There is a movement aimed at stopping players from making choices.
The men’s college basketball season comes to an end with the Michigan-Connecticut championship game in Indianapolis, Indiana. The contest will take place in a cavernous publicly funded football stadium with tens of thousands of seats and it isn’t cheap to attend the game. And the event comes complete with corporate parties. Local politicians spend as much as they can on the public dime to make the people who run the NCAA feel good. There will also be some news release explaining just how much money flowed into the Indianapolis market which is never questioned. Everyone seems to be making money off this event except the players. None of the money goes to them. They are the show. Some of the players can make money from marketing partnerships but most college players are not getting lucrative marketing deals. And the White House and the people who run the college sports industry want that to change. It seems that the power brokers want to go back to a simpler time when “student-athletes” took golden handshakes, no show jobs and the schools were in control of them.
The term “student-athlete” has been used to deny college players in all sports benefits such as salary and long-term health care from injuries suffered on the field whether in practice or in a game. Courts pretty much routinely upheld the college side of things in lawsuits filed by severely injured players or survivors of players killed on the field. Schools should not have to pay workman’s compensation or long-term health care costs because the athlete is a student not an employee of the school. The NCAA does not want the student-athletes to become employees. The coaches get millions, athletic directors’ bonuses. The players? Some may make millions while others may get a ring. The college industry wants to turn back the clock.
Evan Weiner’s books are available at iTunes – https://books.apple.com/us/author/evan-weiner/id595575191
Evan can be reached at evan_weiner@hotmail.com
