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To save college sports, let students turn pro
May 10, 2000
by
Herbert
I.
London
VENTURA COUNTY STAR May 9, 2000
The sacrosanct status of amateur college athletics is in need of redefinition, and even the National Collegiate Athletic Association recognizes it.
In the afterglow of the NCAA basketball tournament, one might assume all is well in the college game, but that contention is belied by grumbling among coaches, fans and university administrators.
Sweeping changes are needed and even an organization as tradition-bound as the NCAA understands that. Under the committee's proposal, college players would be allowed to take out loans based on future earning potential and they would be allowed to use that money to insure against career-ending injuries.
The proposal also gives high school graduates who go directly to the pros the opportunity to enroll in college and be eligible for collegiate basketball should the pro experience prove to be unsatisfactory.
What precipitated the proposal is the dramatic increase in high school and undergraduate players recruited into the National Basketball Association before their eligibility expires and, more ominously, the growing throng of agents and sneaker company representatives who hover over college programs, eager to swoop down on players with payments or favors for long-term commitments.
As one might guess, the NCAA is not acting entirely out of magnanimity. The early loss of star players to the pros has affected television ratings and the NCAA signed a television contract with CBS worth $6 billion over the next 11 years.
Still, this proposed break with the past is a new chapter in so-called amateur sports that makes a compromise with money for play, heretofore considered verboten.
How this will be done remains undetermined. The mix of a former pro playing with recent high school players on a Division I team is enough to boggle the imagination.
Nevertheless, college basketball long ago departed from its amateur status. Many Division I programs don't expect their players to complete four years of education.
For those who do, there are a disproportionate number of physical education, sociology and communication majors biding their time. The behind-the-scenes violations of NCAA regulations are sufficient to write a multi-volume nonfiction series.
Which explains why so many coaches would prefer to abandon the pretense and simply pay college basketball players for their on-court exploits.
That reform, however, isn't on the horizon at the NCAA. As I see it, the reform that makes most sense is the separation of student and athlete.
If one wants to play basketball. then he should, but that decision shouldn't have any influence on his student status. Recognizing the semi-pro profile of many college players would go a long way toward validating payment and restoring the legitimacy of serious student scholarship.
At the moment, many basketball players on financial assistance are studying weightlifting and ball-handling. It's fraudulent to call them students.
My recommendation would be to pay basketball players for participation on a college team whether they are students or not. If they choose to be students, they must meet the same requirements of every undergraduate in the university. Ball-handling is hardly a 4-point course.
This reform would be less convoluted than the NCAA committee proposal and excoriates the hypocrisy in big-time college athletics.
Love of the game gave way to big dollars a long time ago. Scarcely any athlete in a Division I school doesn't receive favors of one kind or another.
But it's also broken many hearts in the inner city. Those players who "have game" assume the transition from the ghetto to college ranks and then the NBA is seamless.
Yet generation after generation is brought to earth by the reality of selection. So few good players make it to the pros and of these, so few last in the pros.
The rule of defining excellence in small numbers betrays the illusions in schoolyards across the country. The NCAA has an obligation to deal with those illusions.
Coaches should tell their players the only education you are likely to get in college is on the court. School administrators should be willing to pay these athletes because of the revenue you generate for the school.
Admission officers should admit that basketball players aren't really students, and the NCAA should fess up to the fact that $6 billion looms very large in its decision making.
At the margin, few star athletes may be assisted by the NCAA proposals, which won't be considered until next year, but in the end the system would benefit if honesty prevailed and the market for basketball players reached its natural level, unencumbered by anachronistic academic standards.
The sacrosanct status of amateur college athletics is in need of redefinition, and even the National Collegiate Athletic Association recognizes it.
In the afterglow of the NCAA basketball tournament, one might assume all is well in the college game, but that contention is belied by grumbling among coaches, fans and university administrators.
Sweeping changes are needed and even an organization as tradition-bound as the NCAA understands that. Under the committee's proposal, college players would be allowed to take out loans based on future earning potential and they would be allowed to use that money to insure against career-ending injuries.
The proposal also gives high school graduates who go directly to the pros the opportunity to enroll in college and be eligible for collegiate basketball should the pro experience prove to be unsatisfactory.
What precipitated the proposal is the dramatic increase in high school and undergraduate players recruited into the National Basketball Association before their eligibility expires and, more ominously, the growing throng of agents and sneaker company representatives who hover over college programs, eager to swoop down on players with payments or favors for long-term commitments.
As one might guess, the NCAA is not acting entirely out of magnanimity. The early loss of star players to the pros has affected television ratings and the NCAA signed a television contract with CBS worth $6 billion over the next 11 years.
Still, this proposed break with the past is a new chapter in so-called amateur sports that makes a compromise with money for play, heretofore considered verboten.
How this will be done remains undetermined. The mix of a former pro playing with recent high school players on a Division I team is enough to boggle the imagination.
Nevertheless, college basketball long ago departed from its amateur status. Many Division I programs don't expect their players to complete four years of education.
For those who do, there are a disproportionate number of physical education, sociology and communication majors biding their time. The behind-the-scenes violations of NCAA regulations are sufficient to write a multi-volume nonfiction series.
Which explains why so many coaches would prefer to abandon the pretense and simply pay college basketball players for their on-court exploits.
That reform, however, isn't on the horizon at the NCAA. As I see it, the reform that makes most sense is the separation of student and athlete.
If one wants to play basketball. then he should, but that decision shouldn't have any influence on his student status. Recognizing the semi-pro profile of many college players would go a long way toward validating payment and restoring the legitimacy of serious student scholarship.
At the moment, many basketball players on financial assistance are studying weightlifting and ball-handling. It's fraudulent to call them students.
My recommendation would be to pay basketball players for participation on a college team whether they are students or not. If they choose to be students, they must meet the same requirements of every undergraduate in the university. Ball-handling is hardly a 4-point course.
This reform would be less convoluted than the NCAA committee proposal and excoriates the hypocrisy in big-time college athletics.
Love of the game gave way to big dollars a long time ago. Scarcely any athlete in a Division I school doesn't receive favors of one kind or another.
But it's also broken many hearts in the inner city. Those players who "have game" assume the transition from the ghetto to college ranks and then the NBA is seamless.
Yet generation after generation is brought to earth by the reality of selection. So few good players make it to the pros and of these, so few last in the pros.
The rule of defining excellence in small numbers betrays the illusions in schoolyards across the country. The NCAA has an obligation to deal with those illusions.
Coaches should tell their players the only education you are likely to get in college is on the court. School administrators should be willing to pay these athletes because of the revenue you generate for the school.
Admission officers should admit that basketball players aren't really students, and the NCAA should fess up to the fact that $6 billion looms very large in its decision making.
At the margin, few star athletes may be assisted by the NCAA proposals, which won't be considered until next year, but in the end the system would benefit if honesty prevailed and the market for basketball players reached its natural level, unencumbered by anachronistic academic standards.
Herbert London is president of Hudson Institute and professor emeritus of New York University. He is the author of Decade of Denial (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2001) and America's Secular Challenge: The Rise of a New National Religion (Encounter Books, 2008). London maintains a website, www.herblondon.org.
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