statistical methods I learned in grad school and analyze what I could when the thought “ya know, it’s often those ball’ah guys who pop-up for rules infractions allegations”. It turns out that there’s a strongly-positive correlation between being a stud on the field and fucking over the college helping you put together footage of you on that field for NFL scouts.
The correlation gets its measure from the lack of actual consequences. Potentially sit for a game for getting hammered on expensive steaks and booze before getting a bj from Nut Gobbler - on some other dudes dime on the nearly non-existent chance you’ll get caught OR just get hammered on expensive steaks and booze before getting a bj from Nut Gobbler - on some other dudes dime and play anyway!
These guys are at least 18 years old; that makes them adults. It is not the host institution or NCAAs’ job maintain control on every single athlete’s decision-making process. They know the rules. They were taught was is right and what is wrong. They know the official consequences. Hell, the host institution is actually incentivized to not maintain control. This is why Jim Tressel took the risk of lying and covering it up. He’s a smart dude. He ran the numbers and calculated an acceptable risk to lie about Tee Pee’s tats.
When shit goes down and players are caught, the punishment is not their burden to carry. Did USC know that Reggie got $200,000 for the house? Maybe, maybe not. Reggie did however make a conscious decision that ripped a school, locker room of teammates and a wealth of fans of a BCS National Championship. USC had nothing to do with his choices. Sure he lost the Heisman and a National Championship but he’s also worth 8 figures - not gonna feel sorry. Tee Pee got caught, kicked out of school and received a $500,000 signing bonus while Ohio State has to forfeit millions in winnings, a BCS bowl victory and a Big Ten Championship.
I offer a simple and sustainable solution that is practically self-governing. For every game that a player gets suspended, so are all the starters on that side of the ball. You win as a team and you lose as a team. Once the NCAA gets some fecal cohesion going on their rules manual, you can quite easily implement this. (I’ll admit the rules presently stray into may gray areas and is as dense as the Federal Tax code.). I’m comfortable estimating that car dealerships might be a little less inclined to stretch the rules.
As an additional punishment for the guilty player, they must pay back the lost portion of their scholarship; that is to say there are 12 regular season games and a one game suspensions means you owe 1/12 of the full financial benefits associated with your scholarship before your ass steps onto the field again. (It’s a side topic but people on academic scholarships are due the same financial punishment in my opinion).
A college education is a privilege - not a right. Players can be suspended for the season and not lose their scholarship. Translated to a normal college student means that they are not allowed to clock in at work for spitting in the customers’ food, still get paid, and still get to come back to work in year. Pryor took it a step further and chose to say “that’s ok, I found someone who’ll pay me more.. sorry about your customers”. If a student loses their job and cannot pay for school, they don’t go to school.
Tough shit. Learn from it.
NCCA athletes are given an amazing forum to showcase their impressive talents, a little humility to respect for the opportunity they have isn’t too much to ask. I call that accepting the consequences for the choices you make.
This is Part 2 of Dan’s thoughts on pay for play. Read Part 1 here.
In “Fiscal Responsibility - Not Just For AIG”, I used the term “student athletes” instead of football and basketball players. In this post, I’m only talking about those two sport as those are the only two revenue generating sports found at the collegiate level (with a few exceptions here and there) and even then, there’s no guarantee. And my goodness how they generate revenue from crazed fans, media conglomerates, boosters, and sponsors. OSU had a profit exceeding $40 million from their football program alone in 2010. ESPN spent $2.25 billion over the next 15 years to certify their monopoly on SEC college football. Once you get into March Madness and Bowl Sponsorship - it get’s even crazier. It is fair that some programs generate cash money and others do not? Of course not but it is the reality of the situation. Always has, always will.
All those dollars are to watch the athletes on the field or on the court. Every single one of them. There’s quite a few folks out there that think the financial benefits (full scholarship, tutors, food, clothing, etc) and the un-calculable benefits (the opportunity to showcase and refine the athlete’s talent at a very elite level to sports zealots all over the country) isn’t enough. That student athletes in revenue generating programs should get a piece of the pie. Divide $40 million (OSU’s profit last year from the football program) by 85 (max. # scholarships) and I’ll readily agree the benefits in college calculable or otherwise probably don’t balance. Ok, so, they shouldn’t get all of the $40 million but let’s run a thought experiment. Let’s say we give each player $100,000 and leave $31.5 million to OSU. What happens?
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As a Buckeye Fan, the last 9 months have been rough and I’ve got plenty to say about that. Interestingly enough however, Ohio State was joined by a dozen other schools around the country for players allegedly receiving improper benefits. These allegations put the “pay-for-play” discussion into the spotlight for most of the off-season.
