A Just Wage

The NCAA's financial disparities are obscene

By Lukas McKnight

Lukas is the director of baseball for Vizual Edge, an industry leader in sports vision evaluation and vision training. Before making a jump to the sports tech space, he worked for the Chicago Cubs for the past 20 seasons as a minor league catcher, scout, crosschecker and front office exec. He writes about baseball and prospects at Peloteros International as well as a freelancer/podcast guest on numerous baseball websites and blogs. In his spare time, he coaches 12u baseball, plays pickleball, and works IT for the writers at The Jesus Creed and Tov Unleashed.

NCAA sports are big business. Bigger than most of us may know. My sources tell me Mike Krzyzewski makes some $7 million per year in salary with some $3 more million in bonuses. How much do his players add to their pocketbooks? Without disputing the value of a college education at Duke University with its network of successful people, the pleasure of celebrity and fame, and the 24-7 attentiveness of tutors, trainers, and sustainers, the players will walk away from the university with nothing in their bank accounts.

The question: Is the NCAA system just?

(Another question for another day: Should educational institutions even have sports teams that have nothing to do with education? Truth be told: my father and I both benefited from athletic scholarships to fund our way through college. I bet you had no idea my dad played basketball. If you do bet, don’t bet against him at the free-throw line.)

Photo by Ben Hershey on Unsplash

The US Supreme Court started hearing the NCAA v Alston case last Wednesday as an anti-trust case. The case concerns whether schools have the right to impose caps on “education-related benefits.” Anyone following along knows this is actually the steady defense by academic institutions of their rights not to pay players. They, after all, are amateurs.

The NCAA continues to defend the quaint idea of “amateurism” while overseeing a multi-billion dollar business with coaches and administrators making eye-popping profits and not allowing the athletes any more portion of the pie than a free education. That those that are profiting from this are overwhelmingly white and male and those unable to profit people of color (and half female) is more than a minor issue as well.

The NCAA’s case is tenuous at best: they contend that fans tune into college sports BECAUSE they want to watch unpaid athletes. Amy Coney Barrett tidied this claim up with the formulation that the NCAA’s case rests on the fact that “consumers love watching unpaid people play sports.” Even acknowledging that there might be a segment of customers who tune out of pro sports because of the high salaries (another discussion for another day, BTW), hers is a hard case to make. The NCAA has a case without any evidence – do you know anyone who watches the NCAA because they are amateurs? Even if it is true of some folks, it’s still probably smaller than the group tuning out of college sports because of the current exploitative model.

Think, too, of this: Gorsuch and Coney Barrett’s comments sound like President Obama’s nominees. That is, the court agrees that the NCAA model is exploitative – and this agreement occurs when Republicans and Democrats can’t agree on what constitutes a coup in their own governmental chambers!

The NCAA’s worry is that by pulling the amateur stone out the whole structure will come tumbling down on itself. It’s fair to worry about some unforeseen fallout that may come from a ruling in favor of the athletes. We’d all hate to see March without Madness, the next Paige Bueckers not getting to add to the UCONN legacy, or college baseball players wanting to go nowhere other than Omaha in the middle of the summer. Perhaps. And only perhaps. Probably not. The NCAA’s speculation can only go so far until it sounds like special pleading.

It’s hard not to see the current model as anything other than exploitation of the athlete. Without those athletes, don’t forget, there’d be no economic driver to this money-producing engine. Why is this the case with sports? After all, there’s no rule in the music department prohibiting a promising guitarist from capitalizing on her ability by playing side-gigs and giving music lessons in her spare time. By the way, the head of the music department’s salary at Kentucky has little in common with John Calipari’s.

What’s the solution, then? Pay the athletes. They deserve just wages for the capital they produce. Make them professionals. Remember that only football and men’s basketball are consistent drivers of revenue at most Division 1 colleges (women’s basketball and baseball make some money in some schools). As such the ones producing the money deserve to get paid the most. Kansas and Duke and Gonzaga might have millions to offer to talented young basketball players. But for the Fordhams and UC Santa Barbaras of the world (and virtually any other athlete in any other sport on any other team outside of basketball and football), an athletic scholarship might be enough to entice athletes to come to their schools (apologies to any Ram or Gaucho fans).

Once in a while a player from a mid-major college might become famous (think Ja Morant blossoming into an elite talent at Murray State or Cameron Krutwig gaining a cult following with Loyola) — at least those players have the option to profit from sponsorships on Instagram and TikTok like every non-athlete at their respective universities. 

Fair enough:  the proposal, it is argued, will create a scenario of “haves” and “have-nots” in the college landscape. Such an argument flies in the face of an NCAA reality: the talent and money are going to top programs today more than ever. The one making this case will want to glue his eyes tight as he pulls his head out of the sandcastle he’s been building.

Ours is probably not a perfect solution, either, but it goes a lot further towards rewarding the talent on which this system’s been built. It’s closer to fairness and justice than the exploitative model at work today.

There was once a time where amateurism made sense as a model, but that was before NCAA sports turned into a big business where everyone was allowed to profit save the college athlete. It’s time to pay the athletes a just wage.