The Nihilist Rants: How the NCAA can do better by players and schools

While we at SAI have been in a prolonged state of mourning over our beloved team’s spectacular fall in the NCAA tournament last week, we now must press on. And so we shall.

The NCAA Tournament gave us many surprises over the past month, not the least of which was our unranked group of superstars coming together to give us one of the most spectacular runs in ALL of NCAA history (and you can quote me on that). Still, what has been even more surprising for this nihilist is the heightened scrutiny of the NCAA that has arisen around college basketball’s centerpiece event.

Last Sunday, the morning before the national championship, the New York Times wrote a revealing piece showing just the tip of the iceberg of profits the NCAA has been reaping at the expense of unpaid college players. In total, the NCAA had at least 19 major corporate sponsors listed on their official fan guide. But the article dug in deeper to some of the corporate promotion that only the keenest of observer would notice.

For example: the cutting of the nets, which is one of the most prominent and eagerly sought ceremonies of NCAA teams and fans. What you might not notice, as the article reveals, is that this is nothing more than another carefully orchestrated corporate affair.

Each team is immediately donned with Final Four apparel (because who doesn’t love free t-shirts and hats), which are made by none other than Nike, one of the largest manufacturers of sports apparel in the world.

The players will then be handed a pair of bright orange Fiskars scissors and climb a yellow and blue Werner ladder as they take down the net, strand by strand.

While the players and fans could care less who makes the ladder and probably wouldn’t be able to pick out the scissors from their local Staples scissor aisle, the NCAA cares about these details greatly. Can you imagine the price tag of being the sole ladder supplier for the NCAA tournament? Not to mention the much more prominent, and probably more expensive price tags, of being the official drink supplier, which Powerade has so generously paid to be this year’s drink sponsor.

Wisconsin (boooo) forward Zach Bohannon, who has been a part of the players’ union movement, described it this way: “With all of the corporate sponsors, it’s like a professional league, only the student-athletes are amateurs, and we don’t have any say in the process.”

The NCAA defense for these actions is weak. Let me rephrase that for emphasis: The NCAA defense for these actions is ridiculously weak, repugnant, deplorable and completely indefensible. They know better. NCAA executive president Mark Lewis defended it this way, “We don’t force anybody to do anything. There is no requirement that anybody drink anything or hold anything of any kind.”

Tell that to Bohannon. He describes walking onto the court with a water bottle from a company not named Powerade (GASP!) and being told by security he could not go onto the floor until he changed it. He was required to tear the label off the bottle before being able to go warm up.

Or tell that to his other Wisconsin teammates who were lined up for one-on-one interviews before the headlining event. In each interview, a Powerade cup was prominently placed in front of them, regardless of whether they ever touched it.

We know this defense is nothing more than lip-service. Are the players supposed to haul in their own ladder for the net cutting? Can they bust out their grandfathers pocket knife when cutting? Are teams allowed to supply their own coolers of sports drink because, ya know, it’s got better electrolytes?

Corporate America is now the reigning king of college athletics. I’ve heard the complaints from friends every time we talk sports: “ACC, Pac 20, SEC, what does it even mean anymore? These teams aren’t even on the Atlantic Coast! (Or the South, or the PAC either.) And my only response is that this is what you get when corporate organizations rule. You don’t get entities that are tied to state or region, history or tradition, players or fans. You get groups that care about one thing only: the market share.

Here at SAI, we have rightly shined a light on the NCAA corrupt policies of reaping the rewards, thanks to Bob Kahne. The thing is, the NCAA says it is simply following rules. But rule-following is not justifiable if you are making all the rules and no one else has a say. This is, for all intents and purposes, an association that behaves like a corporation – one that is happy to join in one, big multi-partnered square dance around the sweet, sweet sounds of profits.

