Asymmetrical Information

Not all athletes can benefit from the chance for a college education, but I think that the vast majority can. With very few exceptions, you need to be a fairly good student to attend a major school, even if you are on the football team -- unless you are a starter. Why? There is virtually no correlation between athletic ability and academic ability, so there are plenty of fairly good athletes who are also good students to stock the bench. Changing the system might help the few stars, but it would likely hurt the grunts who are benefiting from the education.

I think it depends on the school, the athlete, and the sport.

1. For the most part, schools lose money one athletics. This is true even of the "money" sports like football and basketball at all but a relative handful of schools.

2. Most athletes do get something valuable out of school, or at least as valuable as other students get. The vast majority of athletes--those in the non-revenue sports and a minority of those in revenue sports--are actually pretty good students. Most of the kids on the golf, gymnastics, wrestling, soccer, and volleyball teams are above-average students. These students get a double-value: a free college education, often at a "better" school than they'd have gotten a free ride to without their athletic skills plus the tangible and intangible value of having been a college athlete. All things being equal, college athletes do much better than their non-athlete compatriots (such as myself) on the job market and in the employment world. The Nike ads on the value of female participation in sports are essentially correct--and it works that way for the men, too.

3. Which sport matters. Many of those who play football, basketball and, to a much lesser extent, baseball at the higher levels of competitition are at college to gain a shot at the pros. Most of them won't make it. It is this group who is most likely to be exploited.

I should make it clear that we're talking about the money sports here, not golf. I have no problem with giving college athletes a free ride; it's admitting kids who don't belong in college in order to make them into a free farm team for the pros that gives me the heebie-jeebies.

"Non-transferrable yak" - huh? I was never non-transferrable when I was in the Navy.

As to the rice paddies - most yaks are at higher altitudes where rice isn't one of the crops.

Or is that where the transfer comes in?

The key thing to remember here is the ratio of money sports college athletes to the ones that can go pro. VERY few athletes can make it to the pros and only a tiny few of them make more than a couple hundred thousand dollars when they get into whatever league they're headed for.

The key at major universities, then, is not to deny an athlete (minus the student part), a good school education, but to convince them that a free ride at UCLA, Stanford, wherever, does not make them rich forever. Maybe they'll pay a little attention in history or comm studies then.

Going to UCLA, I knew some of the smartedt athletes in the nation and some of the most dim-witted. I knew why the dimwits were there, I just wish they had been given something more constructive to do. These guys need counseling, not cheating tutors.

The question of whether payment of tuition, books, room and board has value is the wrong question. The real question is whether a player is able to receive the market value for his services.

The schools are involved in interstate commerce. As a Harvard economist wrote in WSJ some years ago, the NCAA is the most successful cartel in history. The members conspire to hold wages for workers to a set amount which is far below that which some of the workers could earn in a free market. The cartel severely punishes any member who violates the rules.

This is a classic Antitrust violation.

I'm always amazed at the people who try to defend the cartel by arguing that, in their opinion, the scholarship constitues sufficient payment for athletic services. How about using the market instead of imposing your opinion on someone else? Wouldn't it be nice if gave others the freedom to determine the value of their services? Perhaps they would understand better if we decided that they made too much money and decreed that their salary will now be one tenth of what it was.

One of the things that the report at Rice (mentioned in a comment on the other article) questioned was the financial benefit of the athletic program. The big question was whether having a big athletic program encouraged alumni donations. Without that, the program lost money. I'm not sure how much and I'm not sure how you'd ever determine how much alumni support was due to the athletic program.

Bolie IV

Stan has it, exactly. Most of the commenters are arguing a version of medieval "just price theory", when it's simply Adam Smith's "diamonds and water".

Defenders of the conspiracy in restraint of trade should ask themselves why the NCAA member schools need to agree on a "fair" package of compensation for the athletes at all. If the package is so valuable the athletes would accept it anyway.

