Aug. 10

The Amateur Challenge of College Sports

By John V. Lombardi

Nothing is more central to the enterprise of intercollegiate athletics than the commitment to amateurism. Everyone, whether bitter critic of NCAA sports or ardent defender, acknowledges this requirement. College sports depends on the definition and defense of amateurism for its survival, but the tremendous popularity and financial requirements of the college sports enterprise threatens and has threatened this quality since the early 20th century. The core feature of amateurism is the concept of the student-athlete (a compound noun invented to recognize that we could not just have students who played sports but must have regulated students who played a special type of sports). The student-athlete is an individual who, while maintaining a bureaucratically defined status as student also maintains an equally bureaucratically defined condition of amateur sports performer. The line we draw to separate amateur from non-amateur is exceedingly thin and often follows a rather convoluted path that reflects the creativity of those who seek to provide commercial benefit to themselves and to the student-athletes.

Because college sports are hugely popular, everyone wants to buy a piece of the action. The universities and their agency, the NCAA, sells pieces of the action, but in ways that struggle to distinguish between the sports programs and the students who play the sports. In simple terms, we think it OK to sell the program, the team, the game, and the season, but not OK to sell the individual student-athlete in any forum outside the context of the university, NCAA, or conference sponsored context. Our game-day programs feature individual student-athletes without challenging their amateur status, but we consider a student-athlete who sells her own athletic accomplishments to promote an outside commercial as having given up amateur status. The rules that clarify the differences in these circumstances are numbingly complex, but the principle is easy. If we sell student performances as part of the university based and sanctioned package of college sports, it is OK. If the student sells her athletic abilities outside of university based and sanctioned packages, it is not OK.

Our rules create an elegant rococo disputation among those who believe we should pay students to be athletes and those who think we have already over commercialized students who are athletes within the NCAA context. Both positions have merit, but actually, they are beside the point. The point of the exercise is somewhat different.

College sports MUST be conducted with the talent of amateurs who do not receive direct individual payment for their services beyond what is appropriate for school expenses. If they receive more, then they become employees of the university, playing not for the team but for the money. Even if the money is, at the beginning, relatively minor in character, it is the principle that matters. We succeed with intercollegiate sports because we work hard to put only amateur students on the field, we construct restrictions to keep our student-athletes as continuing members of our university, and we rigorously exclude those who step over the line into the professional world or fail to maintain some minimum standard of student status.

This is the product, the amateur, enrolled, student-athlete competing on behalf of the team for the college. Are the Division I and IA basketball and football enterprises all but professional in every other way? They certainly are. Production values, quality of facilities, quality of coaching, quality of support, all of these are at professional levels and beyond, but the key talent, the athletes themselves, are a special breed. They must be very good at their sport, they must follow exceptional structured training regimes, they must follow complex rules and regulations, but they must also remain students and play for only the canonical college career (four years of play).

Throughout the history of intercollegiate sports in America, nothing has caused college sports more trouble than maintaining this construct of the amateur student-athlete. Payments under the table, bribes for recruiting, gambling schemes, secret professional contracts, payments from agents, and an endless litany of other abuses have nibbled at the edges of the amateur student-athlete, each effort captured in some form of NCAA legislation or definition to hold off the contamination of professionalism. Why not, we might ask, just give up this nonsense and let students who are athletes sell their talents outside the university to the highest bidder? We could do it, of course, it would be easy, but in losing control of the student-athlete, the university loses control of the uniform context of the games we play.

We want college athletics to be a seamless web of competition between teams of athletically talented students who compete against each other on a common basis, the legendary level playing field. We want the games to be fair, uniformly conducted, a competition that demonstrates the best college team. We structure our competitions in conferences and tournaments and bowl games and playoffs all to complete an endlessly renewing cycle that creates the illusion and some of the reality of an ideal type of commitment to institution, team, colleagues, and alumni. We take money to create the facilities, the circumstances, and the quality of the enterprise, but we place a barrier around those who make all this possible, the student-athlete, and hold them, for a short time, isolated from direct involvement with professional choices.

The latest flurry around the expansion of fantasy sports to feature individual student names as well as statistics provides an illustrative example of the tremendous pressure to professionalize the college game. Although the CBS version does not appear to buy or sell individual students, it does create a corporate enterprise that exploits an individual student’s athletic performance as it promotes its own profit-making image and activities. The NCAA will find it difficult to resist the use of student names, which exist in the public domain anyway since newspapers, magazines, and news shows on television or the Internet routinely use student names and images to sell the content of their programs that exists to sell the products advertised. The NCAA’s current rules to do not easily accommodate the fantasy football enterprise, and even though student-athletes do not receive a financial benefit directly from the use of their names in this context, the pressure to connect a prize or benefit to the student-athlete whose name is most valuable in the fantasy league will surely be strong.

And so, the cycle of commercial threat to intercollegiate amateurism will take another turn, and the NCAA and its universities will struggle for yet another definitional determination that allows what must be permitted under the law but sustains the essential non-professional nature of its essential amateur student-athletes.

This battle in its many forms has been in process a long time, about a century perhaps, and it will surely continue. We will learn how to accommodate this latest threat, but our line separating the amateur college student and the professional athlete will grow thinner still, and surely acquire another convoluted twist in our rulebook.

