Is the Demise of the Student-Athlete
in Big-time Sports Finally in Sight?
There
is rumbling in the world of big-time college sports and with a little luck
there will be an uproar before too long.
It’s about time, since for many decades—a century really—unending
numbers of deep problems have been seen to be rooted in the fact that college
students, who as such are subject to academic requirements for admission and
continuation as students, are the agents who carry out the mission of
entertaining untold thousands by playing basketball and, especially, football. (The football stadium of the University
of Michigan has an official capacity of 110,000 and is said to be able to hold
crowds larger than 115,000.) Each
time a new problem pops up, a band aid with ineffective adhesive is applied,
leading to a concatenation of rules and principles that, while making Ptolemy’s
epicycles look streamlined, manage above all to inspire evasions of every
variety.[1]
The
recent rumbling began with former football players at Northwestern University
who, as co-founders of the College Athletes Players Association, proposed to
have such college athletes unionize.[2] They convince me about the many issues
they raise, grievances that reveal that these high visibility student athletes
are exploited in a variety of ways.
Indeed, the whole notion of student-athletes in Division I mainline
spectator sports is deeply suspect.
As long
ago as in the first decade of the 20th century—a hundred years ago,
that is—David Starr Jordan, then the founding president of Stanford University
(after having served a stint as president of Indiana University) declared,
presumably with a sigh, that it would be much better if the University hired
young men just to play for Good (not very) Old Stanford, letting them take
courses if they wanted to. If the
pattern he had in mind were followed, a group of colleges and universities
would take on the role for football and, presumably, basketball that minor
league clubs do for baseball.
Perhaps the step now taken by the Northwestern football players will
lead there in the long run.
Were
this proposal implemented, there would of course have to be various rules
concerning the conditions under which these young athletes are hired, rules
about their compensation, treatment, and how long they may retain their positions,
and so on. Such a batch of
regulations, however, could easily be a model of simplicity and succinctness
compared to the wads of pre-and pro-scriptions of the NCAA. I would propose that part of the
compensation of these youngsters be the permission to take courses and even
work toward a degree, but that, on the one hand, they would not be required to
do so but, on the other, that in their (voluntary) role as students, they would
be subject to the same rules and requirements as are “regular” students, except
that they would be permitted to take fewer courses at any one time than those
regulars are or, indeed, none at all.
I
flatly reject two possible objections to such a scheme. The less plausible one is the
supposition that these hired hands would not give their all in playing their
athletic roles for the institution.
Why wouldn’t they if they are treated well, especially considering that
their performance will surely be the main determinant as to whether they will
be promoted, so to speak, to the major leagues.
A more
plausible one—or at least one that I have heard expressed a number of times—is
that the fans of the University of Michigan’s Wolverines (and their
equivalents) would less enthusiastic about their team and lessen their
attendance at the games. I concede
that there may be a wobbly period of transition, but I would confidently
predict that it would not last very long.
The difference between before and after is, after all, purely cerebral
and not at all experiential.
Whether a spectator sits in the first row or in the gods, as the French
say, he or she would not note anything different from what they had seen
before: broad-shouldered young men running and throwing and clobbering each
other. (See “Gladiators Then and
Now,” my post of February 11, 2014.)
Assuming the spectators are there because they enjoy watching football,
they will continue to enjoy just as much as they did before the change of the
players’ status; they will get used to it.
And
while we are deflating myths, let me conclude by denying two additional
ones. A vigorous student-conducted
athletic program is needed to inspire donors to contribute to the coffers of
the college or university. People
make contributions for all kinds of reasons, from everywhich sort of motive. Those who give money because they are
enthusiasts for one or another college sport, it has been noted more than once,
don’t endow chairs in literary study, the give money that will support some
aspect of athletics.[3]
Nothing
wrong with giving money for athletics, especially—to turn to the second
myth—since all kinds of games are played with the budget for that
enterprise. The fact is that a
woefully tiny fraction of institutions actually derive an income from athletics. At the vast majority of colleges and universities
more is spent on spectator-oriented athletics than it brings in. This would even be clearer if the
bookkeeping were honest. Alas, it
is not unusual to have the recruitment of athletes charged to the Office of
Admissions, the maintenance of the stadium debited to Buildings and Grounds,
the use of college vehicles charged to the carpool—and so on. In short, many institutions don’t even
know what their big-time athletic costs them—especially when they don’t really
want to find out.
The
Northwestern footballers have started something that ultimately may, finally,
see the transformation of athletics in higher education. But while I am eighty-seven years old
and don’t expect to live long enough to see the culmination of this new start,
I hope that some of my readers will.
[1] When I was
provost at the University of Pittsburgh, I was asked to be the new member of
the group of three that would determine which football player candidates would
be recruited as one of the few permitted by the NCAA who did not conform to
standard requirements. When I
suggested, when the first case was being considered, that we look at his
transcript, I was puzzled by the raucous laughter by my experienced partners. The transcript, I was told, came from a
high school that specialized in feeding football players to colleges such as
Pitt and that they were all doctored—a euphemism for falsified.
[2] In the
interest of full disclosure, I was dean of arts and sciences at Northwestern
from 1973 to 1987. During some of
those years Northwestern and my alma mater, Columbia College, were neck and
neck for the longest losing records of their football teams. Northwestern has done somewhat better
since.
[3] When I
taught at Vassar, its president came back from a trip to California and
reported to the faculty that an alumna had given the College a tidy sum to
create or refurbish (I have forgotten which) a playing field. When he was chastised by the faculty
who had very different priorities, he said rather plaintively that this particular
donor was a sports enthusiast and would not have provided funds for anything
else. “Should I have turned down
her gift?”