An example close to my home is former U of Washington and NFL quarterback Billy Joe Hobart. He was married, with a one-year old baby, when, as a sophomore in college he negotiated a loan of $50,000 from a local businessman, to meet his living expenses (he said he was in danger of losing his wife, since he couldn't support her).

The businessman made the loan in light of the potential earning power Hobart had as a likely early round draft choice in the NFL--about which he was correct. This arrangement was economically rational (i.e. mutually beneficial to Hobart and the businessman), but it was against the NCAA rules.

As currently constituted, NCAA member institutions agree not to compensate athletes for playing, scholarships excepted. However, NCAA member organizations may make a scholarship contingent on participation in intercollegiate athletics. (That is, if you don't play, you lose your scholarship.)

Suggestion: Congress should make clear that any scholarship contingent on participation in intercollegiate athletics is a contract in interstate commerce subject to federal antitrust law.

If that happened, I would expect that scholarship-based intercollegiate athletics would shrink dramatically at all but a few colleges, and that the remaining colleges would turn their athletic programs into de facto minor leagues with compensated athletes.

I think the elite college football and basketball players do get something valuable. They can become famous, accumulate trmendous free hype and marketing, and, as a result demand outrageous starting salaries when they do enter the pro leagues.

Think about Brian Bosworth for a minute. In his college days, he played for free, but in his (extremely short and awful) pro career, he commanded a much, much, much higher salary than he would have been able to if he had been coming an NFL minor league system.

Bosworth, like many other mediocre pro athletes, made out like a bandit due to his college career.

Jane, I see only one major weakness in your theory: I do not think it's clear that a lot of the athletes can't use the value themselves.

Certainly, there are a number of anecdotal examples of students who couldn't read but had a sweet jumper so they got to go to college. But there are also a number of anecdotal examples of students on the other end of the spectrum, individuals who are exceptionally capable both on the field/court and in the classroom.

In between is where the remainder of student-athletes lie. They are certainly not as qualified as their academic counterparts, but the education is not worthless to them. For a great number of them they get further in life because of the education they received than they ever would have by not going to college and making peanuts in a farm league until they get cut.

A basic problem with high-level college sports is that the time commitment--practice and training as well as competition--to compete at a high level is so great that few Division I athletes can put in the time required to compile a strong academic record.

There are a couple of reasons for the NCAA rules that have nothing to do with the economic exploitation of athletes. One is competitive balance. If there were no limits on what athletes were paid, a handful of rich programs could become even more dominant. Not even Miami (FLA) wants a situation like that because they know that eventually they won't have enough opponents to fill their schedule as weak schools drop big time sports.

Also, a lot of public support for college sports depends on the players being student athletes. The NCAA rules prevent a school from paying lip service to this ideal and then putting a squad of pure ringers

How many schools could drop the hypocrisy and convert their programs into a professional development league? Many (most) fans and boosters would see no reason to support such a program.

Bolie,

That is a whole new can of worms. Those who are charged with raising money from alums well tell you that success for the football program at schools like those in the SEC or Big Ten (basketball at Kentucky or NC) makes a big difference. They are out there all the time meeting and greeting for bucks and how well the team does is extremely important.

Professors and those who hate the influence of athletics at the schools are always trying to say this is a myth. I remember one study that found no correlation b/w yearly giving and football record the previous year. The professors tried to say this proved that football didn't matter. Of course, this is stupid because the timing of most giving is due to a lot of issues that are not within the control of the giver (death, sale of business, etc.) while the decision to give is made over an extended time.

In fact, one could speculate that the amount received might go up after a bad season. A fanatic football alumnus such as Big Bubba might be so incensed after losing the season ending game to the hated arch-rival that he has a heart attack and dies. School gets big check from his estate. According to the professors, this would be proof that he really didn't care about football.

Craig,

So if it helps teams compete it justifies exploiting the poor athlete and the criminal violation of federal law?

