Exploitation in the Sports Industry

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) players deserve to make money. Yes, they are “student-athletes”, students first and then athletes, and yes, athletics is a university extracurricular just like the arts, carnival and student government. Yet, there is a fundamental difference between athletics, NCAA athletics specifically, and these other valuable university experiences: billions of dollars are made off them without their explicit consent, and for the most part, without any compensation. In fact, different organizations over the years, including the NCAA, have identified the cost of recognizing student-athletes’ worth for years, which has lead them to adopt policies that cause the athletes to live in poverty, while the organizations enrich themselves off their labor.The National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) is the predominant organization managing college level athletics in the United States. It was first established in 1906 with 62 participating institutions and has grown until today, at which point it currently consists of 1,281 institutions and over 400,000 athletes. It develops and attempts to enforce the regulations that govern everything from play review, to athletic recruitment and to coaches’ salaries. While it legally has non-profit organizational status, in 2010 it brought in approximately $750 million in revenues. Pretty much, it’s kind of a big deal in college sports, and if you want to be part of any real competition, you have to go through them.They’re also the organization that coined the term “student-athlete”, and I’m afraid to say, it wasn’t out of love. In fact, according to former NCAA Executive Director Walter Byers, the NCAA created the term because it was scared of, “the dreaded motion that NCAA athletes could be identified as employees by the state industrial commissions and the courts”. In essence, the NCAA created the term so that they wouldn’t have to pay participating athletes. Of course, it gets worse – the majority of these athletes (in high revenue creating sports) are actually forced to play (work) for the NCAA.The NCAA uses its power as the governing organization of the large majority of college sports to pressure the different professional associations and leagues into adopting rules that help the NCAA maintain their revenue streams. In 2005, the NBA adopted the rule that players must be at least one year removed from their high school graduation to be drafted. The NFL requires that players be three years removed from their high school graduation. Sure, these future athletes technically have the choice to play somewhere other than college, but what are their real options? Play in Europe? That’s the the wrong kind of football. That option is more favorable for basketball players, but their NBA draft stock then drops dramatically, causing a massive reduction in rookie earnings potential (see: Brandon Jennings, Jeremy Tyler). By the way, it’s probably not a coincidence that the NFL, more than any other league, requires players to basically finish college – guess which NCAA sport provides between 40-45% of the NCAA’s revenue.

Some people might counterpoint by saying student-athletes do get paid, through athletic scholarships! Well, I took a look at the numbers, and I’ll let you decide if this “compensation” is fair. Let’s take the University of Alabama, a pretty big football school in the NCAA. Full tuition for a non-resident (residents are less than half this) is around $11,000 per semester. Including living expenses, etc., the university estimates it costs around $18,000 per semester. That seems like a pretty good deal, if you’re getting all that covered. Of course, then you take a look at the numbers and realize the University of Alabama took in around $70 million in revenue from the NCAA last year. Oh, and they paid their football coach around $4.5 million. Suddenly, your 0.05% cut doesn’t seem as equitable, especially since NCAA regulations prohibit athletes from selling any personal athletic attire, accepting gifts (for example, dinners from fans) and pretty much anything that might actually benefit a student-athlete personally. The NCAA refuses to give these student-athletes lunch money, and then removes their ability to make any on their own.

NCAA athletes can’t catch a break anywhere else either. EA sports makes millions of dollars off of college-related sports games. How much do NCAA athletes off these deals? Nothing.  Fortunately for future NCAA athletes, former NCAA athletes recently sued Electronic Arts to recover the claimed losses. Under the law in Indiana, where the NCAA is headquartered, claimants could be awarded $1000 per image for every platform. Limiting the calculations to solely basketball and football players would result in total damage awards of $334.5 million. The law also allows for this amount to be trebled should the infraction have been done knowingly, adding up to approximately $1 billion. Unfortunately for future NCAA athletes, they lost the case, which is actually pretty interesting, if you look at previous precedents.

In 1974, Colonel Sanders sued Kentucky Fried Chicken for using his image to promote products he didn’t invent (for the record, the founder called the new gravy “wallpaper paste”). Kentucky Fried Chicken tried to countersue – but it never finished in court. Instead, KFC settled with the Colonel and paid him the cool sum of $1 million. And this was after he’d already allegedly sold the rights to his image in the original sale – it’s a shame these athletes didn’t hire his lawyer.

The idea of owning one’s own image is a popular one and an interesting one, but probably not really grounded in law. Appear in the public domain, and anyone can legally take a quick snapshot. People can even take video of you, as long as there’s no sound. When we as students accept McGill University’s entrance offer and enter the school, we actually give the rights to our own images and allow the university to take advantage of them for promotional and other purposes. I know this was the case at my high school as well. This definitely brings up some interesting questions. The most important one: don’t judge a university, a game and especially a book by its cover, since the cover may not even want to endorse the content it represents.