The trust idea is great. I would have it be 25 years old or when they graduate. Or just have it as an incentive to graduate. Of course that would create certain potential problems as well.

This is really one of the best things I've seen you write, Dave.


Great use of the idea of a neoplantation system....

and then they become (those who are "good enough") 40 million dollar slaves...

It's a truly bizzaro world we live in when the most frequently targeted subject of the medias wrath, Bob Knight, is the guy not only standing up for his players but graduating them as well. The parallels between this NCAA tournament and the BSC is incredible really, the colleges insisting they care about the players education yet using them to make hundreds of millions annually.

Having to sit through the first round of "March Madness" (I feel dumber every time I say those two words...) is a crime in and of itself. In the past decade, and maybe further, as I only checked over the last 10 years, only two teams seeded lower than 2 in their respective region won it all, Florida in '06 and Syracuse of '03. Both of those teams were 3 seeds in their region, for the record. Doing the math, that means in the past decade no team lower than the 12th seed overall has won the national title. This essentially means that this tournament really starts at the Sweet 16. That's why I never mark off this weekend on my calendar. Wake me up in April, when this finally gets interesting. There are no Cinderella stories in March Madness. It's like the old WWF battle royal. A hundred guys in the ring, but you know who's going to win .(Tarheels).

That being said, great points, Dave. Although I don't condone breaking the law, there is nothing in my moral conscience that condemns college athletes, especially those from poor environments, from taking gifts and cash. The money they're making for the people setting the rules is enough to save an impoverished nation...like this one!

Hi Dave. I certainly agree that college athletes should be well compensated---and they already are in an "in kind" manner. It's called tuition, books, room & board for four years. Doesn't sound like a bad deal to me.

Beside the point, Bernard. A ton of money is being made on the backs of the players' labor, and they're getting zilch. If we're going to be serious about not corrupting an amateur sport, then take away the t.v. cameras. In the meantime, as long as you have a commercial industry surrounding the game, the cat is out of the bag, and the profit split between management and labor is 100/0. Room and board? Can't we give them a little more than what we give prisoners?

They're not exactly prisoners; a full athletic scholarship shouldn't be dismissed as insignificant. But Dave's right in that the distribution of profit is skewed towards producers. I tend to gripe about excessive compensation for pro athletes, so I'm not sure that I'd appreciate extending the privilege of bloated salaries to college students...but the money's gotta go somewhere, right? I can think of a few places where I'd like to see the billions spent, and it's not in big paychecks for producers or athletes.

youthnoise.com/playcity

Anyone opposed to the NCAA should call it what they think is (a wage fixing cartel), because using the word "plantation" just shows their stupidity, and that they deserve no place in the dialog.

I mean "dialogue."

The only reason a full ride scholarship can be argued as compensation is because colleges are overpriced to begin with. The argument in and of itself is a red herring. If you think tuition revenue is going entirely to professors or educational tools, think again. Ever seen an administrative employee at a major U with a bad car?

Secondly, the scholarship argument does nothing to address players without scholarships. Granted, it's rare, but there are some productive athletes, putting on a show that the NCAA is profiting off of, who are paying to be there, alongside not being compensated!

Granted, a full scholarship (tuition, books, room and board) is compensation. But have you ever talked to a student-athlete about living without money in their name? It's not realistic to expect these guys to get jobs. Yes, they are students, amateurs. But with the money being made off their work, they deserve some of that. A fair day's pay for a fair day's work?

When is someone going to point out that most major college athletics programs LOSE money over the course of a year. When you take into account travel, equipment, and scholarship money, the average football program loses about $10 million per year.

On top of that, most athletes get about $200,000 spent on them over their four year athletic career. I would so that is no small chunk of change in this economy, especially when it is paid out by a business in the red.