Stan,

No. That wasn't my point. But i think that it is important to recognize that the rules are not there to exploit the athlete but to set ground rules so that schools compete on equal footing. They function a little like the salary cap in the NFL or NBA. Without them, there could be an implosion which would actually lower opportunities for college athletes.

Stan,

You seem to be saying the research on giving doesn't matter because you know better.

My understanding is that, to the extent there is an increase, it goes to the athletic dept., not the university as a whole. So the athletic dorms get plusher, the workout rooms get more equipment, and the athletes become even more convinced that they are a privileged class, not subject to the rules that govern ordinary people.

The problem is that somewhere along the way, college programs became football and basketball's version of baseball's minor leagues.

I would respectfully submit that it's time the NFL and NBA start minor leagues so that the functions of higher education and sports entertainment can lead the separate lives they were meant to.

Sending someone to a university who isn't remotely qualified for (or generally interested in) a university education is stupid and wasteful and isn't good for anyone.

Up with minor leagues! Down with universities doing the pro's grunt work!!!!

I believe they both do have minor leagues, don't they? I mean, isn't there an NBDL (National Basketball Development League) not to mention all of the European leages? Also, there is an NFL Europe, which is run by NFL America and is often used as a farm system for such.

Craig could not be more wrong about:

"...i think that it is important to recognize that the rules are not there to exploit the athlete but to set ground rules so that schools compete on equal footing."

The current rules guarantee that competition will be restricted to the major athletic factories. Year after year, Miami, USC, Ohio State, Notre Dame, Texas, Oklahoma, and a few others, dominate in college football. The same goes, in basketball, for Duke, Indiana, Kentucky, Arizona etc.

Jeff, while the NFL and NBA do have the development systems you mention, they are primarily for those players who are not good enough to make the direct transition from college to professional football or basketball (or in the NBA's case, sometimes from high school to professional). College football and basketball are the de facto primary developmental systems for the professionals.

The scholarly explanation of the phenomenon is at:

http://www.cerge-ei.cz/pdf/events/papers/011029_t.pdf

From which:

" The incentive for individual members to cheat on a cartel agreement represents the basic problem faced by any cartel. In the case of the NCAA, reducing competition for inputs, in this case student-athletes, by controlling input prices constitutes a key component of the cartel agreement. Implications for the output
market also exist; see Eckard (1998) for one example. According to NCAA regulations, each prospective student-athlete can be offered an identical compensation package from each institution, the “full-ride” grant-in-
aid package consisting of tuition and fees, room and board, books, and a small stipend, often called “laundry money.” Requiring each institution to offer recruits the same compensation package clearly restricts
competition in the input market. Absent this restriction, institutions could offer highly-regarded recruits other inducements to attend an institution; in a competitive market, each student-athlete would be offered up to the expected value of his value of marginal product by institutions."

Perhaps Jason McCullough would be so kind as to check the scholars' math for us?

College money sports in the news!

At St. Bonaventure, the *President of the University* personally overrules everyone else to bring in a player who didn't graduate college but who did have a JUCO "certificate in welding." After the story breaks it looks like everyone in the chain of command from the President down to the ballboy is heading for the unemployment line, and the school could be looking for a new conference, assuming the b-ball program survives to need one.
http://espn.go.com/ncb/columns/wojnarowski_adrian/1518764.html

Meanwhile, down in Georgia the coach is getting heat for "taking care of" the financial needs of a recruit who had "attended at least five high schools and five junior colleges before coming to Georgia", and who'd also been charged with sexual assault, as it happens.
http://espn.go.com/ncb/news/2003/0304/1517912.html

Hey, we all know that in the college money sports winning is the only thing, because that's how you get the money, and you don't even have to *share* it with the people who earn it for you! That's a pretty darn good incentive to get all you can, and to do what you have to do to do it.

