Antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA

Bob,

I think you hit the nail on the head here. The schools value protecting the brand above everything else. They use paternalistic concerns for the "student-athletes" as an excuse and the fans, media, coaches, administrators, tv networks, and advertisers who are feasting on the pie gladly play along.

If the "free market" were allowed to be free even in the limited since you suggest, what would happen? In the short term, some athletes would profit immensely while most would be unaffected. In the long term, the superstar college athletes would continue to profit immensely because they would be getting their true value rather than a twin-sized bed and a four-year (or less) stay at a luxury resort in exchange for their work. The overall brand of college athletics would be damaged and the pie would shrink for: overpaid head coaches, overpaid assistant coaches, overpaid and bloated athletics support staffs, bloated conference office staffs, NCAA administrators, prestigious university team brands, the media who cover teams and the networks who broadcast them, the merchandisers who profit off team brand apparel, etc.

In the free market parlance those people would be called "moochers". So, what do the moochers do? They conspire to defend an indefensible system. They conspire to hold down the individual superstar for the greater common benefit of the many. Marx would approve.

 

Except there's not a greater common benefit for many. A certain select group is still profiting off the labor of the majority. The workers aren't owning the means of production,as Marx would put it.

If anything, if the pie would shrink down to near nothing because of a damaged brand, then college athletics could get back to what the NCAA says they're supposed to be: pure amateur games for fun, with winning not being emphasized and players and coaches on teams for fun and school pride, instead of the quasi-pro spectacles they are today.

 

That never *really* happened with Marxism either, if I'm not mistaken.

 

Surely there are professional athletes taking college classes. Lots of em.

 

You know the NCAA can survive right? Just let the kids who want to be pros go pro; then dial down the facilities/bowls/festivities commensurate with the talent level and pump all those profits truly back into the schools for the whole student body and faculty to enjoy. You will then get truly student-athletes; like the Ivy League. Oh yeah, one other thing, no more athletic scholarships.

 

The fact that the new NBA commish wants to make kids wait two years out of high school is going to make this thing all the more hilarious. It could possibly, maybe, eventually even lead to one of John Calipari's players attending a class.

 

Alma, name me another profession in which a traditional college student is forbidden from monetizing his or her craft. One.

 

The NCAA always says they want the athletes to be treated as the same as other students. Well, other students are allowed to make money off their name even when they are participating in extracurricular activities.

 

A traditional college student can play professional sports. To the extent they couldn't, it wouldn't the college's choice to make it so. College don care about your side jobs.

The NCAA is not compulsory.

 

You can't. There is no equivalent for student-athletes. Biology, chemistry, computer science, physics and engineering students can take the summer and go work for Pfizer, Apple, Microsoft, NASA, Boeing and make tons of money, if they can. Come back to school in the fall and continue classes, even on scholarship. But not student-athletes. But I also can't think of a field of employment today (outside the arts) where a high school student can enter the job market at the top. Not a plumber, not a HVAC tech and certainly not in the sciences. Is there a Lebron James of letters? A supremely gifted high school graduate who wrote exquisitely well and was financially successful immediately.

Inter-collegiate Athletics is unique.

 

Name me another extracurricular activity that imposes amateurism. There has to be one, right?

Look, I know how you feel about money. But it's not like nobody is making money here. There is money coming in. Do you just think the athletes are more honorable because they don't get a cut? Camel through the eye of a needle, etc.?

 

Nothing prevented Kobe Bryant from enrolling in college, only playing basketball for the school.