NCAA Part II (Duane)

Thank you all for your positive feedback on my last post! Although I probably got the general points across, I feel like taking more time to explain the nuances of the NCAA and their rules and provide some context for the current debates in sports.

For starters, let’s talk about college football. College football is often considered the primary moneymaker for almost every major school. A majority of the money comes from lucrative TV contracts through ESPN, CBS, or FOX. I don’t think anybody has any issues with the universities making exorbitant sums of money off these contracts, as most of the money goes to salaries, scholarships, basic team needs (uniforms, hotels for away games, flights, etc) and athletic facility upgrades for the sports who couldn’t afford it otherwise. What’s important to note here is that the money for the athletic programs is COMPLETELY SEPARATE from the university’s general funding. Therefore, these student athletes aren’t taking away resources from the academic programs of the university. Anyway, I digress…

With football in particular, the NFL enacted a rule that doesn’t allow players to be drafted until 3 years after they graduate high school. From a rational standpoint, this makes perfect sense. Football is a highly physical game, and having 18 year olds being tackled by grown men at full speed sounds like a recipe for disaster. As sports fans saw this year with the failure of the AAF (an alternative football leave), it is virtually impossible to create a professional football league to compete with the NFL. That leaves college football as the only option for a recent high school graduate. Although this isn’t true for a majority of players, truly elite high school football players have to twiddle their thumbs in college for 3 years before they can be paid for their abilities. The coaches and athletic departments often put winning over education, as their exorbitant salaries are dependent on how many games they win. Because of this, these kids are often steered into programs like “General Studies” or “Recreation, Sport, and Tourism”. These degrees provide arguably the least return on investment of any career path in the school. What this means is that the student-athletes aren’t getting their money’s worth out of their education. Add to this the fact that college athletics is a significant time commitment (30+ hours a week), and you can see how the pure system of “education for athletics” has been exploited.

College basketball follows similar guidelines. However, college basketball players are only required to stay one year in college. Given the basketball season ends in March, they effectively only have to stay one semester to be eligible for the NBA Draft. Because basketball is an international game, there are various other leagues in Europe/Asia that will pay players. The NBA even has a development league, called the NBA G League (G for Gatorade in the name of corporate America).This system gives the players more agency than their football counterparts, but the system itself coerces players into college as many scouts believe European basketball is drastically different than that of the NBA. Although these systems don’t explicitly force players to play college sports, society dictates they do.

However, these issues involve a rare subset of individuals in college sports. For most sports, the education is more relevant. The prevalence of Title IX has actually made a huge impact on the non-revenue sports. Title IX states that resources for men and women must be the same, and this relates to athletic department finances. Since a football team has 85 scholarships, the women’s sports need significantly more scholarships to even it out. But, because these sports don’t have revenue, the NCAA arbitrarily “caps” total scholarships at different values to provide “balance”. However, the Title IX “balance” means that neither the men’s nor women’s non-revenue programs adequately support their genuine student-athletes. Golf, for example, is capped at 4.5 scholarships for men and 6 for women. Often, these teams will have anywhere from 7-12 players, which means most of these players are on at most partial scholarships. Football and basketball, on the other hand, pretty much guarantees their players will get full academic scholarships all 4 years on campus. What ends up happening is NCAA rules prohibit the majority of student-athletes who actually use their sports to gain a real education from attaining full scholarships. Rather, this money goes to players who are just biding their time until they can enter the lucrative professional leagues and don’t effectively leverage their free education.

So how do we fix this? Perhaps the best solution is that employed by college baseball and the MLB. High school baseball players are allowed to immediately be drafted right out of college. However, if they do not choose to sign, they must wait 3 years before they are eligible to be drafted again. Under these rules, NCAA teams would actually be getting players who are interested in getting an education, as those who don’t have interest in school would just turn professional out of high school. Another great solution would be that used by the NHL and college hockey. NHL teams draft players while they’re in college. However, until they actually decide to turn professional, the NHL team has the “rights” to that player. Their contract control also doesn’t begin (usually there is a minimum contract length) until after they turn professional. Some of their money is also guaranteed, which means players can earn some of their value in the event they get injured while in college. A surprising amount of college hockey players come from Ivy League schools, and this system allows them to continue to pursue their educations without having to worry about their professional futures.

As you can see, the debate of NCAA control is far more nuanced than it seems on the surface. There is growing support of these changes in the media. The NBA is already rumored to have eliminated their single year rule before the 2023 NBA season. However, it is up to the NCAA and their respective professional sports leagues to further resolve these issues before players begin taking their talents elsewhere.