Patrick:

In my earlier comment I said that "if there were no limits on what athletes were paid, a handful of rich programs could become even more dominant. "

So I am not disputing that traditional football or basketball powers exist. But many NCAA rules-- especially those relating to the number and value of scholarships-- are designed to increase the competitiveness between schools so that the current have-not programs do not throw in the towel.

Those rules work pretty well even looking at the schools you listed for football. Before this year, Ohio State last won the AP national championship in 1968. USC hasn't won it since 1972, Notre Dame since 1988, Texas since 1969. Oklahoma won in 2000 and before that in 1985. Miami (FL) is a powerhouse but they only won titles in 2001 and 1991.

If I could command one scenario to be inflicted on the miserable cartel-loving bastards that comprise the NCAA, it would be to have the 8 squads that comprise the BCS Bowl Contest, or the 4 squads that comprise the NCAA Men's Basketball Final Four weekend call a joint press conference on the eve of the games, and inform the NCAA, the T.V. networks, the advertisers, the shoe companies, and other assorted parasites that unless some rather large cashiers checks are cut in the next 24 hours, there ain't gonna be any games with which to sell shoes, cars, beer, movie premiers, or any other damn thing. The revenue stream that provides extremely large salaries to NCAA leaches, coaches, ad execs, and other hangers-on just dried up. Finito. This would take extraordinary courage on the part of the young men, although the really top pro prospects would likely be unaffected. Just seeing a bunch of pigs writhe in agony from having their snouts jerked out of the feed trough would be satisfying.

Mark, I understand that the purpose of the NBDL and NFL Europe is for college players who weren't quite good enough for their elite counterparts. My point is just that minor leagues are available, should a high school student decide to circumvent the college process and go pro without the necessary refined talent.

"There is virtually no correlation between athletic ability and academic ability"

I suspect that there is a reasonable negative correlation between academic ability and athletic ability at the level needed to play big-time college sports.

This is not because of any genetic factors but because of the level of effort needed for a teen-ager to become a Divsion I caliber football or basketball player. A high school student who devotes that much energy to sports will devote less to academics, and thus have less academic ability. It may also be the case that a student with few academic interests is more likely to devote this sort of energy to sports.

Remember that we are not talking about average or above average athletes, or even excellent ones. We are talking about a tiny percentage of superstars. There are about 3.5 million college age males in the US. Of these about 10,000, or .3%, hold football or basketball scholarships at major universities. It seems to me that, to reach these heights in sports, they will often have neglected their studies.

And that is the source of much of the problem. They may be great athletes, but they are not, for the most part, students.

In addition to paying for athletic facilities and coaches' salaries, the revenues from football and men's basketball are also typically used to pay for scholarships in the non-revenue generating sports. So if you paid football and basketball athletes their free market value, a lot of swimmers, golfers, gymnasts, track and fielders, etc. would end up losing their scholarships.

Given that nowadays any athlete who is ready to play in the pros can go and do so, I don’t see how college sports qualify as exploitation. In fact, the combined salary that a marginal pro prospect could get for four years playing in a minor league is probably a lot less than the economic value of a college education. In short, the existence of college sports probably results in an increase in the welfare of athletes.

My only observation in this debate is that in Texas, Stephen F. Austin University and Sam Houston State University (as well as pretty much the whole UT system) are considered second-tier universities, despite being the same size as several "1st-tier schools" and having some amazing strengths (in education and criminal justice in Sam Houston State U's case). The main reason? Football is king in Texas, and those two schools are Division 1-AA.

The point is RC, it shouldn't be up to you, me, the NCAA, or the anybody else, to determine what is "fair", or "right" for a University of Maryland basketball player to receive. It should be up to the the basketball player and the various entities who operate basketball teams to negotiate, in an enconomic environment free of the influence of illegitimate cartels. If having to openly compete for the services of basketball players causes the University of Maryland to get out of the for-profit basketball business, so be it. Universities don't benefit from cartel-derived fixed compensation when competing for the services of famous law or economics professors, and there is no reason they should benefit from it when competing for the services of basketball players. Imagine the uproar from university presidents if the various governing bodies of the 100 most presitigous schools formed a cartel and mandated that, from that point on, no president shall receive more than $75,000 year, and they were forbidden to earn money from other sources. Hey,.... now that I think about it, what's good for the goose......