True, Daniel, room and board is no small chunk of change, but that's still far less than their market value. College athletes should consider a walkout. Conventional cynicism says that they can easily be replaced, but I'm not sure about that. The very industry that's capitalized on them has made celebrities out of them in doing so. Oops! Huge avenue there for the athletes to utilize.

In fact, what better time than the Final 4? Wouldn't that be something? If every player on the 4 teams just walked out, on the eve of the semi finals? Huge leverage. Draft something that guarantees us a cut of the t.v profits, and we take the court. It's that simple. Athletes have so much political power that they rarely utilize anymore. I hope the Obama era changes that.

I didn't say anything about room and board. And if they're getting paid so much less than their market value, then how come these "businesses" are so far in the red. If they were taking advantage of athletes, I would expect them to be making a profit off of them.

In fact, it would be a lot more financially expedient for a university to drop its football program altogether.

Great article, Dave! Although, as pointed out earlier, the trust idea will raise more questions (i.e. do all athletes deserve the same amount? What about non-revenue sports? When should these young folks have access to them?), I think it is one of the better ideas I've heard on this subject.

I am a former non-revenue D-1 athlete. After an injury cut short my athletic career, I worked for our athletic department. Now I am an academic advisor at a mid-major univeristy in the south and I see many student-athletes, along wiht "regular" students.

Daniel, where did that "the average football program loses $10 million" come from? Most football programs do not have budgets that big, so it would be very difficult for that to be accurate, in terms of all programs. If it is accurae, this number is probably skewed by a few outliers.

Yes, student-athletes do get a great deal in that they are tied to a school though a scholarship, regardless of whether the coach stays or not, on a year by year basis. They can get that scholarship taken away after any year, sometimes without much notice. If a student-athlete keeps his or her scholarship for all four years, they have to deal with institutional forces getting in the way of their education. They have professors who do not let them make up coursework missed while at away games/meets representing the school, they have coaches who will not let them major in certain programs because of time-conflicts with classes and practice, and they have academic advising/support office who oftentimes focus on eligibilty at the expense of education.

For anyone interested in this, there is a great ethnography by P. Adler called "Backboards and Blackboards" that explores the actual experience of collegiate athletes, focusing on basketball players.

Daniel, the big colleges that are on t.v. do make money, and those are the ones I'm referring to. I'm referring to instances where there is a commercial profit, and there is plenty in college football and basketball programs that get the most t.v. time. I was assuming you knew that's what I was talking about. I guess I'll have to be more nuanced when making my points from here on out.

Daniel,
If you include the 'cost' of tuition, room, and board, then these departments are in the red. However, to do so would be like a man saying that he's in the red because of his wife's 'rent'. So basically, your argument lacks intellectual honesty because of that and other reasons.

Student athletes are glorified chattel. If any institution wants to sue me for libel, they can contact me directly. They won't win that suit, however, because they know that the allegation is true.

In all fairness Dave He probably had little to do with the speech for he's got one of those Death sentence cancers, that said one would hope he could see the light.

There are people that have trouble with the term plantation because they are in a state of ahistorical denial about slavery in the US. Enslaved Africans did get just enough food leftovers to subsist, and they had slave shacks to keep out some of the elements, so they had loding. But they sacrificed their bodies, their spirit, and their futures to exhausting labor that put money in the pockets of the plantation master and the economy of the slave holding states. The citizens of those states benefited by the psychological well being of feeling white-skinned privilege in the social order. The enslaved Africans were told to be thankful they got the Bible, and if they were lucky, they learned to read illegally.

College coaches make millions of dollars annually, are the lords of their domains, and most successful Division 1 basketball and football programs have graduation rates that are embarrassing. Coaches get rich. The schools get a powerful recruiting tool that also advertises to the paying alumni. But the actual athlete rarely gets a diploma or an education or a career. And the athlete is in violation if he ever sees a dime.

How is that not just like a plantation? If the athletes aren'tgetting degrees and aren't getting wages, then at best what we are seeing is bad reality tv and at worst televised exploitation.

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