[MUSIC]
Now maybe the biggest problem and flash point for
controversy around big time college sports has to do with,
or I call the economic hypocrisy that's involved in the whole endeavor.
And by this I mean, the fact that the stars of the show,
the people we tune in to watch are the players.
The players who are on the court and on the field.
Yet, the players are not paid for what they're doing.
They are given, yes, tuition and room and board at the university,
which can in value, something like from $30,000 to $50,000 a year,
depending on the prices at that university.
So, not an insignificant sum.
But nothing compared to the kind of value that they're generating
by being on TV, earning these huge contracts for the NCAA,
of the millions of people who are turning in to watch them.
So, the players are making almost nothing, the cost of tuition, room and board.
But who's profiting from the big time college sports machine?
Well, it's coaches, it's athletics directors, it's the president of the NCAA.
These people are making millions and millions of dollars a year.
So, a college coach can make as much as $10 million a year,
while his players are making the pittance of a tuition.
And it should be noted, as I think I mentioned in an earlier lecture,
that there is a racial dimension to all of this.
Most, not all, but most of the coaches, athletic directors,
and NCA executives are older white men.
While most of the players are African-American.
Many of them from families without a lot of money to spare.
So, it seems like there's something not right about the people who were doing
the playing not getting a share, a fair share,
of the giant earnings that the billion dollar college,
sports entertainment complex is generating.
And this denial to players of the right to earn money off of their labors,
sometimes it's carried to absurd extremes.
For example, it's illegal by NCAA regulations for
players to earn even a few hundred dollars signing autographs,
because these top players are celebrities whose autographs are in demand.
So, we've had cases of players suspended, because they dared to earn a few
hundred dollars, a couple thousand dollars signing autographs.
While their coaches are making millions of dollars a year,
out of the college sports endeavor.
And to add to the hypocrisy and the problems here,
you also have the fact that the players, these college students,
do not have full choice over playing in the first place.
Because in college basketball and football, if you're a fantastic
player in high school, you can't just go straight to the NBA or the NFL.
It's prohibited.
Right now, you have to either turn 19 or
to spend a year in college before you can play in NBA.
For the NFL, you have to play a couple years in college or reach a certain age.
So, the choices of the players are limited.
They are literally forced to go and play for colleges.
That's the so-called one and done phenomenon in basketball,
where players go for a year and then jump to the NBA.
By these essentially monopolistic anti-free market label practices and
regulations.
And there's a double standard here too, in the sense that, in a lot of sports,
including, I must say, in the whiter country club sports like golf and tennis.
A really talented 16 or
17 year old athlete in high school can go straight to the professional leagues.
And often, in the case of really top players, do.
But here we have a prominently African-American player's
kids in football and basketball,
who are denied the right to sell their services to the highest bidder.
Now, in all of this problem of double standard and the rest,
we have the so called cult of the coach in college sports.
And this is the tradition in America of the college coach becoming this heroic,
larger than life, God-like figure.
And it goes back with Notre Dame to the famous charismatic football coach,
Newt Rockne, or to John Woodand, the wonderful,
wise, coach of the dynastic UCLA Bruins basketball teams.
These are coaches, who become American living legends.
And it partly has to do with the fact, of course, that the coaches are there over
the longer term and becomes identified with the school.
Whereas players, and most, spend their four years of their college life and
then move on to other things.
So, we get this cult of the coach.
And in recent years, we've seen this cult of the coach translating into these
astronomical salaries that I've mentioned.
So, $10 million a year for a coach like Nick Sabin,
the great University of Alabama coach.
Our own coach Mike Shechefski here, make something like $10 million a year.
So, these are coaches who are making, in many cases,
10, 12 times more than the presidents of their own university.
I saw a map the other day that shows that in a number of states around the country,
the top earning state employee is not, as you might think,
the Governor or the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
It's the football or basketball coach.
We've seen this huge inflation of coaches salary tied into
this kind of cult of the coach.
And in one sense, great.
More power to these coaches.
They are brilliant and the best at what they do.
And the reason they earn so much money is because that's what the market bares.
They can sell, it's supply and demand.
These winning coaches are in gigantic demand in this billion dollar business.
And so, sure,
they're taking the money because that's what the market will pay them.
And yet, when you think about this.
Well, what about the players?
They do not enjoy free market rights, they cannot sell their services
to the higher bidder because of these various regulations.
And then more generally, and I would say this about high-paid coaches, but
also about high-paid athletes, or players that I love.
They earn millions and millions of dollars.
Again, that's what the market bears.
There's somebody, there's competition for their services.
But is a world that's dictated solely by market principles,
a world we really wanna live in?
Is it right that a college football coach, a football coach.
Or a top soccer player, a soccer player earns 100,
200, 300 times more than a nurse or a teacher, or
other people who do these file services that make our societies work.
So, these are some of the contradictions around college sports,
around college coaching, around the issues of the free market.
And the contradictions that are involved in college sports.
But this brings us back to the fact that
all of us in America know about these scandals and hypocrisy's.
But we still, me included, turn on the games and watch, and
follow the players that are interested by what the coaches are up to.
The college sports machinery rolls on,
despite all these objections and paradoxes.
And I think that has a lot to do with a number of different things.
One of them is the fact that, American particularized a gigantic appetite for
sports.
So, we can't let go.
College football and basketball, and things we're used to watching to.
And we're gonna watch them no matter what we may know about their underside.
Sports and college sports are also tied to the mystic chords of memory and
tradition in the United States.
I remember as a kid, I used to sell sodas in
University of California's giant memorial stadium.
Cokes, Fantas, Ice cream bars.
And I remember the feel of the game, and the band, and the cheerleaders,
and the drama, and it's a part of my own personal identity.
As it is for many Americans.
March Madness is almost a ritual of spring for many people.
And the famous early twentieth-century french sociologist, Emile Durkheim.
Talked about the concept of collective effervescence,
the way certain rituals bring people together in this good feeling,
in this moment, in these moments of community.
And college sports have that function as, too.
Because students, and alumni, and people who care about a college,
come together around the game and create a kind of moment or space of common feeling.
So, for all of these reasons,
it's hard to imagine that college sports are gonna, somehow
vanish from the American landscape under the weight of their own contractions.
We may see reforms.
We may see movement towards eliminating some of these problems and hypocrisies.
We may not.
But I expect the college sports juggernaut to roll on.
[MUSIC]