Craig is missing my point, the same schools dominate college sports year after year after year. That's the result of NCAA policies NOW.

That THE same team does not always win the national championship is irrelevant (though there have been dynasties such as UCLA basketball in the 60s and 70s, which was undone only by the retirement of John Wooden). The same teams compete for it every year. The same teams play in the big money bowl games every year, with very few exceptions. Last year's football top ten were:

1. Ohio State
2. Miami
3. Georgia
4. USC
5. Oklahoma
6. Kansas State
7. Texas
8. Iowa
9. Michigan
10. Washington State

all but two of the above are traditional powerhouses. It's like that year in and year out, because of the rules of competition for athletes rule out actual competition in the marketplace.

If a good player can only get the same thing (tuition, books, etc) from every school, he will choose the already successful program--where he knows he'll get exposure to NFL scouts. Or, he'll choose the school with the cutest coeds.

But if a usual loser school can sweeten the pot by having interested alumni offer the recruits jobs, or nice apartments, or cars, or interest free loans, then there is a tool with which the school can pry good athletes loose. And the losers can then compete with the traditional powers. They will be led, as if by an invisible hand, to promote the financial welfare of their employees.

Contrast that to the Washington State coach who abandoned his team virtually on the eve of their Rose Bowl appearance, to jump to Alabama. He did it for the big money. That move isn't available to the kids.

A nit: Division I does not imply "big time college sports". Division I means that the institution has a bunch of sports and plays at least a minimum number of competitions against other Division I institutions. Harvard, Dartmouth, Lehigh, and Colgate are Division I (and the Ivy League and Patriot League champions usually get blown out in the first round of the Men's NCAA Division I basketball tournament--they often are competitive in other sports).

"But many NCAA rules -- especially those relating to the number and value of scholarships -- are designed to increase the competitiveness between schools so that the current have-not programs do not throw in the towel."

Sounds like the objective of professional sports leagues -- the NFL's priority on parity, etc. Of course, professional sports leagues recognize the conflict of interest this creates with their players, and negotiate the details with their players through their unions. Who represents the players to the NCAA?

Professional sports leagues also do not claim tax exemption due to their a not-for-profit nature.

"Those rules work pretty well. "

There are 327 Division I college basketball programs. How many have a chance to get to the Final Four? A quick look at the game result pages shows the best teams are about 45 points better than the weakest and 20 points better than the average -- and that's *within* Division I. That's not very competitive, yet the other 300 teams "do not throw in the towel". Competitive balance is found within conferences of eight teams or so.

"the revenues from football and men's basketball are also typically used to pay for scholarships in the non-revenue generating sports."

Sure -- an excellent reason to confiscate another person's income. I am justified in confiscating the income you produce so long as it is put to a purpose that I approve of. You don't even get to vote on it. Sounds good to me!

Hey, here's a modest little three-step reform proposal to get real student athletes back playing revenue-generating student athletics, and eliminating the NCAA's monopoly-maintenance police who currently spy out whether any million dollar income generators out there are getting $5 too much in meal money, creating all the under-the-table corruption that entails.

1) Have all student athletes be real students enrolled in real academic degree programs. (The rest can go play in pro minor leagues).

2) Give each team a set number of roster slots, e.g. 15 over five years for basketball.

3) If any student doesn't graduate in 5 years, for any reason whatsoever -- homesick, academic problems, NBA lottery, decides another school is better for him -- the team loses that roster slot for, say, three years. Lose a few roster slots, that'll hurt.
Benefits: Suddenly coaches will be recruiting on the basis of whether kids can and will do the schoolwork at the school's academic level, will fit within the culture of the school, and have constructive character. Coaches also will suddenly gain a very strong incentive to make only promises that they keep. All of which has *got* to be a whole lot better than the way things work now. And as a not insignificant bonus, it would send a message to the younger kids about what they have to do if they want to "play ball". They have to go to class if they want to go to school -- a thought to send out on the streets!

