The Madness of March

 

This column takes pride in bringing to light the truest truth. Saint Patrick was no saint. Spring Break is neither in the spring nor is it, for anyone with kids, a break.

But every once in a while, a name does capture the moment. Sometimes they nail it. Thus, I give you: March Madness. The Madness of March, of course, comes ‘round every year, smack in the middle of March. The NCAA holds two basketball tournaments (men and women) for the top 64 schools that qualify. Teams compete. Players leave it all on the court. Blood, sweat, and tears. 63 teams will fall short. One team will be crowned this year’s best. There will be nail biters, upsets. Titans will fall. Upstarts will demand your attention. Games will go down to the wire. How can you not tune in?

And, according to multiple sources, the NCAA makes about a billion dollars on this little tournament. According to NPR, the NCAA funnels about two-thirds of that back to the schools. Which sounds like a lot. But you know what’s also a lot of money? A third of a billion dollars.

There’s also revenue to be made from filling up those stands with paying fans. Really good seats to the Final Four will run you about $2250 on Ticketmaster. Of course, great seats are a bit more, closer to $7K. You might want to wear your team’s jersey, which is available from Nike, Adidas, etc. for about a hundred bucks. Don’t worry. There are plenty of corporate sponsorships to go around. Of course, the hospitality industry cleans up in every host city. Hotels are booked solid at well-above-market rates. Everyone’s ready to party so restaurants and bars are at capacity. Entire cities cash in. We should acknowledge that the schools take the biggest cut. They get paid based on their performance. The better they do in the tournament, the more money they make. And the coaches take home their slice of the pie. According to USA Today, the average salary for a FBS head coach salary is about $2.7 million and 36 basketball head coaches made at least that. Heck, John Calipari makes a little over $8 million a year. In college sports, everybody makes money!!

Well, okay, not everybody.

Everybody but the players. Well, I mean they do get paid a little bit. Most players are on an athletic scholarship, so they’re paid not with money but with opportunity. The opportunity to attend the school. Although, let’s be clear. They’re not paid to actually attend school. They’re not paid to go to class. Or study. Unless you count studying the tapes of their opponents. These players are paid to play ball. And then go to school. And that’s absolutely worth something.

Some even say an education is priceless. Which is a nice thought. Except the price tag for attending college is right there on their website. Tuition, room and board, books and other fees do cost money. But it’s not priceless. And, for an admitted student, they can pay that price and go to that institution.

So, it’s not hard to determine the market value of that athletic scholarship. Except… an athlete can’t choose the courses he wants if the course conflicts with practice, training, games, etc. Say, for example, an athlete wants to study computer science, but the class meets during the morning weight training. Sorry, Bub. His second choice is Pre-Med. Alas, the labs are during the afternoon practice. Rats. Don’t worry. The school has thought of this and arranged for one very passable discipline for the athletes to attend and pass. Hooray for Sports Marketing! It may not be the athletes first, second or third choice. But, hey, it is a major. And eight out ten athletes will even get a degree.

So, the price of an education is one thing. An athletic scholarship is another, smaller, lesser thing.

So, why can’t we pay the players market value? Because they’re amateurs. Their amateur status is essential to the purity of the sport. If we paid them anything, then the sport wouldn’t be pure. College sport is pure because the only people making money are the people making money, the biggest slice goes to the schools and the NCAA. Hey, I bet you the NCAA can tell you exactly how pure sport is… to the penny. The NCAA will tell you that if you paid the players, they will play with less purity. They will play for something dirty and impure – like money.

In the olden days, like two years ago, college sports were so pure that an athlete couldn’t even sign an autograph for money or accept a bag of groceries without having his eligibility revoked. Now that’s pure. And it’s hard to argue that if all the power is in one place, like the NCAA and the schools, that’s pure. If power is spread out, that’s less pure. Sadly, in 2021, the Supreme Court (in a 9-0 vote) said the NCAA was violating antitrust laws and forced the NCAA to allow the athletes to make money off their Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL). So now college sport is less pure. (Sad face) Now athletes can get a side hustle endorsing everything from local restaurants to sport drinks. But the neatest thing about NIL deals is that what used to be done in back alleys, things like giving players envelopes full of money, cars, etc. is now done out in the open. In fact, NIL deals are now just a recruiting tool and an arms race at that! Of course, many in power are terribly concerned that bad actors will take advantage of these young, naïve folks. Leave the money making to the professionals, kiddos.

Of course, NIL is just a side hustle. Their first job is playing ball. And winning. But they don’t get paid for that. It’d be like if I held a tennis tournament like the US Open, something that I made, say, a billion dollars on, and told the players that they could make all the money they wanted – on the side, selling, say, shoes or rackets or whatever, but the players would be playing the tournament for the glory!

Fun fact. This is the second time the Supreme Court ruled against the NCAA. In 1984 the Supreme Court ruled that the NCAA violated antitrust laws by trying to control the number of times a school could be on television. You gotta feel for the NCAA. It’s really hard to be a cartel in a free market society.

Just who is the NCAA? Well, the NCAA is a nonprofit, here solely for the athlete. I mean, the student. Well, the student who plays sports at a high enough level that the NCAA can profit off them. (You should see what the NCAA makes on football season.) In fact, NCAA president, Mark Emmert, makes an annual salary of $2.9 million.

Mark Emmert’s job is really hard. Mark Emmert has to explain why it is absolutely essential that the very real money fans pay to see athletes compete should absolutely not go to the athletes. None of it. Not one penny. Mark Emmert must explain why everyone else, especially the NCAA should make money but if the athletes that are actually putting the fans in the seats got paid, that would be exploiting them! And no one exploits athletes on the NCAA’s watch!! The most difficult part of Mark Emmert’s job is not that he has to say this with a straight face, although I imagine it’s challenging, but that he must also twist the knife by adding that the NCAA will never pay athletes because they’re not really athletes at all. They’re just kids.

You see? It’s for the children. It’s all about the children. And, that thing Whitney Houston said about the children are our future is very true.

Here’s a fun thought experiment. Do you think the system would be different if the majority of these players were white? Do you think the system has something to do with the fact that a college scholarship is a big, big deal to economically disadvantaged athletes?

Speaking of economically disadvantaged, a few of the most decorated college coaches of all times have even taken their college fame and success to the big leagues, you know, where they pay the players. Sadly, Urban Meyer, Nick Saban, Matt Rhule aren’t household names in the NFL. Nor is Rick Pitino in the NBA. Some might conclude that motivating poor, needy boys of color is different than motivating equals, men. People with rights. And a paycheck. You know, people with options.

The NCAA calls them student-athletes, but some people think if these kids are required to work a certain number of hours every week for a certain number of years for no pay, well, then that’s indentured servitude. But no one wants to watch indentured servants compete. They want to watch gladiators fight to the death! Oh, wait. I’ve just learned gladiators were mostly slaves. So nevermind, I guess.

So, let’s end with a question. An eighteen-year-old kid is old enough to be tried as an adult, to vote, to die for his country. But this nation says he’s not old enough to have a beer. And the NCAA says he cannot make money from his basketball or football because he’s not an adult. So, when is he an adult? When it’s convenient… for us?

This is indeed madness. And it is March. Some may say: Hey, I thought this column was supposed to be funny? Look, this is funny. Some things are so funny they make you want to cry.