NCAA is business before basketball
All that money, and we’re still worried whether Mom paid for lunch
Michigan State sophomore Miles Bridges is slated to take the floor in Detroit on Friday, as his team plays Bucknell in the first round of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. But less than a month ago, the star guard’s name surfaced in a payfor-play scandal implicating some of college basketball’s marquee programs.
Details of the FBI probe, made public in a Yahoo! Sports story, included archetypes and allegations that often underlie NCAA violations: assistant coaches and shoe company reps discussing six-figure sums to steer players to certain schools. And the investigation included Bridges, whose mom had accepted a free lunch worth $70 from a coach recruiting her son. The act violated the NCAA’s amateurism rules, and Bridges paid $40 to charity to avoid suspension.
If disciplining a player for a meal he didn’t even consume seems petty, that’s because it is.
The college sports industry enriches a long list of people that still doesn’t include players. March Madness will bring the NCAA nearly $880 million in broadcast fees this year alone. Bridges’ coach, Tom Izzo, earns $4.1 million annually in base salary. Meanwhile, college basketball’s underground economy draws FBI scrutiny because it recognizes what the NCAA won’t concede — that players who generate revenue deserve compensation beyond scholarships, and that a reckoning on player payment is growing inevitable. The NCAA has maintained paying players would damage the integrity of college sport, but treating Bridges’ free lunch as an illicit benefit doesn’t highlight the virtues of amateurism. It exposes the absurdity of rules that don’t limit coaching salaries but legislate who can buy a player a meal.
If the NCAA isn’t prepared to enact changes, some conferences are.
The Pac-12 revealed recommendations Monday of a task force it convened last year to tackle corruption in basketball recruiting. Suggestions include enabling freer communication between college players and pro agents, and compelling the NBA to abandon its minimum age rule. The New York Times reports that the league and the NBA Players’ Association have both met with the task force, and ESPN has reported that the league wants to abolish the rule excluding players younger than 20.
Removing the NBA’s minimum age, which essentially forces top prospects to play at least one season in college, could trigger profound changes for stakeholders benefitting from major college sports’ status quo.
The NCAA, for one, makes an average of $771million annually on March Madness broadcast rights, with average annual rights fees set to top $1billion by 2025. Football playoffs bring in an average of $467 million a year in broadcast fees from ESPN.
Conferences and individual schools also cash in. The Big Ten Network generated a reported $400 million in 2017, while the University of Texas brought in a reported $182.1 million in 2016.
Five years ago, an underdog squad Florida Gulf Coast Uni- versity reached the men’s basketball tournament’s round of 16, giving the commuter school rare time in the national spotlight. The following year, applications reportedly rose by 35 per cent. NBA teams, meanwhile, dodge the cost of running comprehensive farm systems by compelling players to develop in college. And each year the league brings in a class of draftees who bring their NCAA fame to the NBA, easing the marketing burden on their pro teams. The NFL similarly bars players until three years after graduating high school, forcing them to bolster a multibillion-dollar college football enterprise while working toward pro careers.
That the most rigid rules around amateurism only apply to football and men’s basketball — often euphemized as “revenue sports” — isn’t a coincidence. Neither are the age limits imposed by pro leagues grown comfortable downloading the cost of grooming young talent to NCAA programs. The directives purport to safeguard student-athletes and the pristine ideal of amateurism, but above all they protect business.
In sports that don’t generate nine-figure paydays for the NCAA, the public easily accepts teenagers who skip college to compete professionally.
Imagine the WTA telling a teenage Serena Williams to spend two years on scholarship before joining the tour. Or envision the IAAF banning a 21year-old Usain Bolt from the Diamond League because he hadn’t finished a mandatory post-high school waiting period.
Those scenarios sound as outlandish as Barcelona suspending a 16-year-old Lionel Messi from its B-team because an agent bought him a sandwich. The NCAA, NFL and NBA have successfully peddled the notion that education is sacrosanct and paid apprenticeships taboo. The idea has grown so pervasive that the FBI devoted resources to micromanaging basketball amateurism, ensnaring Bridges over his mom’s free lunch.
But the NBA’s and the union’s willingness to revisit the age requirement hint that both organizations realize arbitrary rules governing amateurism drive players to turn pro overseas, or spend an extra year in prep schools before entering the draft. Both those moves diminish the star power players bring with them to the league.
And the Pac-12’s push for reform signals recognition that an amateur system enriching everyone but the talent must evolve to head off future scandals.