That's it -- no other rules. If a school wants to promise the athlete the opportunity to *make money* while attending it, why not? Pay him what he's worth and let him have a sneaker contract too. So long as the kid actually goes to class. Drama departments encourage students to do commercials and movies. Business departments don't stop students from working. Why should athletes be discriminated against? And if a coach wants to recruit a kid who will jump to the NBA in two years, at the cost of giving up the roster slot for the next three, why not? As long as the kid goes to class for the two years.

It would be one heck of a lot better to have students who go to class and graduate get paid above the table for playing ball than to have students who never go to class get paid under the table for it and drop out without an education.

Think of programs like Cincinnati -- nationally ranked for years, didn't graduate a player for years, a use 'em and dispose of 'em money making machine. It deserved the death sentence, and this would give the death sentence to every program like that. While unemploying the NCAA's meal stipend police too, since there wouldn't be a single thing for the NCAA to check except transcripts to see that students are enrolled in classes appropriate to their school's academic level.

I think there's a false assumption here that the market value for college athletes would be high. I don't think so. Check out minor league baseball salaries for comparison. 95% of the kids playing there make crap wages. Check the developmental league in the NBA or the CBA--salaries there are quite low. No-one in the US cares about minor league sports. The value of college football and basketball is provided by the schools, not by the players, who no-one cares about for themselves. ANd there are thousands of kids who are pretty good who want to get a chance to play, so the labor market favors the teams, not the players at the lower levels. Only the very top stars have the leverage to get big money.

As for football, while it does generate a lot of revenue, it's probably not nearly as much as you'd think, once you factor in travel, facilities, medical, administrative overhead, and equipment expenses.

I don't think most schools not in major conferences make any money at all on football, and even big time schools aren't making tens of millions of dollars off it. A few million, maybe. Divide that by 100 players (not to mention a dozen or more coaches), and you're hardly left with tremendous riches for the players.

Basketball you have more of a point, but there the top kids right now are jumping right to the NBA. And as others have pointed out, there are viable developmental leagues for kids to go to if they don't like the college system. It's just that the benefits offered by colleges are about 100 times better than those offered by the professional minor leagues, so kids choose that rather than going to the CBA or the NBDL.

So many misconceptions, so little time ...

The amount of time a HS athlete devotes to his sport is not sufficiently great to hurt his academics at all (even one who goes on to be a collegiate All-American). If anything, athletes in season often have better grades because their daily lives are better organized.

I know because I played football, basketball and baseball in HS and was recruited to play all three in college. I did play all three at a major college before being drafted to play professional baseball. Then I went on to law school at Vanderbilt. Later, I was an asst. football coach focused on recruiting for one of the most successful college programs in the country.

Elite athletes are often not academically qualified. Not because of time devoted to their sport, but because they lack the IQ, the interest, and the home support which are needed to compile an academic record sufficient for college. Additionally, for whatever reason, an extrememly high percentage of good players in football and basketball (the money sports) are black. And in many states in this country, fewer than half of black students graduate HS. Many of these players were on that dropout path until the prospect of being recruited gave them (and their HS) a reason to try to boost their record to NCAA minimums. Very often these are kids who never cracked a book because to do so in their school was considered "acting white".

I am ambivalent on whether it is wrong for a college to admit academically unqualified athletes. Given all the other many ways that schools have compromised their academic integrity, I don't think there is any point in focusing only on athletes.

Are athletes in football and basketball shortchanged? Sure. They labor in multimillion dollar businesses for which a free market would pay them a great deal more. If they were paid, would it hurt kids in non-revenue sports? Sure, most schools wouldn't be able to pay them each 15 to 30 grand to play a sport that loses money. Players whose play generates millions would get more. Players whose play loses money would get less.

