Like every year, the nation has spent the last month captivated by theNCAA basketball tournament. In addition to showcasing the nation’s top basketball talent, the tournament also exposes us to one of the most unconscionable economic arrangements in American history: the failure to pay college athletes.
Every year, the NCAA finds new ways to extract economic value from the sweat of its athletes. From shoe deals to video game licensing to television contracts, the labor of college athletes generates billions of dollars every year for TV networks, schools, coaches, apparel companies, hotels, airlines and countless other entities that do not have to lace up sneakers, miss class, or risk injury. In fact, the only people who do not benefit from the ever-expanding “athletic industrial complex” are the athletes themselves.
The primary argument against payment has been that they are student athletes who are being rewarded with a full ride to college. If tainted by money, proponents argue, collegians will lose their innocence and be hastily hurled into the dark world of profit-making. Like any effective pimp, the NCAA pretends to protect its athletes from the harsh realities of the “real world” while exploiting them in the most extravagant ways imaginable.
While the romantic notion of the “student-athlete” may have been authentic 50 years ago, today’s college player is markedly different. Today’s athlete is expected to practice 4-6 hours a day, work out 12 months out of the year, and miss out on many of the personal, social, and intellectual experiences that color our idyllic memories of college. In nearly every way, today’s college player is much more like an overworked semi-professional than an amateur student in need of protection from corporate bloodsuckers.
Of course, there is an enormous, poor Black elephant in the room that few are willing to acknowledge. As the most lucrative sports become increasingly populated by economically disadvantaged minorities, there is considerably less outrage about the NCAA’s billion dollar plantation.
For a variety of reasons, many Americans still view Black athletes as undeserving of our sympathy, respect, or outrage. To these people, college athletes should be happy to get a “good education." It's the same racial double-standard that incites moral panic whenever Black college basketball or football players leave school after freshman year, while white hockey or baseball players go straight to the pros from high school with nothing but fanfare and admiration.
Such a claim, while absurd for the reasons previously stated, is also disingenuous, as most high-powered programs provide little academic support and even less of a commitment to sustaining respectable college graduation rates. In fact, many blue chip players are told by recruiters, in no uncertain terms, that they only need to spend a year or two in college before striking it rich in the pros. The educational process is nothing more than a pretext for peddling a gospel of prosperity, leaving the bulk of athletes in the same desperate circumstance in which they were found.
We must stop using labels like “student-athlete,” which only obscure an otherwise clear case of labor exploitation. Athletes must organize, protest, and even strike in order to demand a substantive slice of the NCAA’s ever expanding pie. Without such actions, every team, regardless of their national ranking, will continue to lose.
Marc Lamont Hill is Associate Professor of Education at Columbia University. He blogs regularly at MarcLamontHill.com. He can be reached at marc@theloop21.com.
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