No Minimum Wage in NCAA Sports

If you follow sports at all, you certainly know by now that Reggie Bush, standout running back at the University of Southern California, Heisman Trophy winner and first-round draft choice of the New Orleans Saints, allegedly received financial benefits while attending USC. This is, of course, a violation of NCAA terms and may strike his college statistics and Heisman Trophy from the record books. If Bush did what the allegations suggest, i.e. - receive cash and various gifts from sports marketing companies and sports agents while attending USC, then he is indeed guilty of cheating the “system”. But to make this story about Reggie Bush, as sensational as his name does make it, is to entirely miss the point. Or, as Rick Maese of the Baltimore Sun puts it:

Bush’s alleged transgressions are just a little chest cold. You have to follow the roots to the core to see how bad the cancer really is.

No, the only thing cheated was the system, this antiquated house of cards that cashes big checks every year off the hard work of talented young athletes who don’t see a dime. It’s a billion-dollar industry in which the labor costs are always zero. Malaysian sweatshops look at the NCAA with envy.

In this country, a teenager can have a singing career, can work construction, can join the Army, but because of a cartel agreement between the NCAA and the NFL, he has to give away his services to the NCAA for two years before he can make any money. Does that make any sense?

The answer, of course, is “no”, it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. There was a time when athletes were said to be “paid” for their athletic endeavors by receiving a free education via a scholarship. But the 1960s (or is it the 1950s?) are now over and schools receive millions of dollars by touting their young athletes, especially football players, who work for free and risk never seeing a dime as professionals if one tweak of the knee or blow to the chest knocks them out of the payday lottery that is the annual NFL draft.

This system would be perfectly acceptable if gifted athletes coming out of high school had other options. The agreement between the NFL and the NCAA, however, dictates that athletes must be 20 years old to be drafted and further “discourages” the existence of minor league football leagues that could also feed the NFL quality players. In essence, if you are a talented high school football player and want to play professionally in the NFL, you had better go to college and play for at least two years (for free) and pay your dues (while your school gets paid millions) and risk getting hurt (which your school doesn’t care about at all, other than that it stops the gravy train for them) and THEN you can play in the NFL.

Are professional athletes spoiled, socially undeveloped, good-for-nothing-else miscreants? Some of them are. Does paying college athletes bring into question the integrity of college sports? Well…it would, if that hadn’t happened long ago. So, what’s the answer?

I don’t have one - but what I DO know is that this story isn’t about Reggie Bush at all, despite the fact that the media are salivating over it and won’t let it drop until there is another big-name football player involved in some illegal activity. I also don’t expect that these facts will help launch an investigation and overhaul of the NCAA/NFL “system”. After all, the colleges and the NFL keep getting rich in the current arrangement, and have so much power that they couldn’t possibly want to see things change. Until things DO change, however, college athletes will have to keep working for less than minimum wage.

Tags: minimum wage, ncaa recruiting, nfl salaries

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