Jon Chait on the Marketization of College Sports

I dont like change, but its innevitable. As a lifelong fan of college sports that never participated at the collge level. I do not have a player perspective. I have thought deeply about how this will end up ruining the game. I have come up with the sponsorship Idea. Every team, conference to conference do a sponsorship profit share. Every team in the big can go out in the off season with their respective teams and collect sponsors. Sponsors can be registered boosters, businesses in the area, etc. They can raise the money needed to meet their cap and boom every player on each team receives their allowance mothly during the season.   

 Can we avoid that today?

Maybe?

 

not be a popular view. I am a very casual fan of pro sports. If that is what college athletics become, I have other interests that can fill the gap.

I would support stipends for athletes on full scholarship, as long as they are available to every athlete on a full scholarship. Moving very far past that will make ticket prices, questions about what color yellow is, and who ran RR off a moot point as far as I am concerned.

Oh God. First Bacon, now Chait.

Is this "horrendous Michigan writer" day?

This is one of those topics that fills me with a very deep ambivalence. I love college football and wish it would never change, but I fully recognize that it has already changed in many fundamental ways. A lot of facets of the sport just haven't caught up yet.

I'm not sure how football will change in the near or distance future, but I just know that there are going to be some seismic shifts. Between the boost in money flowing through the college sport and the looming brain trauma controversies at all levels, there's no way for things to stay the way they are. I just don't even know how I'd want it to change, let alone have any idea how it will change.

Saying that colleges would become a "minor league" if they paid players is a bit misleading.  College sports would become professional sports if they paid their players and it is quite possible given the loyalties involved that they would be as every bit as "major "as the NFL,NBA, etc.

But, thankfully, colleges do not want to field professional teams so it will never happen.

As to the marketization of college sports, it is unfortunate and probably too late to turn back now.  But if I were to make a single recommendation to restore the original appeal of college sports it would be this:

-Get rid of the massive television money that has been flooding into it by taking the televised games off of private networks and put them on taxpayer funded public television instead.  Sounds crazy at first but if it can be argued that the results of games involving the University of Michigan and Michigan State University are in the public interest (and I think it can) then why shouldn't these games be available to all free-of-charge and without advertisements?  Instead some E$PN execs are getting rich off of the public's interest in college football.

I'm not sure about everything he says in the article, but this statement is 100% accurate: "I can’t think of a single example anywhere in the world of a minor-league sport that even approaches the popularity of the major-league version."

I think there's a very real risk that college football is moving towards being just another minor league.  When that happens, it'll be a precipitous fall back to earth for college athletic departments.  

If college sports went pro, so to say, it would not be nearly as popular. It's likely that a large majority of the teams would be even less competitive than they are now, if they even existed. And all those things this board would hate to see like ads in the big house would be impossible to avoid. To be frank, I question whether Michigan would be able to compete. I suspect the Big Ten would have trouble and the TV money from the BTN would start shrinking, this would make it tough to compete with southern schools whose boosters mark there whole identity by the way their team performs. Essentially, it is my belief that if we paid players, the players would end up far worse off in the end. In 10-15 years few program's would remain and those likely would end up making less money. Thus you would have less scholarships and less money being paid out when all is said and done.

First of all, I'm dubious (to put it mildly) that, e.g, Bama and Auburn fans would suddenly stop caring if their players got (openly) paid. Ditto for us. We love the university and want to see it succeed, regardless of the setting. But more importantly, the *possibility* of this happening is simply no justification for denying athletes the access to the free market that pretty much everyone else has, Chait included. "Amateur" athletics is just a made up concept that allows someone else to keep the $ the athletes generate. It is also, in the case of the NCAA a way to take $ generated by a heavily (if not exclusively) African-American group of athletes and transfer it to a bunch of white folks (coaches, administrators, NCAA officials, non-revenue athletes).

This was a nice, concise piece.  And the point about the popularity of college sports vs. minor league sports is a good one.

I don't know, but if I was a men's baseball, lacrosse, or cross country athlete, I wouldn't want to find out.  That money comes from somewhere and I don't think it's going to be the football program (coaches, and facilities - we'll still have to compete with the SEC teams) and I don't think it's coming from Dave Brandon, NCAA adminstration, or other executive types.

I'm sorry, but this is still a crock.  99.999% of college athletes are compensated far better than what their universities make off of them.

Plus, those athletes could not make that money without the University's legacy, support, etc.

They are getting a free $150,000 education, at least.  They could potentially earn a Master's degree (ala Gardner) if they enroll early.  Now we're talking a quarter million dollar education.

They are getting an invaluable internship that can lead them to lucrative careers as professional athletes, coaches, etc.

They get free clothing, free food, and a living stipend if they live off campus that far exceeds their rent.

Go ask these athletes if they feel taken advantage of.  99.999% are not - just look at Tom Brady's speech.

Honestly, I'm just tired of this issue at this point.  Yes, the current setup is unfair to the small number of superstars who actually do, individually, have market value.  But there's basically zero way to compensate them without either 1) running afoul of Title IX or 2) destroying the economic structure of college sports.  Life isn't fair.  

 

I like Chait, but I couldn't get past the fourth paragraph here.  Chait cites the "purpose" of the rule as being to "prevent boosters of the programs from illicitly paying players," but teams are already buying players.  All the rule does is ensure that only dirty teams buy players, giving teams like Ohio State, Alabama, Oregon, and USC a huge advantage over the rest of college football.