Moola moola!

A few weeks back, I saw a pretty crazy headline in Fortune:

NCAA head warns that 95% of student athletes face extinction if colleges actually have to pay them as employees

Extinction, you say?

Well, not quite. 

What NCAA President Charlie Baker [former governor of Massachusetts, who - for all his vaunted business genius - left behind a transportation system in shambles] had said that the ability of most (that's the 95%) to play sports at a college level would be endangered. Which is not quite same as saying that the athletes themselves will no longer be around to roam their campue gyms, fields, and pools, no longer here on earth to grab a brew and a slice at their favorite college town beer joint.  

Even if college athletes will not exactly be disappearing, the current state of play in the NCAA is pretty interesting.

There are about 1,100 colleges and universities that are member of the NCAA, the governing body for college sports. These schools are split into three divisions (D1 - 350 schools, D2 - 310 schools, and D3 - 438 schools). D1 schools, of course, get most of the attention, as it's D1 teams that play in the big football bowl games and March Madness. Most professional football and basketball players played at D1 schools, and a growing proportion of hockey and baseball players as well. For the NFL and the NBA, the big D1 schools pretty much provide the minor leagues. Hockey and baseball have long histories of bringing players up through their own minor leagues.

D1 schools tend to be large - Rah! Rah! State U! - but there are also smaller schools in the D1, including Holy Cross and the Ivies.

An interesting stat from the NCAA: the proportion of students who are athletes in D1 is 1 in 23; for D2, it's 1 in 10 for D2; and it's 1 in 6 for D3. It's the kids at the D2 and D3 schools - like the cross country team at MIT (D3) - who we tend to think of as "student-athletes," even though there are plenty of kids playing sports at D1 schools - especially the kids involved in sports where there doesn't tend to be a lucrative sports after-life - who are more student than athlete. 

The NCAA has made plenty of headlines over the past few years with respect to their decision to allow student athletes to be compensated for the use of their Name, Image, and License (NIL). The NCAA had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the NIL era, and the drag-in occurred only after a lot of the states that have powerhouse D1 schools started enacting laws okaying it.

NIL recognizes the fact that some schools are largely minor league/stepping stone home for their athletes, and that these schools make a ton of money off the backs of the kids who play on their teams. Only fair to let those kids in on the goldmine that is big-time college athletics. NILdoes allow students even at lowly D3 schools to wet their beaks. But, let's face it, the real lucre is in the schools with the Heisman Trophy players, the teams that go to the Final Four. While it is theoretically possible for, say, an MIT water polo player to make NIL money, there probably aren't that many folks who'd pay for the autograph of the MIT water polo player or use their likeness in an ad campaign. Water polo is, after all, a lesser sport, and D3 is a lesser division. Not to mention that water polo players look plenty dorky in those caps, so there may not be all that many opportunities to sell their NIL. 

Meanwhile, there are all sorts of back and forth, now led by Charlie Baker, about getting Congress to do something about giving the NCAA an antitrust exemption to do whatever it is that they want to do to regulate who's zooming who when it comes to paying student athletes. The NCAA, of course, positions itself as this lofty organization committed to safeguarding all those wholesome student athletes. That's the scrim it operates behind, of course, because IRL they're a cartel wetting their beak in lucrative broadcast contracts - and spending a lot of money lobbying to get Congress to let them do whatever it is that they want to do. 

I use the word "whatever" because I really can't be bothered to try to figure out all the ins and outs.

I'm sure that one of the "whatevers" the NCAA would like Congress' help with is squelching efforts to unionize athletes. 

Should the Dartmouth jocks trying to unionize be considered employees of the school? Oh, FFS, there are probably two Dartmouth athletes playing pro-anything, and while I'm sure that Dartmouth spends plenty of athletics for a variety of recruitment and alumni-jollying reasons, Darthmouth is not exactly rolling in big TV contract money. Not to mention that playing sports at an Ivy League school - even if it did help you get into the school over an applicant with better SATs and AP classes - isn't why most kids choose an Ivy. If you have an Ivy League education you've got yourself pretty much the Willy Wonka Golden Ticket of diplomas. 

But by all means let the Alabama football team pay for the services of their student athletes. 

My gut feeling is that, for decades, the semi-pro schools have been exploiting their semi-pro student athletes, most of who won't make it to the pros and get eye-bulging contracts, and most of who, sadly, won't have gotten much of an education, either.

So I'm fine if the NCAA decided to come up with a super-D1 set "that would allow the schools that make the most money from sports to pay their athletes." (Source: Fortune) Boola boola to that!

I'm also not worried about having to protect the sporting changes of the 95% of kids participating in "lesser" sports, at "lesser" schools like MIT, or the jocks at Darthmouth. Or even the members of the softball team at unheard of schools like Our Lady of the Bathtub.

Frankly, most of what the NCAA is worried about is protecting their moola moola!