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How much is an Amateur Athlete worth?
Posted at: Nov/23/2010 : Posted by: mel
Related Category: Sports,
It has happened again, another college football star (Cam Newton of Auburn) is under investigation for allegedly being paid to play or receiving money to choose their school. Not too long ago Reggie Bush was investigated and ultimately found to have benefited while playing at USC some years ago. There are some important questions that need to be asked here, but it should also be noted that speed and timing make some of this seem ridiculous. The wheels turn slowly at the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association), though in their defense the scope and scale of our national college sports programs makes their task seem nearly impossible. To help solve this problem each college is supposed to police itself with its own internal compliance office. There are some major flaws in this process since each school has little reason to rat on itself. In the end, the NCAA investigative force, which is so overwhelmingly outmanned that they must depend on conference rivals ratting on each other still does manage to find transgressions. Typically, however, by the time any penalty is handed down, the culprits have moved on to greener pastures. The most common NCAA punishment is to require the offending college to forfeit the games it won sometime in its ancient dark past. This has proven to have very little impact at scaring cheaters. Changing old record books is like telling you that the vacation you had in Las Vegas five years ago, when you were drinking rum, playing golf and swimming with a beautiful woman in the moonlight at a party pool really wasn't any fun. By the way, “what happens in Vegas…stays in Vegas.” Back to Cam Newton; the charges are beginning to fly and state that someone purporting to represent Cam demanded $180,000 for him to enroll at Mississippi State University. To its credit, Mississippi State reported the matter, and to be fair to both Newton and Auburn there is no evidence that the would-be broker was authorized to act for Cam or that Auburn subsequently anted up. In the midst of all this mess is Newton's father, a preacher, who says he didn't want his son to go to Mississippi State because there he would be, "a rented mule." Sometimes fathers are worth listening to. Not too long ago the dust finally settled on all the charges circling Reggie Bush and his tenure at USC. It was determined that back in 2005 the running back was ineligible because he received improper benefits. To put this controversy to rest on his side Reggie held a press conference in which he formally returned his Heisman Trophy. The NCAA will put some asterisks into the record books and the current football program and its players will be sanctioned for something that happened 5 years ago when most of them were in high school. There is a lot I can find wrong with this. As a parent I have learned that punishment is a necessary tool to be used as part of the learning cycle. Of course, punishment serves little or no value if it is not handed out swiftly and in a uniform manner. By the time the NCAA investigative body reached a conclusion, USC’s coach had moved on to the professional football coaching arena and Reggie was already on the downhill side of a very lucrative career in professional football having received many millions of dollars. Giving back his trophy doesn’t seem to have cost him anything. The score on the USC side is a little different. The school was stripped of its 2004 national championship victory and forced to vacate its entire 2005 season, (this is one of those asterisk things). The school has also been banned from post season play for two years and will lose more than 20 scholarships. Back to that thing on punishment, virtually all the players that were part of the USC football program 5 years ago are gone by now, I have a rough time seeing how punishing a new group of coaches and players who were not there serves any real purpose. If you believe in my rules for using punishment this was definitely not timely and meted out to players who were in high school at the time. There is also some consideration that must be given to age as well. Many of the players involved in these scandals over the years have been 17, 18, 19, 20 years old. These mere teenagers and as any parent call tell you are easily manipulated by smooth talking adults. These same teenagers are potentially years away from developing any understanding of ethics and how they apply them to choices in life. I don’t wish to absolve the young players of responsibility, but I need to ask, what was the role played by the parents, the college coach, the high school coach, and the recruiter? All these people are potentially trusted advisors in a college athlete’s decision process. I have a tough time believing that these star athlete’s did not have more mature adults in their inner circle encouraging them down this path and endorsing their choices. What is a star athlete worth anyway. When colleges first started offering athletic scholarships it was a mutually beneficial and equitable deal. A talent young athlete who might not otherwise afford an education got some or all of their college paid for. The school was able in return to put on an exciting sports program that could draw a paying crowd to their stadium. The revenue from the paid attendance at these events supported the athletic department, scholarships across all departments, and defrayed some other expenses. The one great consistency is change. Now most college conferences have very lucrative television sports contracts worth many tens of millions of dollars for each school. Some schools even have their own television contracts independent of any conference allegiance. Any business major will tell you that the true value of something is whatever people are willing to actually pay. A star football player or basketball player is no longer worth just a scholarship, now they potentially bring in large TV contracts and alumni donations. After departing college, many of these turning professional athletes rise to market values in the many tens of millions of dollars. Anywhere that there is that much money to be made, there will be middle men who are brokering deals and influencing the outcome. Since there is money to be made people will get in line to make it. In this case just about everybody makes real money –– some really big money –– except the athletes, the Cam Newton’s. They're not allowed to be represented by reputable agents; so of course, the other less than reputable agents come out of the woodwork. They're not allowed to be paid, so of course money will slip under the table. But the NCAA, in it's delusion, persists in trying to continue to prop up their failed concept of amateurism in college sports. In all the world of big-time sport only in American college football and basketball does the myth of amateurism still exists. Whether it Reggie Bush, Cam Newton, or an endless array of other, it is naïve to believe that money is not changing hands. Still more glaring is the notion that these same teen age athletes have the skill, insight, or ethics to make the kind of choices we are asking of them when faced with the sales like pressures they get from so many others. I don’t know what the fix is, but let’s be realistic. At these high levels truely amateur sports is an ancient myth. If we can’t stop the money…maybe we should demand that the colleges surround these same sports stars with capable and responsible advisors.
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