Ah yes, here we are at the conclusion of another wonderful college football season. And like so many seasons that preceded this one, we are left, not with fond memories of great games played by hard-charging student athletes, but the carnage of wrecked lives, overt corruption, physical abuse, and of course, unbridled greed. Isn't it fitting that the most lasting memory of the 2009 collegiate season was not the Alabama Texas game, but the flight of USC's Pete Carroll to the Seattle Sea Hawks for a truckload of cash. And, like so many of his peers, Carroll has timed his departure to narrowly escape an avalanche of NCAA sanctions against the USC football program. Don't be too embarrassed, USC boosters, at least your coach is not under investigation for brutalizing any of his charges, like the coaches at Texas Tech, Kansas, and South Florida. And besides, you still have your wonderful memories of two national championship teams, even if your Trojans did break a few rules to secure their titles. But at USC Reggie Bush's Escalade and beach house are barely speed bumps, compared to the OJ scandal.
If ever there was a time to step back and evaluate the status of intercollegiate athletics, that time is now. At the Division One level, football and men's basketball are little more than bloated cash cows and subsidized training academies for the NFL and the NBA. Worse, is the fact that ninety-five percent of the exploited athletes will never make a dime as professionals, and more than half of those left behind will not emerge from their schools with a diploma. Most will be quickly forgotten as a new crop of hopefuls arrive on campus next fall. Like so many of America's wounded war veterans, the majority of football and basketball players who have used up their eligibility, will find the people who once cheered for them, could care less about their post-playing lives. Meanwhile the coaches get rich on lucrative endorsements and shoe contracts, the universities rake in millions from TV revenues, and the NCAA takes its cut and turns its back on the people who actually generated all those bucks.
So what to do? Without a doubt, the best solution would be for the NFL and NBA to fund and operate their own minor league systems, like pro baseball does. That would eliminate from the ranks of the college teams all those kids who have no desire to go to school, but are instead looking for a route to the pros. Baseball seems to be getting along just fine with a system like this already in place. And, unlike football and basketball, college baseball players have consistently high graduation rates. But let's be practical. With all the money involved, big time college football and basketball are here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future.
Short an entire overhaul then, perhaps a major tweek or two could work. How about this: every D-1 school still gets all of its scholarships, but instead of discarding players once their eligibility is up, the schools have to keep them on scholarship until they graduate. Further, until a scholarship athlete actually finishes his degree, the athletic department is down one scholarship for a new kid. Thus, if the University of Florida, let's say, has eighty-five football scholarships, but twenty of its football players do not graduate by the time their NCAA eligibility is up, Florida loses those twenty scholarships. Once those kids finish their degree programs, then Florida gets back the scholarships. Right now in the SEC, America's premier college football conference, the graduation rate for football players is a whopping thirty percent overall, and less than twenty percent for black athletes. I bet those numbers would change pretty quickly if the schools were penalized for failing to meet the educational needs of their kids.
Here's another idea. How about establishing a national foundation at the NCAA, where ten percent of all television and bowl revenue is set aside for future medical and educational expenses for the athletes who generated the cash in the first place? Many football related injuries lay dormant for years before they begin to take a toll on the ex-players. Wouldn't it be nice if there was a fund to pay those expenses? And many ex-players who took meaningless classes to remain eligible, may want to go back to school later in life and actually finish their educations. A yearly assessment of ten percent per D-1 school, would very quickly grow into an inexhaustible source of revenue for the players. Both Nick Saban of Alabama and Mack Brown of Texas had huge performance bonuses built into their contracts for getting into the National Championship game. For both coaches the amounts were in excess of two million dollars. But not one dime was set aside for the players.
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