Loyola’s success spotlights flaws
To the average college basketball fan, Clayton Custer would have been more likely identified two weeks ago as a character in a Western than the Missouri Valley Conference player of the year. The supporting cast in LoyolaChicago’s run to the Final Four would have been even more anonymous, playing on a team that was barely covered even by the local media until it started winning big for the first time in
decades.
The best thing about college basketball is that a team of this little pedigree or expectation could wind up playing for a national championship while the Dukes, Kentuckys and Michigan States fell by the wayside. To get to the Final Four, you have to earn it.
But the opportunity only extends so far.
If college sports actually reflected the values of American society, Loyola-Chicago’s improbable run would be a oncein-a-lifetime chance for its players to cash in on their sudden popularity. Given that none of them are likely to make the NBA, they’ll never be more marketable than they are now. In a fair system, Custer might get offered a book deal,
Marques Townes could earn a few thousand dollars autographing pictures of his winning shot against Nevada and center Cameron Krutwig might appear in restaurant advertisements.
But under the guise of “amateurism,” a theory that has been abandoned by every other sporting enterprise except the NCAA, none of that is acceptable. If any of those players who are slated to return to Loyola next season took even a dime to profit off their newfound celebrity, they’d be ineligible.
It doesn’t have to be that way. And with scandal swirling around college basketball for the foreseeable future, it’s time the NCAA answer one simple question: What intrinsic value is being preserved by maintaining the amateur model?
NCAA President Mark Emmert is scheduled to speak Thursday afternoon at the Final Four at his annual news conference, but this one will be unlike any other in recent memory.
Last September, the FBI arrested four assistant coaches and several others who were part of college basketball’s underworld including financial advisers, agents and shoe company executives, charging them with corruption and fraud.
In response, a commission headed by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is expected to recommend changes within the next month to purportedly clean up the sport.
While it’s unclear how comprehensive those will be, anything short of a full reconsideration of amateurism will fall short of the practical and moral responsibility of the NCAA to finally get this right.
Based on what we’ve seen so far from the Pac-12 and Big East, however, there’s little reason to believe school presidents and athletics directors have the political will to fix the problem by allowing college athletes to profit off their name, image and likeness the way that talented, highachieving people are able to do in any other context of American society.
Anything less than that serves only to maintain the interests of an antiquated system that concentrates money in the hands of coaches and administrators who typically struggle to explain why amateurism serves the greater good but point to the alternative as too messy and complicated.
Given the current state of affairs, it’s too late to worry about that.
In the end, solutions are simple if you start with a simple goal: What’s best for the athletes?
It’s only when you start attaching other agendas that the ridiculousness seeps in. Take, for instance, the suggestion by the Pac-12 and the Big East that the NBA end the one-and-done rule, but that basketball players who attend college have to do so for a minimum of two or three years before they’re draft-eligible.
This suggestion is totally self-serving and morally irresponsible, particularly if there’s no mechanism to allow college athletes to recoup any of that lost income through name, image and likeness rights.
Think about Oklahoma’s Trae Young. A year ago, he finished as the 23rdranked high school senior according to 247 Sports and the ESPN 100, meaning there’s little chance he would have entered the draft. He needed college as a platform to prove his skills, and he performed well enough to be a likely lottery pick this year, advancing to the NBA at the pace his talent — not some arbitrary rule — dictated.
Under the Pac-12 proposal, Young would be forced to stay at Oklahoma two more years because Commissioner Larry Scott and his cohorts have presented a false choice.
The value of education vs. ability to prosper off God-given talent isn’t a de- bate university administrators have about kids on acting or music scholarships should they suddenly hit it big. There’s no conflict if a regular Stanford student happens to sell their website for millions of dollars. If every other part of the university community can have it both ways, why can’t athletics?
Much of the rhetoric you’ve heard from people such as Scott centers on the idea that basketball players who view college only as a launching pad to the pros should simply go that route, whether it’s the minor leagues or overseas, and bypass the NCAA.
Not only does that fail to address the reality of the black market, where you’re simply replacing one set of players with another to fill the void, it’s a stunning abdication of responsibility by people who supposedly believe in the opportunity of education.
Meanwhile, Emmert and company will almost certainly tout Loyola-Chicago this week as the ideal for what the sport should be. No one-and-dones, no shady recruiting stories, no agents swirling around. They will even try to tell you the reward of making the Final Four makes it all worthwhile.
But for those of us who believe these kids should have the right to squeeze every ounce — and every cent — out of this experience, it’s not nearly enough.