I look at the “pay for play” discussion and college football and see two schools of thought. School #1 revolves around supplementing athletes income by providing them a modest payment to cover living expenses - in the neighborhood of a couple hundred or a couple thousand dollars a semester. School #2 involves giving the athletes a piece of the money-pie served up (mostly) among the BCS conferences. I can summarize both schools using Obama 2012 campaign slogan’s initial acronym ‘WTF’ but I feel they are worth discussing. Each school brings to light another issue that will need to be resolved should college football - hell, college athletics - continue to exist. As a result, I’ve broken up the “pay-for-play” discussion into 3 posts:
“Fiscal Responsibility - Not Just For AIG” 9/11
“I’m Not Telling The Pistol Team Their Sport Is Useless” 9/18
“Life, Liberty And The Pursuit of Happiness May Be Inalienable Rights - A College Scholarship Is Not” 9/25
“Fiscal Responsibility - Not Just For AIG”
Supplemental income of a couple hundred or a couple thousand dollars is not a whole lot of money in the grand scheme of things but a college student can stretch that a lonngggggg ways. And for student athletes supplemental income is talking about $2500 spread out over the course of 15-18 weeks. You know how most students gather $2500 over the course of 15-18 weeks?
They get a j-o-b.
Pre-season and in-season responsibilities are a full-time commitment above and beyond classroom duties for student athletes. As many of these students are on a scholarship for their respective sport, I fully support dedication of 100% of their effort to their studies and athletic commitments during this time. Once the season is over their athletic commitments drop to a part-time job, or drop completely or at least should (more on this last point in a minute). This would be a great time to get a job and earn “a modest sum of money to cover living expenses - in the neighborhood of a couple hundred or a couple thousand dollars”.
As an added bonus, unlike nearly all of their classmates, most of student athletes’ educational expenses are already covered. Cash from that part-time job need only be used to directly supplement their living expenses. While they’re at it, squirrel a little away for preseason and season commitments. Viola! Living expenses covered! As a matter of fact, I watched my roommate in college (Women’s Soccer @ OSU) and her teammates do exactly that. I call that fiscal responsibility and I doubt I’m the only one.
I’m am also sure I am not the only one whose heard the rumor that athletic commitments at high-profile institutions in revenue-generating sports are a year-round commitment. Sure the NCAA limits the official number of practices but there’s plenty of “volunteer” activities, practices, lifts, etc that make the commitment year-round. I agree that this would make it difficult, but not impossible, to get that job to supplement your income. (Some of us regular folk worked 40 hours a week year-round to pay for their school and didn’t bitch about not having enough money but I digress). However I am willing to find some semblance of sympathy if that commitment is so great that finding part-time work to supplement your living expenses is that restricted.
The NCAA and host institutions should work to limit the amount of off-season commitments instead of finding ways to pay all their athletes. I think a little extra monitoring may have additional benefits (see ESPN for a list of NCAA programs on the “you should have monitored your program more” shit list). And ya know what? I suspect this is the reason, this year-round commitment, the whole pay for play discussion has come about. You don’t hear about the men’s gymnastic team complaining about pay for play. You don’t read about the lacrosse team asking for a supplemental income. Quite frankly, 99.9% of student athletes are doing what is necessary to play the sport they love, go to their classes and live the college lifestyle. It’s the 0.1% of student athletes playing high-profile sports at the highest-profile institutions that are involved in this pay-for-play debacle.
Limiting off-season commitments also represents a sustainable path forward to supplement athletes income. Most athletic departments lose money each year, only a very select few make money. Where in budgets that lose money year in and year out do you expect to find a couple thousand dollars for the hundreds of athletes ? How do you expect to make a case to tax-payers for those state-institutions to supplement income when their poster children are buying tattoos? How do you keep an amateur-level playing field internally between sports and externally between institutions? Most academic institutions are already providing enough benefits to their student athletes above and beyond paying for the entirety of their education (see food, clothing, travel expenses, etc) - paying them more money should not be their burden.
All sports however can determine maximum commitments between pre-season, season and off-season regardless of sport - and can enforce them with a little help from the NCAA. If you ensure student athletes have the opportunity to supplement their income like everyone else, the pay-for-play discussion is over for 90% of that 0.1% of student athletes that give this article its purpose. And while you’re at it, you teach the student athletes a lesson in fiscal responsibility - lord knows we need as much of that among my generation as we can get. The remaining 0.01% of student athletes need an article all of themselves and I’ll talk about them in “Life, Liberty And The Pursuit of Happiness May Be Inalienable Rights - A College Scholarship Is Not”.
