Pay to play, here to stay
In the past year, agents, lawyers, politicians, sportswriters and would-be union organizers rooting for free-for-all player compensation in colleges have largely won the battle. They made a convincing case that athletes should be able to earn income from the fame their talents bring them, while elsewhere a court struck down prohibitions on direct payments to players by schools.
All agreed solemnly that it’s just about “fairness” and, mercy no, we can’t and won’t let this become a vehicle for recruiting, poaching or runwild booster involvement.
Right. Before a single recruiting season has passed, big-money payments are everywhere.
There is a precedent for the world that many university athletic programs are now hurtling into. From 1947 to 1961, the National Basketball Association had a highly competitive rival league. The National Industrial Basketball League (NIBL) comprised teams sponsored by companies as a way to promote their names and reputations, an earlier version of the stadium and event sponsorships of today.
Teams such as the Peoria Caterpillar Diesels and Akron Goodyear Wingfoots contended with Milwaukee Allen-Bradley, the Denver Central Bankers.
My friend Bobby Plump, whose last-second real-world jump shot in 1954 for Milan High School made the movie “Hoosiers” possible, compared an opportunity with the NBA’s Minneapolis Lakers with one from the Phillips 66ers of the NIBL and chose the latter. He led them to a league title and a lot of publicity for the company.
Bobby and his teammates might have made an occasional public appearance on behalf of their firm, but their job was to play ball.
That may become the model for our brave new pay-to-play world; a top tier of young athletes will be handsomely compensated to boost the recognition of their sponsoring universities. Period. “Let’s welcome the Crimson Tide, sponsored by the University of Alabama!!”
Schools comfortable spending huge donations on recruiting the best players—funds that might have been used to strengthen their academic mission—will be free to do so. When that happens, they should drop any pretense that these are “students” and any requirement that anyone attend classes or pursue a degree.
Only a couple dozen sports factories will be able to compete successfully in the pay-to-play echelon. The rest will be left with a Hobson’s choice between permanent also-ran status and dropping down into a further segmentation of today’s system, hoping that they can still fill stadiums and negotiate TV contracts to watch actual students play.
Meanwhile, they will be deciding which non-revenue sports to cut so athletic department budgets come close to balancing. Maybe they can expand club sports.
My guess—OK, hope—is that such an arrangement can work. Meanwhile, I’m sure the new league of sponsored professionals will be highly entertaining and a huge financial success. Just please don’t call it “college” sports.