The exploitation of US college athletes Tim Nevius
Transcriber:
In college sports, American universities
are exploiting, disproportionately,
Black athletes
for billions of dollars,
while diminishing their education,
health and safety.
Let me start with a bit of history.
In November 1984,
an undersized quarterback
from Boston College named Doug Flutie
threw a game-winning touchdown pass
against the defending national champions,
University of Miami.
As the Hail Mary pass floated
through the fall air
in front of a packed stadium,
millions more watched
with excitement on TV.
After the dramatic win,
undergraduate application rates
at Boston College shot up by 30 percent,
revealing to universities
the enormous marketing value
of building high-profile sports programs.
That same year, the United States
Supreme Court heard a case
in which the Universities
of Georgia and Oklahoma
challenged rules that limited the number
of football games they could play on TV.
Those schools saw the opportunity
to not only make money
by televising their games,
but to also market
their universities to the world.
The Supreme Court agreed that
the broadcasting restrictions were illegal
and schools began to negotiate
TV deals worth millions.
That case opened the floodgates
to money in college athletics,
and with it, ever-growing
conflicts of interest
that prioritize sports over education,
promote wins over health and safety
and reinforce the disturbing racial
and economic inequities in our country.
Since then, the growth in college sports
has been extraordinary
and schools have earned
record revenues year after year.
The spending during that same time period
has increased at almost
the same dramatic pace,
as universities engage in an arms race
to the top of the rankings.
Massive expenditures on new stadiums,
bigger staffs and record salaries
have made it appear,
on the books at least,
that athletic departments
are losing money,
while they build lavish facilities
and make multimillionaires
out of coaches and administrators.
In fact, in 40 out of 50 states,
the highest-paid public employee is now
a college football or basketball coach.
Meanwhile, college athletes, whose elite
talents generate these massive revenues,
are not only denied the ability
to share in the riches they create,
too many of them are not given
the education they’re promised, either.
Today, college athletes are exploited
to the tune of almost 15 billion dollars.
That’s how much money is generated
by college sports each year.
And I’m all too familiar
with the exploitation,
because I used to be responsible
for enforcing it.
Following my own college baseball career
at the University of Dayton,
I went on to law school
before becoming an investigator
at the National Collegiate
Athletic Association.
I traveled to college campuses
across the country
and helped enforce a 400-page rule book
that denies athletes the right to get paid
for their performance
or even profit from their own name.
For instance: unlike the music student
who, in addition to their scholarship,
can get paid to record a song,
or the English student who,
in addition to their scholarship,
can get paid to write a book,
college athletes cannot
profit from their talents
or even take a free meal
without being ruled ineligible
and risking their scholarship.
During my time as an investigator,
I questioned hundreds of athletes
and their families
about their financial transactions,
dug through their personal
bank and phone records
and scrutinized their relationships
to a humiliating degree,
all for the possibility that someone gave
them something beyond a scholarship,
no matter how petty.
In one case, I questioned
Ohio State football players
who received free tattoos and cash
in exchange for memorabilia.
The case received national attention
and became known as “Tattoo Gate,”
as if it were a scandal on par
with political espionage.
The players were suspended
and had to repay the cash
as well as the value of the tattoos.
In effect, unpaid athletes were fined
by a billion-dollar organization
that gets paid by sponsors to decorate
the athletes in corporate logos.
I was told my job was to promote fairness,
but there was nothing fair about that.
Shortly thereafter, I left the NCAA
and started fighting for the athletes.
It became increasingly clear to me
that rules supposedly designed
to prevent exploitation
instead allow a collection of universities
and their wealthy corporate sponsors
to profit off the athletes,
who are promised an education
and lured by a chance at the pros
but who too often end up with nothing.
Now, some people believe
college athletes get a free ride.
However, there is nothing free
about risking health and safety
while working 40 to 50 hours per week
as you fight to keep your scholarship.
In football alone,
there are over 20,000 injuries a year,
including 4,000 knee injuries
and 1,000 spinal injuries.
Since 2000, forty players have died.
Beyond football, a recent study revealed
that an estimated 60 percent
of Division 1 college athletes
suffer a major injury in their career,
and over half of them
endure chronic conditions
that last well beyond their playing days.
There is nothing free about that,
especially as the NCAA refuses to enforce
health and safety standards
and has denied in court
it even has that responsibility.
And about that education
they’re promised –
according to the College Sports
Research Institute,
Black football and basketball players
in the top five conferences
graduate at 22 and 37 percent lower
than the undergraduate population.
Those who do graduate are often shuffled
into majors with watered-down courses
that conform to their athletic schedules
to simply keep them eligible.
The time demands
and required focus on sports
makes it challenging for even
the most well-intentioned athlete
to get a meaningful education.
This is unacceptable
for a 15 dollar billion industry
run by institutions whose mission
is to educate young people.
Although plenty of athletes succeed,
their achievements don’t require
rules that deny pay
or a system that limits
educational opportunities
or neglects health and safety.
The fact is,
American universities oversee a
multibillion-dollar entertainment industry
that denies fundamental rights
to its essential workers,
a disproportionate number
of whom are Black,
while making millionaires of largely
white coaches and administrators.
This dynamic has not only deprived many
young people of a meaningful education,
it has shifted generations of wealth
away from mostly Black families
and represents the systemic inequities
plaguing our society.
The good news is that people
are starting to see the truth.
The NCAA’s own public polling
has revealed that a staggering
79 percent of the public
believe that colleges put money
ahead of their athletes.
State and federal lawmakers,
both Republican and Democrat,
have also taken notice and started to act.
Several US senators have rightly
described the problems in college sports
as a civil rights issue.
Meanwhile, college athletes
from across the country
have started to stand up to demand
greater health and safety protections,
representation rights,
attention to racial
and social justice issues
and economic fairness.
Those who think the players
should just stick to sports
fail to recognize how rarely
college athletes speak up
and ignore the great
personal risk they take
in confronting a powerful industry,
especially without any representation.
More importantly,
critics fail to acknowledge
that college athletes
are simply seeking rights
that are afforded to virtually
everyone else in this country
and basic protections that
shouldn’t even be in question.
I agree that college sports should
be an enjoyable distraction,
but not when they’re distracting us
from the very injustice they enable.
In his retirement,
the NCAA’s first and longest-serving
executive director, Walter Byers,
described college sports as
“the plantation mentality resurrected
and blessed by today’s campus executives.”
This is a telling quote from the man
who designed this system
and the one who knew it best.
But you don’t have to be an insider
to recognize the exploitation
of young people.
You don’t have to be
a Republican or a Democrat
to be troubled by the irresponsible
spending or the disregard for values
at our universities.
You don’t even have to be a sports fan.
You just have to believe
in basic ideas of fairness
and the values of higher education.
So let’s require that all college athletes
are given a chance
at a meaningful education.
Let’s demand responsible spending
by our universities
and fairly allocate the billions
of dollars being generated.
Let’s create robust
health and safety standards
to protect those
who entertain us with their bodies
and enforce those standards.
Let’s provide college athletes
with a representative body
so they have recourse
when things go wrong
and a voice about how
to make things right.
Finally, let’s rise
to the challenge of our time
and once and for all correct
the persistent racial
and economic inequities
that apply to college sports and beyond.
Change is long overdue,
but there has never been
a better time than now.