The Last Student Athletes

We can now bid a fond farewell to the tradition of the collegiate “student athlete”.  The notion has been on life support for decades, but now it is in the last stages of cancer of the assets.  

The Never Cares About Academics (NCAA) has recently ruled that collegiate athletes can be paid for using “their name, image, and likeness.”  (Yes, the last two terms are a little redundant, but what did you expect from the a group that grosses a billion bucks a year from selling television rights to college games while pretending to educate the players?)

The National Collections of Athletic Administrators (NCAA) has caved to the state legislature of California, who took a break from outlawing common sense or repealing the Law of Gravity to pass a law allowing college athletes to be paid.  Despite the fact that most collegiate programs lose money faster than a kosher deli in Baghdad, this is guaranteed to raise the cost of athletics just about everywhere so that even more programs will be in the red.

Athletes from all over America will quite naturally be drawn to the program that promises to provide them with the most income, meaning that California will have a distinct advantage in recruitment over the other states who are still misguided enough to believe that the purpose of a university is to teach students.  Consequently, similar legislation has already been introduced in Illinois, New York, and Florida.  The only thing preventing every state from following suit is the likelihood that Congress (having already solved those pesky little problems like balancing the budget, war in the Mideast, and poverty) will likely pass similar legislation for the entire nation.

Instead of college campuses attempting to attract athletes based on such minor details as the quality of the education they might receive, enticing new athletes will be based strictly on the bucks…  Small schools need not apply unless they close down their Math Departments and divert the funds to people who play with balls. Since recent Socio-scientific studies have convinced Seattle educators that Mathematics is a racist construct and not appropriate school material, abolishing those departments would be a “win-win.”

We live in a strange world when importing minority children from inner city ghettos for our entertainment--until they are too crippled to perform--is considered less racist than math.

Why would the Nutty Cash for Athletes Association (NCAA) make such a stupid ruling?  Well, the current board chair of the association is Michael Drake, who is also President of Ohio State University, which coincidentally has one of the most profitable football programs in the country.  (That’s probably just a coincidence, of course!)

Selling images (or even likenesses) of athletes probably has a limited market.  I’m sure that fairly soon, the market will be flooded with products endorsed by various athletes, most of which will be legitimate.  But, the system would be very easy to cheat in as sponsors could buy multiple copies of useless products or pay athletes to needlessly endorse products.

Naturally, there is a historical example.  

Back in the 1980’s, voters started demanding that restrictions be placed on congressional influence buying.  Among other abuses, a group seeking favors from our elected leaders might pay a congressman a huge sum to make a useless speech at a bogus meeting.  So laws were passed severely limiting damn near everyone but ex-presidents, the husband of the Secretary of State, and private foundations from doing that.  (Damn!  Now, I’m redundant.)

Speaker of the House Jim Wright found a way around the restriction.  He wrote a book filled with his political wisdom, deep insights, and personal philosophy.  Actually, it was more of a pamphlet than a book, since it was only 117 pages—most of which had less than a full page of print.  Actually, quite a few only had a single word centered on the page for artistic effect.  I’m sure it won’t surprise you to learn that the publisher reported that the majority of the books sold were large volume sales to unions, corporations, and lobbying groups.  It probably also won’t surprise you to learn that Wright managed to negotiate a royalty of 55% for each book sold—about five times higher than the industry standard and about twice what a writer like Stephen King gets for a best seller.  If J. K. Rowling produced another Harry Potter book, she wouldn’t get that big a royalty.

Sadly, I couldn’t find a single copy of the wonder book in any library in the state.  While this is not quite as tragic of the burning of the library at Alexandria, it’s close.  

Naturally, the scandal forced Wright to resign.

While we may have lost Wright’s timeless prose, I’m sure that shortly we will be able to buy an endless stream of products endorsed by quarterbacks, point guards, and baseball pitchers.  

Once the athletes start getting paid, it won’t take long before competing institutions will be forced to find new ways to funnel money into the hands of athletes.  This is going to cost universities big money, and it comes at a time when most institutions are already hard up for funds.  Insurance rates for athletics are soaring, labor costs are up, and almost every state university has a crisis funding retirement funds.  Something will have to give, and I think the loss will be in the athletes’ education.

College will still have athletics, but I’m not sure we will be able to continue to call them students.  And this is just the beginning: As Mark Drake recently said, "We must embrace change to provide the best possible experience for college athletes,”

He forgot to say, “student athletes”.