Would it change the face of collegiate sports? Absolutely. Would I like such a system better than the present system? Probably not. But I'm not a poor black inner city kid getting stiffed by white college administrators and coaches making 6 and 7 figure salaries while bemoaning the lack of money.

What amazes me is the unwillingess of some to admit the basic facts. The schools are engaging in a business which is very clearly interstate commerce. The schools clearly combine to fix the prices to be paid the athletes that work for them.

This is a crime under federal antitrust laws.

The fact that it is supposed to help some schools compete is irrelevant.

Finally, the idea that the schools should get out of the sports business is another example of ignoring market realities. The constituencies which support the school (alums, taxpayers, students) get what they want. They want sports.

[Note -- I didn't say that the professors were wrong on giving and the relationship to athletics because I know better. I said they were wrong because the professionals who spend their lives doing the fundraising say they are wrong. When people who don't even like sports report after years of asking alums for money that the state of the athletic program is a very serious consideration in their success, I think they have more credibility than professors who aren't even talking to the customers.

If a business needs to know what customers are thinking, asking the sales force is a helluva lot smarter than asking the bean counters or janitors.

Stan,

Well, I think lack of interest was one part of my claim about the negative correlation. Your alternative reasons are valid also, but we agree the correlation is there. And while I'm sure some athletes' studies benefit from the discipline, it's hard to believe most do, when you look at the relevant GPA's. You might also look at the number who have to go to junior colleges that are often little more than farm teamsfor the major colleges.

I am opposed to admitting academically unqualified athletes. Those who favor the practice seem to implicitly assume that otherwise there would be no football program, for example. But there are plenty of HS players who are qualified. The teams might not be quite as good, but they would exist. Instead of giving a scholarship to an academically unqualified player you would give one to a player who was stronger academically and weaker athletically. That's not a bad trade. If academic requirements are taken seriously it might even give great HS athletes a reason not to lose interest in their studies entirely.

Coincidentally, I too went to Vanderbilt, so we are both familiar with its dismal athletic history. This history is due, in part, to the fact that the university has tried to hold athletes to some semblance of academic standards, both in admission and after enrollment. I don't think it is unfair to say that the other SEC schools are not much bothered by these issues. As a "constituent," howver, I would much rather see Vanderbilt continue its athletic futility, or drop to a lower division, than abandon its insistence on these standards. Sadly, it has recently begun to do the latter.

"I think there's a false assumption here that the market value for college athletes would be high. I don't think so."

For 98% of athletes they wouldn't be. Too bad the NCAA has to impose its horrible regulations on everyone to siphon off the market value of the top 2%, but that's how monopolies work. OTOH, letting athletes get paid what they are worth would let the regulations be lifted on everyone.

But, hey, let's put the few big money-makers and the $6 billion basketball TV contract aside for a moment. Even in the "no money" sports the NCAA acts as a cartel of coaches and administrators that operates at the cost of the students.

Let's talk about the fencing team. How in the world is it in the student athlete's interest to have to sit out a year if he/she decides to transfer to another school that might provide a better education for him/her?? It's not, obviously, it is a cost imposed on students to benefit coaches and sports program administrators by reducing transfers. But nothing prevents a coach from kicking a student off the team simply because he wants to. And coaches don't have to sit out a year when they move to another school, of course. ;-)

"What amazes me is the unwillingness of some to admit the basic facts. The schools are engaging in a business which is very clearly interstate commerce. The schools clearly combine to fix the prices to be paid the athletes that work for them. This is a crime under federal antitrust laws."

Very obviously, and the reason the law is not enforced is politics.

E.g., some years ago the IRS took initial steps to revoke the tax exempt status of some of the major college football bowl games, since they were so *blatantly* run for profit. But Congress quickly heard from the colleges and college sports fans and told the IRS "No way!" and that was the end of that -- the IRS isn't going to try that again.

