I don't believe that sports have an effect on society. The sports media (and probably most fans) seem to go along with the stories that sports teams have the ability to buoy (or depress) cities or countries they represent. This makes sense because everyone wants their thing to matter to everyone. While it is a nice story that the Japanese team won the Women's World Cup, it has nothing to do with the problems in Japan caused by the tsunami earlier this year. The same could be said of the New Orleans Saints' Super Bowl win and its effect on the city of New Orleans in its recovery from Katrina. Sports are a momentary diversion. There is nothing wrong with that, but they need to be viewed in context.
I have the same feeling about the split between colleges and collegiate athletics: one thing has very little to do with the other, especially in the college football and basketball (i.e. the sports that make money). There has been quite a bit of debate this summer about how to fix these sports to make them more equitable to the players. It isn't hard to see that there is a lot of money floating around and very little is going to the players that are putting their bodies on the line.
The athletes do get benefits in the current system. They have access to an education and they get plenty of benefits that the common student does not (as Doug Gottlieb pointed out in this article). To paraphrase Gottlieb's article, athletes get preferential entrance, tutoring, and class scheduling. This is all in aid of getting the school's teams wins, which have no effect on their academics. Isn't that what universities are supposed to be about?
How many of these athletes are able to take advantage of the opportunities afforded to them? If you listen to Jason Whitlock's podcast, you know that he does not believe the current system is fair. I have become a big fan of this podcast because Whitlock doesn't like the system and he is trying to do something about it. He has had provocative interviews on the subject with people like Sonny Vaccaro, Dan Wetzel from Yahoo!, and Willie Lyles (a football scout who seems to broker players to various schools).
Whitlock's latest podcast on the subject was with Seth Davis in which Davis tried to defend the current system. It was an interesting debate, but I think there should have been two caveats about Davis. First, he appears on CBS which has tied its basketball fortune to the NCAA. Second, he went to Duke, so his view on college athletics is colored by attending one of the only schools that is able attempt the balance between education and athletics. Davis said that he thought the athletes were getting a fair deal from schools and if they didn't like it, they should go pro. He was in favor of dumping the one-and-done rule and probably would have thought players like Brandon Jennings did the right thing by skipping the entire process and heading to Europe.
The problem came when the two started to debate the current forms of pay-for-play that have been debated. Should the university pay their athletes? Or maybe the coaches should support the athletes that support them ( South Carolina football coach Steve Spurrier suggested ). And should all athletes be paid the same? Davis noted that it wasn't fair that the quarterback and the second string safety should be paid equally.
I don't think it is right that not only are the athletes not allowed to be paid under auspices of amateurism (which I think should be dumped), but they are also not allowed to profit from their celebrity. Shouldn't a player like Terrelle Pryor be allowed to make money for selling his jerseys and autographs? There is something un-American by suspending him for trying to do so. And shouldn't a player like Enes Kanter get to play at Kentucky, even if he already played as a 16-year-old professionally in Turkey? As I noted in my previous linked article, would a musician or author need to cede all of their potential profits to their university if they wrote the music or book while in school?
While I think the athletes deserve part of the pie, I don't think universities should pay the bill. I also don't think all athletes should be paid equally. The solution is to allow endorsements. In the example above, endorsers might consider a team's quarterback, but they are unlikely to be interested in a second string safety. Athletes in smaller areas who are seen as local heroes could capitalize on their celebrity while it is of most use to them.
Perhaps you are thinking that having money would cause problems between teammates. But that is part of the professional ranks, so the best athletes (i.e. those with pro potential) would have to get used to it. If the money is the problem, there are a couple of solutions. Maybe the money could be put in a trust fund or sent to the family to use at their discretion. This would be better than the current method in which relatives are hired for dubious positions or money is gained in illicit manners.
The second solution would be to split the athletic programs off from the rest of the university. The teams could send some money to the university for the use of its campus and/or name. The athletes would be able to use their athletic scholarship to go to school after four years to preserve the current process. This would allow athletes to focus on athletics and not worry about academics. This would also allow athletes who were not really interested in academics (be it because of pro potential or just lack of interest) to use the university in the best method.
Next week, I'll get off my soapbox and back to fantasy college hoops, I promise. In the meanwhile, feel free to email me and let me know what you think about the ramblings above.