The argument against paying NCAA football and basketball players that the NCAA and schools can't make

There seems to be a movement among some college sports fans who can’t embrace the idea of paying players that the least the NCAA can do is allow those players to take endorsement money. I’m not sure precisely how I feel about applying that idea in the current environment, but for now I’d like to point out there is A reasonable logic to “maintaining amateurism” and preventing endorsements based on athletic ability — the NCAA and school administrations are simply in no position to defend that logic, because they’re ************** and ******** of hypocrisy.

The argument would go something like this: <rhetorical>Schools exist to educate. Intercollegiate athletics are non-essential to schools’ mission to educate. “Amateurism” is to protect against academic malfeasance.

If a student attended, say, Boston College solely because he was there to play football, and he was paid money to play football, whether that’s by the school or an outside entity, that cheapens the value of a Boston College education by making football the reason that student is there. That’s the sort of environment in which academic cheating happens, because the education becomes something to be endured or worked around in order to play sports.

The current scholarship-for-play model is based on the idea that the scholarship is the most valuable part of the transaction, and Bobby Middle Linebacker has chosen to attend BC because of BC, not because BC is a way station to something else.</rhetorical>

We know that’s not how big-time NCAA sports actually work, but I can see the principles behind it.

College education and the NCAA

There may be a way to kill the NCAA — corrupt institution that deserves to be dynamited — and at the same time address the problem of skyrocketing college costs. I can’t be the first person to think of this, but I could be one of a relative few who would be perfectly happy jettisoning the NCAA in the service of improving universities’ finances and, by extension, their students’.

This would have to start with a public university system, which could then lead to changes at private institutions.

1 — Beef up the junior colleges. Under this plan, junior colleges will become equal partners with full universities.

2 — In the public university system, allow any student who lives in a junior college’s “district” to attend, like an optional public high school. Students may fail and fail and fail, but because it’s optional, they can keep coming back and trying to earn their credits and paying their tuition. It’s key to create “districts” for JUCOs because…

3 — *Deep breath* Make the full universities in the public system only responsible for the final two (standard) years of college education; that is, they will only offer major-specific classes. Admissions to these schools will still be competitive, but will be based on students’ performance in junior college.

Junior colleges can offer their Associate Degrees and a litany of general education and prerequisite classes for a fraction of the cost that full universities charge for those same classes. Leverage that.

Students who test out of prerequisite classes in high school wouldn’t have to take those junior college classes. Some would probably end up at full universities a semester, or even a year early. That’s great!

You know what else is great? If private schools followed the public schools’ lead, there might pop up a bunch of new, competitive, private junior colleges. It would be a whole new tier of education, but one predicated on the idea that the first two years of university could fairly be a lot cheaper than the third and fourth years.

And a happy byproduct would be that with only two-ish years of attendance from students, the “upper” universities wouldn’t be able to field competitive NCAA sports teams, and so it wouldn’t be worth it to keep competing.

Of course, some interests would want JUCOs to affiliate with “upper” schools so that, say, someone attending San Francisco City College and another person attending San Francisco State University would be able to play on the same sports team, but in my fantasy, the legislation creating this tiered system prohibits such partnerships.

Snickerdoodle cake on Flickr.

UNC Wilmington graduation cake FTW.