You might look up the experience of the Bush I Justice Department in trying to break the explicit, openly run, tuition price-fixing cartel operated by the Ivy League and some other elite colleges.

Another outrageous practice is that schools can, in general, take away athletic scholarships for no reason other than the athlete's failure to perform as well as expected.

Note that this means you can be an exemplary individual in all respects. Make good grades, behave yourself, work hard at the sport, but just not be good enough, and you still might face having to transfer or scratch around for money.

It's easy to say, "that's what you signed up for," but we're talking about 17-18 year olds who sign up, and who are being told by the coaches recruiting them that they are the next coming of Michael Jordan. If the schools had any interest in the athlete's well-being beyond sports, and any sense of responsibility they would not allow this.

If a University of Maryland basketball player feels he’s not being compensated fairly, he’s perfectly free to go to the pros (including minor league or international basketball if he’s not good enough for the NBA). And if he chooses to play for UM but not go to class, well, it’s his choice to not take advantage of the educational opportunity that he’s been offered. So where’s the exploitation?

Also, with player drafts, salary caps, and the ability of leagues to restrict the entry of new teams, upper echelon pro sports are just as cartelized as the NCAA is. But by and large I don’t think this is a bad thing either. It keeps talent from getting too diluted, and promotes competitive equality between the teams, both of which are good for consumers.

RC,

The pros' restrictions you mentiion are part of a labor bargaining agreement and thus exempt from antitrust.

The possibility of someone changing jobs to avoid the illegal price fixing is no defense. Nor should it be.

Bernard,

I'd get more worked up about unqualified athletes if the schools hadn't compromised academic integrity in so many other ways.

What Stan said. That not everyone engages in illegal price fixing is no defense to those that do. That is why I think it would be so wonderful if the players fought back and demanded a boatload of money before they would play Final Four Weekend, or the BCS bowl games. The T.V. networks would call up the NCAA, and say, "fellas, if there's no game tomorrow, we expect a full refund of the several hundred million that we paid in order to faciltate the selling of cars, beer, potato chips, and everything else." The NCAA price fixers would then be tossed into a panic at the prospect of actually having to deal with revenue generators who asserted their interests, instead meekly taking what was deigned appropriate by the price fixers.

Megan,

Much as I'd like to give you guys "credit" for that, it was actually my Princeton Tigers who snapped Columbia's then-record losing streak (which was "only" 44 games, though I'm sure it seemed like 20 years to some).

And since you're a year younger than I am, you weren't at Penn when it happened; it was actually in 1988. (At least, I assume you weren't.)

Of course, if we require athletes to meet the same academic requirements as other scholarship students at a school, what you wind up with is an even greater disparity than we have now in terms of a negative correlation between the academic reputation of the school and its success in big-time athletics. The Ivies all suck in basketball and football. Only a handful of prestigious schools (Michigan, UCLA, Stanford and Duke come to mind) are also elite schools in football and/or men's basketball.

Presumably, while what the schools do is a violation of the principle of anti-trust law, it isn't an actual violation of the law (that is, they must have been exempted in some manner)or one of the approximately 90% of Americans who are lawyers would have initiated a suit by now.

James,

At least for now, our system still requires a willing plaintiff for a lawyer to file suit.

Don't confuse the academics of a school with the academic requirements for athletes. The Charlotte Observer had an article a few years ago comparing the average SAT scores of the basketball players at each ACC school. Duke ranked last with scores worse than academic powerhouses such as Clemson and FSU.

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I would like to know more about your School and how to get signed up for the scholarship. I play basketball, volleyball, and some football. I really could benefit from this. If you need anymore informtaion about me, you can contact me at (address) 2000 Schilling Ave. Albany, Ga. 31705, or my e-mail. If I can get accepted, it would mean alot to me. O'yeah....I've scored an 810 on my SAT. A 420 on the verbal and a 390 on the math, if that's of some assist.

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