Op Ed: College Basketball's Poisonous Pie
The players aren't the greedy ones.
The following does not represent the views of Halves Not Quarters nor its editorial board.
The two-headed monster that define college basketball’s current apocalypse are that of player compensation, as the college basketball world is exposed to the free market, and heightened transfer activity, as the lack of collective bargaining within that free market leaves players with essentially perpetual free agency and informal, at-will employment. While this has been a boon for the financial enrichment and personal freedom of college basketball players, once subjects of draconian restrictions and hypocritical exploitation by the schools, these changes have wrought significant damage to the sport. Not for the schools themselves, mind you, but for the fans of their basketball teams. In fact, the schools have found a way to continue making millions off of unpaid labor, shifting the burden of expectation onto fans, alumni, and boosters through the Name, Image, and Likeness scheme. It’s humiliating to look back just a few years and see people like myself welcome NIL with open arms as we were sold a naïve dream of offensive lineman starring in beef commercials and an Xbox game with real names. Instead, we’ve been given a system where fans must pretend to celebrate mercenary players whose names they’ve only known for two months and foot the bill for the privilege.
Many fans deride the players themselves for their open greed and disloyalty. I get frustrated when fans call the players greedy: they aren’t. All they’re asking for is a reasonable slice of the massive pie that these universities have been devouring for years. The players aren’t greedy: the schools are. The universities sit on their high horse and preen about the beauty of amateurism and the value of education while they rake in billions of dollars, raise their applicant pools, and ignore the academic deficiency, disinterest, and disobedience of star athletes so long as they keep bringing home the bacon. It’s true that the players are fortunate; almost any kid in America would take their spot in a heartbeat for free if offered. It’s not true that the players are undeserving; so long as there is a pie to be eaten, the chefs that make it so sweet should get a rather large slice to themselves.
My problem is with the universities who insist on baking that pie even as tuition skyrockets and the value of a degree plummets. The idea that any of this has value to higher education is laughable. For any school like mine racking their brains about how to get students more invested in their teams, try taking some of that athletics revenue and putting it towards a general tuition fund. Or, maybe just pay the damn players yourself instead of kowtowing to the demands of the oil barons who will.
College sports could still be something really special: the platonic ideal of sport for sport’s sake, without all the trappings of professionalism and profit. Don’t pay the players, don’t give them special treatment, and spend the money you make selling popcorn on hiring geography professors. Play your historic rivals, other nearby schools that fans have friends and family connections with, or charity tournaments that bring alumni together in exotic locales. Prevent players from financially enriching themselves by participating; when the best players complain, direct them to the NBA’s G-League Ignite program, the Euroleague’s developmental teams, or the Overtime Elite social media league. Make it clear that college basketball belongs to the tradition of sacrifice, loyalty, and amateurism that fans loved and respected. But, that would require the monstrosities that we call public universities to display the smallest amount of restraint when it comes to self-aggrandizement and personal enrichment. The serious people say that the NCAA can’t enforce any of the rules we want because they keep getting the pants sued off of them in court. Maybe they wouldn’t if they weren’t making so much damn money off of this whole scheme.
The fear, of course, is that fans don’t actually want that. I’m just an outdated purist, Ohio State Inc. versus 0regon every year is actually what the fans want to see, not 0regon’s rivalry with Oregon State which was so intense that they called it the Civil War, until that name too was deemed a threat to marketability. I’m skeptical that this is the case. If college basketball fans cared about watching the best basketball, they would watch the NBA. If college football fans cared about watching the best football, they’d wait until Sunday. College basketball has always been a sport where the name on the front of the jersey has mattered more than the name on the back. There’s an irresistible appeal of watching your alma mater or your summer camp take on the world as thousands of drunken 20 year olds muster them on with a deafening din. The idea that this would lose its appeal if the average player shot 29% from three instead of 32% from three is farcical. We moved the three point line back recently; we can move it closer again if we must. Arenas have gotten larger; they can get smaller again (in fact, most fans prefer their stuffy old fieldhouse to their sleek, modern arena; just ask anyone who went to Maryland or North Carolina.) All of this, of course, would require the modern American university to lose a major revenue stream and source of prestige, so it will never, ever, happen.
Maybe I sound like some radical pinko here, but all I’m asking for is that universities act in the manner in which they were created. If universities were companies, I’d have no problem with what they’re doing; the point is that they weren’t supposed to be, they were supposed to have the freedom to act outside the bounds of profitability and ruthless capitalist efficiency. Instead, they’ve welcomed market forces in with open arms. Curricula are changed based on what jobs are popular, grade inflation soars to keep parents paying, and energy drinks with godforsaken metals in them are dropped on every student’s desk like some kind of modern day opium war.
College basketball is in a unique position to operate outside of the confines of profitability and business interests. I think that’s the only hope college basketball has. The more college basketball is forced to reflect the boring, legal realities of operating as a professional sports league, the less differentiation it will have from other sports and leagues, and the less reason fans will have to watch it instead. The fewer times a La Salle beats a Kansas, or hell, even plays a Kansas, the less reason anyone who went to La Salle has to bother worrying about what kind of a season Kansas is having. If Kansas pays their players millions more than you do, if those players didn’t dream of being a Jayhawk, and if those players are 35 years old, what’s the point of all of this? Again, the NCAA can’t enforce any of the restrictions that make college basketball unique because they keep losing in court. The NCAA keeps losing in court because they are making money on this. Until that changes, college basketball is doomed to a slow death as more and more of its former fans no longer see any reason to watch worse basketball players do the exact same things as the NBA.
That’s the most frustrating part of this whole situation to me; I’m being told that greed and moneyed interests are the driving force behind these sweeping changes, and, yet, for the life of me, I can’t figure out how destroying everything that made college basketball unique will make them any money. I’m not going to name any names, but it reminds me of another vindictive regime dismantling things that people enjoy with the explicit purpose of greed, and not even making any money in the process. Greed is not inherently profitable, no matter what some guy with slicked back hair in an 80’s movie said, and thus things cannot be justified on the sole grounds of greed unless the underlying reasoning supports the profitability of the decision. There’s a certain kind of person that believes smart people are those who make hard decisions which upset people in order to do what must be done, and begin to think that if they just make decisions which upset people that it must inherently be the right thing to do.
In the past, there have been plenty of paying leagues around the world that had no restrictions on young players joining their ranks and audiences hungry for the best talent their money can buy. So, why did recruits always choose to play college basketball for free? Because it did provide value to them. Scholarships are valuable, a chance to play on TV every night is worthwhile, and a built in support network for any future professional endeavor, or, hell, just never having a buy a drink in town again is desirable. It just all felt too glib when the universities themselves got to have their cake and eat it too. Until our alma maters stop using college athletics as a way to fill out their bankroll, launder their image, and get more suckers through the door, I won’t blame the athletes for feeling a little left out. Delicious pie doesn’t cook itself.
