The NCAA’s Fleeting Facade of Amateurism

“[Amateurism]’s one of the most fundamental principles of the NCAA and intercollegiate athletics. They have always seen and assumed that intercollegiate athletics is about the notion that these are members of the student body. They’re not hired employees conducting games for entertainment. They’re not a random group of folks that just come together to play sports.”

—National Collegiate Athletic Association President Mark Emmert.

The NCAA is a corrupt institution that operates under the fantastical guise of “amateurism”. In reality, however, amateurism at the NCAA Division 1 level is a sham. The NCAA’s stranglehold on so-called “student-athletes” is outdated and ridiculous.

---

Amateurism is an outdated ideal that no longer has a place in significant modern sports. Amateurism is the notion that competitors play their sport solely for the intrinsic value of playing their sport. Furthermore, rules in amateur sports are supposed to benefit those playing the game as opposed to those observing it. However amateurism is an outdated remnant of a past time when television and gate revenues did not exist.

As first noted by Eric Dunning almost 20 years ago, there is a growing schism in modern sports. He suggests that amateur sports are disappearing as sports have become so prized by society that many people seem to have a religious devotion to them. Dunning discusses the fall of amateurism in modern sports by mentioning the British Rugby Football Union (RFU). The RFU has struggled since the late 1800’s to uphold its pure amateur values as the number of spectators and the reliance of clubs on commercial and spectator revenues have grown. Additionally, the increase in spectators, hiring of full-time officials, allegations of players being paid, and the proliferation of leagues and cups have destroyed the once proud amateurism present in the RFU. However, the RFU still lays claim to the amateurism of its athletes, even though these players do most of the heavy lifting in increasing the profit margins of the RFU. This claim of amateurism is merely just that—a claim. The real motive behind the RFU’s insistence on their athletes being recognized as amateurs is greed for the RFU does not want to hand over the athletes’ fair share of the pot to them. The reprehensible actions of the RFU are not too dissimilar from the actions of an organization across the pond—the NCAA.

---

Eager fans gather to watch Texas A&M’s Heisman-winning star quarterback Johnny Manziel.

The NCAA shares a striking number of similarities to the RFU. Not unlink the RFU, the creation of conferences has swept the NCAA—10 now exist in Division 1 football and 30 in Division 1 basketball. Moreover, some NCAA athletes receive pay. The NCAA also has thousands of full-time paid officials, including a commissioner who makes almost $2 million a year! In college basketball and football, there are even rules created specifically to cater to advertisers. All of these attributes are in violation of amateurism and should not occur in an establishment that considers itself amateur.

The NCAA claims that players do not bring in significant revenue; however, it is clear that consumers’ interests are drawn to the players. Meanwhile, television contracts for NCAA athletic competitions are shooting through the roof, bringing in billions of dollars of revenue to the NCAA, of which the players see almost nothing. Student-athletes in football devote between 40 and 50 hours per week into their sport. At the same time that the NCAA’s profit margins are expanding greatly, the players receive almost nothing besides their scholarships while putting in the same amount of hours per week into their sport as someone does with their full-time job.

 

These players don’t sound like your typical college students, or your typical amateur athlete. They describe this drill as something of a “make-or-break” ordeal—there is much more at stake than just the intrinsic value of playing football. These players sound like professionals with their jobs at risk if they fail to perform up to standards on a drill that encourages all-out physical participation. The lack of amateurism in collegiate athletics has diminished as the level of intensity of its participants has grown. College athletics are intense, and college athletes are being ignored.

It is easy to see that NCAA amateur student-athletes are not really amateurs. They are professionals who do not get to bear the fruits of their labor because of the totalitarian regime of the NCAA. If any other employee in any other profession was forced to work and did not get paid, there would be a public outcry over the situation from the get-go. However, the NCAA’s clever ploy of using amateurism as a get out of jail free card worked for decades. Only now is the tide of public opinion beginning to line up with that of what is just.

---

The Northwestern University football team was granted the right to unionize by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). This decision signals that the NLRB recognizes the athletes on the football team as employees, meaning they are entitled to certain employee rights. For the NCAA’s sake, this decision is catastrophic. The NCAA now might be in danger of sharing the hundreds of millions of dollars it has generated off of the hard work and struggles of university athletes with those same athletes. College athletes still have a few hurdles to jump over in the legal and collective bargaining realms, but it is entirely possible that some day in the near future college athletics as we know them will be gone, and a new generation of student-athletes who are treated equitably will emerge.

College athletes deserve compensation–not only in the form of a paycheck, but also in healthcare, stipends and travel costs. Just because college athletes are young does not make them dumb; they recognize the changing current and are chomping at the bit to capitalize on it. The NCAA’s claims of amateurism are ridiculous and invalid. Hopefully, and soon, a number of other university sports teams will join in and decide to unionize.