Suppose you hire a group of college kids to provide
entertainment for which you charge the public. In exchange for
their effort, you give them exposure to the media, free training
and room and board worth, perhaps $30,000 a year, but no actual
pay.
Suppose you hire a group of college kids to provide entertainment for which you charge the public. In exchange for their effort, you give them exposure to the media, free training and room and board worth, perhaps $30,000 a year, but no actual pay. You also hire expert and expensive management and your business makes money hand over fist. It’s all great except that the serious injury rate among your employees is astronomical.Â
What do you think would happen to your business? Well, you would not have a business. The Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA), the agency responsible for workplace safety, would eventually shut you down; unless you drastically reduced the injury rate, you’d be gone. Then the IRS would rule that those college kids were not ‘independent contractors’ and you had better cough up their back pay – and fast.
Of course, I’m making an analogy to major college football, except for the closing up part, that’s never going to happen. Discussing this issue requires the liberal use of quotation marks, because so many terms are as phony as the proverbial three-dollar bill.
Don’t accuse me of hating football; I love it. I played for the U.S. Air Force base team at Ramstein, Germany, until the second dislocation of my right wrist ended my career forever. I wasn’t very good, but I’m still a dedicated fan.
Major college sports are big-time businesses, but the “workers” are not being paid and many of them, especially football players, are sustaining serious injuries. Better nutrition, better training, earlier starts and sometimes a little pharmaceutical help have made college athletes bigger, stronger and faster. Collisions between these great athletes have the expected results – serious damage to the human body.
We won’t discuss the so-called “student-athlete” other than admit that some do exist, but many star players they are “athlete-students” – with a big “A” and little “s.” College basketball doesn’t even pretend anymore, players go one-and-done, a year of top-notch coaching and off to the NBA. The coaches cheat and then move on to better jobs, leaving a mess behind. The schools, coaches, and top players who go pro make millions as do the franchises and related industries, but most of the athletes are left out. They will not go pro because they are not good enough or because have been injured and too many of them will not finish their education.
Injuries can be reduced by introducing better equipment like soft-shell helmets that protect everyone, not just the wearers. Then let’s end this farce. The schools should pay the players some of what they are worth and compensate them for injuries. It’s hypocritical to expect them to put in many hours of mandatory practice, plus ‘voluntary’ film study and ‘unsupervised’ meetings and have an alumnus give them a ‘summer job’ to feed them cash under the table.
At times, the coaches are the highest paid employees in the education system but the scholarship athletes can be busted for taking free French fries. These inequities and hypocrisy lead to the Reggie Bush Syndrome where his family ‘forgets’ they are living in a new house that they could not afford because Reggie’s “friends” are betting on his economic future.
We live in a world where even dead celebrities produce a lot of income, but live college athletes are stiffed by the schools, coaches and companies they enrich. It is past time to protect and pay the athletes and then hold them, the schools, the alumni and the coaches to higher standards of conduct with real penalties for transgressions. Who are we fooling other than ourselves?
Marty Richman is a Hollister resident. His column runs Tuesdays. Reach him at cw*****@***oo.com.
