CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – I like college football and college basketball as much as the next fan. But I’ve become more aware that I’m watching a charade. They’re not student athletes.
The deal used to be that if you were really, really good at a sport you’d get a scholarship. You play for your college, and you’ll get a free education. And that was considered a fair deal. No one knew that college sports would bring in an avalanche of money.
College athletes today are using the schools they play for as a platform to show off their skills in hopes of playing professionally. If they were told that attending class was optional, many would choose to spend that time working out or on the practice field. I predict that such a time is coming.
Consider a ruling by the National Labor Relations Board. They ruled that college basketball players at Dartmouth are actually school employees, and that they have a right to unionize to negotiate things like their practice schedules, their work rules, and, yes, their pay and benefits. Dartmouth, as an Ivy League school, doesn’t give out athletic scholarships. Dartmouth is also cutting five sports: mens and womens swimming, mens and womens golf, and rowing. That will cover some of their new basketball employees.
I think there is more meddling coming in the college sports world. Now that student-athletes can make money off their name, image, and likeness, I predict two things: some colleges will suddenly become more popular. Go to UCLA, where we already have advertising agencies and agents. Alabama? Maybe not so much. And get ready for more arguments about equity. A star football quarterback can bank a million dollars in NIL money. A star Wisconsin volleyball player gets $400. Now, granted, one sport is much more popular than the other… but for how long do you think such an inequity will be allowed? Especially now that players could potentially unionize and demand paychecks from their schools.
There’s no going back to the good old days. Not with the money that the schools make off their broadcast rights. Eventually it became so much that it had to be spread around. So a star football or basketball player can become an NCAA millionaire. And I ask, why can’t some of that money find its way to actual students? Their tuition goes up every year.
When I was a student and my father would mail off my tuition check, sometimes he’d joke with me. “Chris, if only you had a better jump shot.”
Chris Conley
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