"The point is ladies and gentlemen that greed, for lack of a better word, is good."
Gordon Gekko, in "Wall Street."
Greed, for lack of a better word, has gotten the nation's sports-idolizing colleges and universities into this strange, awful twist of student-athletes (or athlete-students) advocating for unions and for being treated as employees.
Many of us out here making a living no doubt wonder why they're in such a hurry to be treated as employees. A lot of us recognize, now, that those college years are precious, to be cherished for the unique time of life it is. Employees? Ugh. They'll get plenty of that treatment in their lives. Plenty.
Last week, a regional director of the National Labor Relations Board ruled a group of football players at the private Northwestern University qualify as employees under federal law and thus can create the nation's first union of college athletes. The director determined that if it walks like a duck and acts like a duck, it's not just marketing insurance. College students who play major sports, at least at Northwestern but arguably at most universities with major athletics programs, devote more time to their sport than to academics, he observed.
The ruling will be appealed, and it doesn't apply to public colleges and universities because the labor board has no authority over them. But rest assured last week's ruling was a watershed moment in the development of collegiate athletics. It is, perhaps, the inevitable result of the financial behemoth college sports has become, all while straining to keep the evil, corrupting influence of cash away from the athletes who everyone is buying tickets or tuning in to watch.
Thank goodness the athletic programs and those who lead them are immune from such influences and can handle the piles of money now changing hands.
It should come as no surprise something as ludicrous as a college football players union would be an outcome of the multi-billion dollar-a-year industry colleges have created. With the help of ESPN, cable television's ability to penetrate homes with custom-packaged sports programming, and the billions of dollars involved in such arrangements, is it any wonder more attorneys are involved and people are angling for their piece of the pie?
And I don't fault the players. They didn't create this system. They're just saying they deserve to wet their beaks a little from the abundance arising from an industry in which they play the central role.
But last week's decision pulled back the curtain on the increasingly tenuous connection between pursuit of education and the athletic programs that once thrived by giving people who wanted a college education the opportunity to pay for it by playing football, basketball and other sports. Today, they are athletes who must attend college classes to maintain their eligibility to play.
Today, when someone says something is good for the game, that usually translates into a dollar figure.
Many years ago, as a columnist and reporter for the Hot Springs Sentinel-Record, I offered up an idea: Let the NFL pay for the expenses of operating athletic programs for the nation's top football programs. Let the NBA pay for basketball programs at the nation's top schools for hoops. At the time, it seemed they were basically farm systems for the majors, to which the exceptional players "graduated" once they proved themselves in the college ranks.
Circumstances have changed a lot since then. College conferences are now making more money in a year than they did over 10 a few decades ago. Conference commissioners and athletic directors (who really don't need the burden of coaching experience anymore) have been at the forefront of turning college sports into big business.
But is that the experience fans want? Are Saturdays meant to just be a mini-me version of the NFL? Many fans love the college football and basketball experience because it at least seems the athletes are competing out of a sense of school spirit and what should be a welcome chance to improve one's education and future opportunities.
Turn the experience into a cash-oriented, player-unionizing experience and many fans will rightly conclude there's little difference between the pros and the so-called amateurs.
In a column by William C. Rhoden in the New York Times last week, George Mason coach Paul Hewitt said he feared the long-term impact of the NLRB ruling.
"My fear is that schools will say, 'O.K., we'll give you some money, you can come play for us, but the education part of it is going to be out of the equation,' " Hewitt said. "People really undersell just how much education these athletes get."
They're getting an education, all right, but it's not one that ends up earning them a college degree.
Commentary on 03/31/2014