11/24/2010: One of the sadder aspects of college athletics is the resemblance to slavery. The coaches earn millions, while the players get subsistence. Slave owners were able to do this because they owned the slaves and had a brutal system of enforcers to prevent the slaves from bargaining for more, or fleeing to better opportunities.
In college athletics coaches are the owners and the NCAA plays the role of overseer and sheriff. The Cam Newton affair is one example. This guy’s crime was trying to keep a few hundred thousand of the millions he is earning for his coach. The NCAA is coming down hard on him. The NCAA investigation of LaMichael James is another example. James’s crime? Someone lent him a car. If you are an NCAA athlete you are forbidden from even talking to a coach from another team – because he might make you a better offer. Cash offers are the worst – because more money for the players means less money for the coaches.
Here in Oregon, sports agents have been secretly meeting with players, giving them a little cash, helping them look around for better deals. Sort of like Harriet Tubman. People like that need to be taught their place.
So the NCAA has been trying to get states to adopt laws to prevent this. According to the Oregonian, Senate leader Peter Courtney is going along with them. Not just internal NCAA rules, but actual state laws, enforced by the Attorney General at state expense, with penalties, to prevent people from talking to other people about better employment offers. And now Attorney General Kroger has taken sides – the side of the owners.
Have these people ever heard of competition and free markets? Sure they have – the coaches know a few things about competition, I’ve heard. And they also know how to use the NCAA to crush their players’s ability to use competition to make a few bucks for themselves.
So why is the state government helping the coaches instead of the players? Skybox tickets.
Be First to Comment