So with the players’ union movement gaining momentum, I’d like to propose three options to get the NCAA back in line, from most likely (or what I’d most like to see) to least likely:

1. The NCAA moves into a more equitable relationship with both players and colleges.

As Kahne described, college athletics reaps all the benefits and faces none of the risks. Rutgers University, he said, took a significant hit on covering the losses from the athletics department. And who foots the bill for Rutgers? The taxpayers of New Jersey. The University of Louisville, not unlike many programs I know, struck up a deal for tax incentives, breaks and money with the city government to help build its basketball mega complex. Tax payers see no tangible return on the investments. The universities are facing the hurts of economic recession and limited government funds, often times raising tuition for students even while their athletic programs are wildly successful.

Likewise, players invest years of training in leagues and with special coaches, all in the hopes of getting a scholarship and competing for an even slimmer chance of going pro. The NCAA, coaches and athletic departments share in the huge profits and incentives that come with championship sponsorship, yet the players and universities do not receive a dime.

I’d propose more benefits for players and a more equitable among universities and their athletic programs. Early last week, coach John Calipari described an aggressive plan to boost player benefits, offering these guidelines: raising players stipends from $3,000 to $5,000, covering players’ insurance and allowing them to take loans on future earnings, doing away with the one-year transfer rule, and giving players money to fly home once a year and buy suits to wear to games.

These would be only meager gains in the much larger pool of NCAA profits. With such protections and benefits in place, players would receive better treatment and it would change the college-to-pro deal from a crap shoot to more stable odds. Players would be treated like students, like real people, and actually have a better experience while in college.

College athletics as a separate entity for profits but a shared entity for losses also has go to go. If the NCAA really is about colleges and about student athletes, then it should start acting like it. Contracts should be made that outline shared revenue from sports income.

I realize this is a less popular argument in the equation, but one of the greatest crises we face now (and this gets into another article) is the inaccessibility of adequate education and resources for our republic. I see no reason why college programs should be able to offer multi-million dollar contracts to coaches and receive numerous corporate sponsorships, while simultaneously raising tuition (double digit percentages each year) for the wider populace.

If the program benefits, the college affiliated with it should benefit as well. The NCAA should be required to be a part of this profit sharing as well, doling out benefits (more than scholarships) for member schools who play in their leagues. It is the same way for TV contracts and league tournaments; why can’t it be that way for college sports and their supporting college entities more broadly?

2. The profit-making sports could fully detach and become an amateur league unto themselves.

With the one-and-done rule, the NCAA and the NBA essentially manufactured a de facto amateur league for college basketball. Why not go ahead and make it official? As an amateur league, athletes could truly focus on their sport and colleges would not have to funnel resources to support instruction time, housing space and accommodations for a one-year honeymoon with athletes who know they are for sure going pro.

The one-and-done rule is crooked any way you slice it. It was a brokered deal so that the NCAA could get a slice of the pie and not completely missing out on NBA talent. The NBA benefits from an extra year to watch players develop and play on a team in a more rigorous environment.

Who else benefits? No one. An amateur league would break down this shrouded farce. It would be sustained by its own profits and would create rules that benefit the league and the players, without giving a veiled attempt at factoring universities into the formula.

3. The NCAA could start to make sense in what it does.

And I won’t even flesh this one out because it’s so laughable. The NCAA (and NFL) rules that football players must meet an age requirement before going pro, while basketball players must come to college for one year. It assesses fines for players who sell autographed jerseys, while a regular fan or the athletics department can do so for major gains. The NCAA punishes players for actions that would benefit themselves, but then rules that the player can play in championship games that will yield it huge profits and TV ratings.

Honestly I want to slap myself it’s so stupid. So the NCAA could, I guess, get an entry level course in ethics and integrity and begin ruling in ways that are right by the players and the universities, instead of right by it. It could establish clear guidelines for the ways that it will rule in violations and the rights of players, instead of acting arbitrarily. This way everyone, players included, would know for sure what they’re getting themselves into. As it stands right now, everyone is acting based on calculated risk.

If the NCAA were to pursue any of these proposals, I’m sure it would hold up much better to scrutiny than the way it now acts. Until then, it will face continued pressure showing the glaring reality: that a scholarship just doesn’t cut it anymore.