Sports Justice: The Law and the Business of Sports

Chapter 4: The Ideal of Amateurism

THEßIDEALßOFßAMATEURISMß NCAAßREGULATIONßOFßTHEßß COLLEGEßCARTEL Can’t anything be done about calling these guys “student athletes”? That’s like referring to Attila the Hun’s cavalry as “weekend warriors.” russell baker  • • • previous page In order to play for the University of Colorado Buffaloes, Jeremy Bloom was forced to give up the endorsement income he earned as a professional skier. ap Photo / David Zalubowski The academic performance of America’s colleges and universities is a matter of great national pride. The smartest and most ambitious of the world’s youth long for the opportunity to further their education and their employment prospects by obtaining degrees at American institutions of higher learning. Faculty members at those institutions produce the scienti fic research and scholarly work that serve as the engines of global business and intellectual ferment. And, as a result of a quirk of history, those same non-profit, tax-exempt institutions provide the public with entertainment through sporting exhibitions, primarily by presenting football contests and basketball games fought between men in their late teens and early twenties. That is certainly an unusual business for academia, and it is uniquely an American phenomenon. Although college sports in the aggregate are the source of millions of dollars of annual gross revenue for colleges and universities, student athletes—the performers in these entertainments—do not receive a salary for their participation. As Professor Andrew Zimbalist noted in Unpaid Professionals, “No other industry in the United States manages not to pay its principal producers a wage or salary.” Although gross receipts from football and men’s basketball at many schools are substantial, these sports produce little net revenue because the surplus funds coaches’ salaries and the costs of non-revenue-producing sports. In fact, considered as a whole, college sports normally constitute a drain on an institution’s academic resources , even with the economic exploitation of the athletes. While many, if not most, college football and basketball players aspire to continue their careers at the professional level after their college apprenticeships, very few ever do so. And many athletes do not leave school with their college degrees. Some, like Dexter Manley of the Washington Redskins, complete college without learning how to read or write. Outside of the revenue-producing sports of football and men’s basketball , most athletes do not receive sufficient scholarship aid from their schools to cover their tuition. Nonetheless, they are limited under the rules of the National Collegiate Athletic Association in their ability to earn income . This tragic combination of no compensation for services performed, The Ideal of Amateurism • • • 65 little prospect for professional accomplishment, and inadequate, if any, real educational value is the great shame of America’s colleges, all administered under the watchful eye of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. How can we justify the hypocritical reality of college sports and the treatment of college athletes? Here is one convenient, albeit fictional, explanation . Colleges and their agent, the ncaa, decided that student-athletes should be considered “amateurs,” a Victorian concept first developed to apply to nineteenth-century, upper-class lads of means. Because there were few paid professional athletes at the time outside of baseball, the definition fit. In order to preserve the spirit of pure competition, colleges decided that athletes should be strictly forbidden from receiving compensation. These athletes would then remain amateurs because they received no compensation. This prevailing tautology of purity has never been justified by demonstrating that it produced some social good, although when college sports were simply expanded intramural exhibitions, it did little harm. But how can we possibly explain the necessity of the norm of amateurism after revenue-producing college sports became highly commercialized, national entertainment products? Colleges have no difficulty filling the ranks of their revenue-producing sports teams—football and men’s basketball—even without offering a salary to the participants. High school boys willingly accept the norms of amateurism while they dream of professional riches. More to the point, by playing for universities such as Notre Dame or usc, a football player can become the object of something approaching public adoration. Each new generation of athletes joins a long lineage of footballers, inheriting past glories and inspiring reverence in those who will follow. If they are injured or defeated, others will suffer with them. It is not just a game. It is a hallowed tradition. in the beginning...