Bias out front: I'm a sports fan but not a fan of the NCAA.
I consider so-called student athletes to be an exploited working class on one hand and a pampered elite not called upon for normal scholastic exertions on the other.
I saw the elite status when I was an undergraduate at the University of Texas and shared a class with a member of the national championship football team. In those days, they posted grades on the door of the classroom next to your name.
He never showed face in the upper division history class and pulled a C. I never missed a class except for the times I was in jail for civil rights activities. I was used to As and I got a B in that class--meaning it was not an easy class.
I saw the elite status again when I taught at Indiana University, and was invited to interact with the personal academic trainers assigned to each scholarship athlete. Some of my colleagues refused the invitation because all students did not have personal academic trainers, but I accepted. I just did not give athletes any grading breaks, though I knew that by doing so I could pump up my student numbers. The athletic department maintained a list of majors and courses considered not terribly challenging.
Student athletes bring in a lot of cash. They should be paid a fair wage and their work lives should be structured around their course schedules and not the other way around.
Student athletes should have workers' compensation insurance to cover medical care for their injuries and an athletic scholarship should be for the whole time it takes to get a degree--normally in these times, five years---without regard to being injured or even being a poor player. Only goofing off should break the contract formed at the front end.
If money is a problem, college teams should be subsidized by the pro teams for which they function as farm clubs.
Come now a number of the elite elite college athletes who made it to the pros suing the NCAA. It is about any of the stuff above? No, it's about the NCAA and the member schools using their likenesses in advertising after graduation without compensation.
Plaintiffs include former UCLA basketball star Ed O'Bannon, former University of Nebraska quarterback Sam Keller, Vanderbilt linebacker Chase Graham, Clemson cornerback Darius Robinson, linebacker Jake Fischer and kicker Jake Smith from the University of Arizona, and tight end Moses Alipate and wide receiver Victor Keise from the University of Minnesota.I think these are good lawsuits. When, by your own sweat, you have made your image worth money in the advertising game, you are entitled to compensation for the use of your image and you are entitled to stop people from using your image without permission.
Think about if that were not the law. You could catch a long lens shot of some quarterback having a cigar at his birthday party and use it to hawk tobacco. Any famous person who bought a car would be buying a ride in ads for that car.
The NCAA claims that these lawsuits threaten "amateurism." Of course, these plaintiffs are no longer amateurs, but the argument is (I think) they are stalking horses for high school kids who have no power to assert anything against the universities where they are supplicants, let alone the all-powerful NCAA.
Hey, if it's all for the love of the game, how about allotting tickets to football bowl games and the basketball Sweet 16 by lottery and for free, with students from the competing schools having first draw? Sound like a good idea, NCAA?
I didn't think so.