Comments

I have maintained for some time that college teams ought to be minor league franchises of the majors with full-time professional players, who may if they wish, attend college in the off season.

Orwell, at 11:20 am EDT on August 11, 2008

The line does not exist

I have often thought about this same issue—something I deem as the “commercialization” of college sports—which has at its core the purported “student"-athlete.

I firmly believe based on a totality of the circumstances the line Dr. Lombardi speaks about no longer exists—only the “student"-athlete is not compensated for their professional status, rather the university itself reaps the financial benefits off the backs of the “student"-athlete.

The level of spending dedicated to collegiate sports is one that could be compared to what the band Soul Asylum sings about in their song “Runaway Train.” It’s going the “wrong way on a one-way track.”

And as a result of this choo-choo train speeding out of control it is no surprise the US Congress is about to hold hearings on the matter to look at the level of spending and purported corruption as it concerns the spending:

http://www.dnj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/...080709/SPORTS/807090317/-1/ARCHIVE01

I am happy Congress is taking a look at this. I hope during their consideration they will look at “private” enterprises such as athletic foundations which are shielded from public records laws and scrutiny of all their revenue soures despite them performing very “public” functions. (Thank you former Governor Edwards for that one). I digress.

The spending, many would argue, is a necessary evil to attract the best talent, pay the football coach, have the best facilities, etc. We are in competition with all the other programs for the best at every level—and the one thing that differentiates the good from the great is $.

And if there is one school which knows this well, it is my alma mater three times over—LSU.

The Athletic Department at LSU was recently listed in the top 3 programs to increase recruiting expenses over the past decade according to the Chronicle: http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i47/47a00102.htm

248% to be exact.

I would argue this level of spending increases and the amount of money college football brings in would leave no argument that this has become a professional enterprise driven by the desire to win at any cost.

And this is where the “student” comes into play. They have a desire to perform at a professional level in the end—and the university knows this. So what we have is a “use-use” situation. The athletic department “uses” the student athlete to bring in the big bucks and in turn the athlete is able to “use” the university setting to showcase their talents for true professional sports in the future in hopes of making millions on the end of the deal.

One of my former opinion columnists opined about this phenomenon:

http://media.www.lsureveille.com/...s.Are.ModernDay.Slaves-2682540.shtml

Now while I wouldn’t go so far as to compare the enterprise to modern day slavery as Ms. Matthews does, one gets the point she is trying to make—and it is a valid one concerning how much money is made off the backs of students.

In closing, I apprecaite the continued debate on this matter. It is one that seemingly will be had into perpetuity becasue of the popularity of collegiate sports.

And will I enable this behavior?

Absolutely.

I will be in the sweltering heat of Tiger Stadium at 4 P.M. in the overcrowded student section with the rest of the proletariat gazing up at the Tiger Den suites where the bourgeoisie sit able to have their gin and tonic.

After all, we know the Tiger Den suites aren’t part of the stadium—they don’t “touch” it and are therefore able to skirt the rules about not having alcohol games.

And in sum, I’ll be, as Soul Asylum was, thinking to myself:

Can you help me remember how to smile Make it somehow all seem worthwhile How on earth did I get so jaded Life’s mystery seems so faded

I can’t wait for that runaway train!

Donald Hodge, Student at LSU, at 12:05 pm EDT on August 11, 2008

Big-time college athletics cynically exploits its players. But the players can be just as cynical as the universities. Do you really think that the “one and done” players who are forced to spend a year in college getting their game ready for the NBA give a damn about the school they are “attending"?

Peter Wolfe, Professor of Mathematics at University of Maryland, at 4:30 pm EDT on August 11, 2008

sports in college

What all of these rants, and thousands before this seem to miss, is that the majority of college athletes do NOT play for the “big-time” program. For every FSU football player we love to look down on, there are four cross-country runners or swimmers competing at what is, for them the highest level possible while earning a legitimate degree. Future doctors, lawyers, politicians, ceo’s all learning that discipline applied to desire equals success. That is why we excel as a country.There are reasons to be a college athlete, none of which require pay for play.

Rich Morris, Director of Health Education at Rollins College, at 8:41 am EDT on August 26, 2008

In response to Rich Morris, at big-time 1A football schools, it’s more like 1 cross-country runner or swimmer for each of those football players. Just to keep things in perspective.

Anonymous, at 7:20 pm EDT on September 23, 2008

intercollegiate athletics

The answer for schools like LSU and Ohio State and maybe two or three dozen others is that they should contribute some of their proceeds to the university’s general fund. It is customary when you use someone’s names for commercial purposes to compensate them. And make no mistake, LSU and Ohio Stae and the others are using the school’s name for commercial purposes. How many people do you think would pay $50 to see the Baton Rouge Tigers against the Tuscaloosa Crimson Tide?

Guido Stempel, distinguished professor emeritus at ohio unviersity, at 3:35 pm EDT on October 2, 2008

Naming Gifts

Could not agree less about “flexibility,” whether an interior or exterior item. Being flexible guarantees inconsistency and brings high risk of angering donors, as in “What, you got the patio for only $100,000? They told me it was $200,000!”

Not a good idea.

George Brakeley, Chairman at Brakeley Briscoe Inc, at 7:35 am EDT on October 6, 2008