"Be careful for what you wish for," goes the proverb. "You just might get it."
For more than a year now, I've been advocating for reforms in college football and men's basketball that would both acknowledge that the two sports are big businesses — rather than extracurricular activities, as the N.C.A.A. still pretends — and then begin to rectify the gross inequity embedded in the current system, namely that the players work for free while everyone around them gets rich from college sports.
One of the ideas I've come to champion is the establishment of a kind of superleague, consisting of marquee names like Kentucky, Alabama, Notre Dame, Michigan, U.C.L.A. and the like: maybe 72 or so football teams and 100-plus basketball teams. These teams would openly serve as the minor leagues for professional football and basketball. The players would get wages. They could get an education if they chose — and that would be a good thing, of course — but there would be no more pretending that football players were actually students first. I know that education purists hate this idea, but it has the benefit of dealing with reality — a reality that is unlikely to change given the immense popularity of college sports. If implemented properly, it could be the beginning of the end of "the plantation," as Taylor Branch famously described big-time college sports in The Atlantic two years ago.
In recent weeks, some of the most powerful men in college sports have begun to tiptoe in the same direction. Every summer, each of the big five conferences — the A.C.C., the S.E.C., the Big Ten, the Pac-12 and the Big 12 — holds an annual media day. This year, a number of conference commissioners, most notably Bob Bowlsby of the Big 12, came out in favor of a new superdivision consisting of only the teams in the five big conferences. Having now listened to them, I'm not so sure anymore what I think of the idea.
As articulated by Bowlsby, the chief impetus for the new division is that the big boys also want more realism in the rules they operate by. Unlike many smaller schools, for instance, a number of the big conferences were proponents of the N.C.A.A.'s plan to raise scholarship money by $2,000 or so to match the real cost of attending college. They were ultimately overruled by the smaller schools, which were concerned about being able to afford it. They are tired by the N.C.A.A.'s picayune rules around "amateurism," where players can be suspended for, say, selling their own property for tattoos, as famously happened at Ohio State. Indeed, Bowlsby cast this new division in terms of doing right by the athletes who play the games. (Nobody is talking about leaving the N.C.A.A., but with a gun to its head, it would be forced to accede to looser rules for the major powers.)
Of course, there is another reason the big five want to go their own way. They wouldn't have to share their wealth with the college sports also-rans. Right now, the major conferences are scheduled to get 75 percent of the 12-year, $5.6 billion deal college football signed with ESPN. Why settle for 75 percent when you can get the whole thing?
The smaller schools would be furious if the big five decided to create their own sandbox, of course. But that's fine by me. Such a move could well force the smaller schools to re-evaluate whether to continue emphasizing sports — or not. Midsize Division 1 schools would no longer have an incentive to spend millions upgrading their football "programs." Some sanity might return.
But it also doesn't sound as though a new superdivision, should it come to pass, would make much more than token gestures toward the athletes. Yes, it would be nice if their scholarships covered the full cost of college, but that is not the same as getting paid for what amounts to a full-time job, while generating billions for others. Nor does it mean that there would be any new emphasis on education either; in fact, it would probably diminish. My friend Gregg Easterbrook, who has a book on college football coming out in September, calls it "Football's Sellout Subdivision."
Then again, a new superdivision might cause others to take a closer look at the current cartel arrangement enjoyed by college sports. There are currently federal lawsuits brought by former and current athletes revolving around licensing of player images — and judges might start wondering why players shouldn't be paid for their images. Congress might start to wonder why college sports enjoys "educational" tax deductions not available to other businesses. In the new revenue-maximizing superdivision, the players themselves might finally start wondering about the fairness with which they're treated.
A guy can dream, can't he?
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