Mike Wilbon May Be 50% Correct, But He's Still 50% Wrong

I follow Jay Bilas on Twitter, like many other people do. As anyone who follows Jay Bilas knows, if you read anything he Tweets about it will either deal with how crazy Bill Raftery is or with the subject of paying college athletes. Jay Bilas is all about paying college athletes. I am all about the paying of athletes in theory, but in practice I'm having difficulty figuring out how it won't create further problems where some schools can afford to pay some athletes more money or some college athletes don't get paid. Mike Wilbon sees these "further problems" and tries to reason through them. I still find holes in his argument that I'm not sure can be fixed, though I am becoming more convinced paying NCAA athletes is the way it will go in the future.

Of course the title of this column is "College athletes deserve to be paid." I feel like "deserve" is the wrong term to use when talking about college athletes getting paid.

I used to argue vehemently against paying college athletes. Tuition, room, board and books were compensation enough. And even if, increasingly, it wasn't enough and virtually every kid who accepted a scholarship was in the red before Christmas of his freshman year,

Every kid who accepts a scholarship or goes to college is in the red before Christmas of his freshman year. This is why I don’t find this argument that some advocates of paying college athletes as persuasive. The argument “college athletes don’t have much money to spend” goes for NEARLY EVERY SINGLE COLLEGE STUDENT, so it isn’t exclusive to the college athletes. Pleading the “we’re so poor” rationale fails in that it isn’t exclusive to just college athletes. Under that rationale, all college students should get paid for the money they bring into the college in the course of being a student.

the notion of pay-for-play was at best a logistical nightmare. Where exactly would the money come from? How could you pay college football players but not baseball players or members of the women's field hockey team? And how in the world would you pay men in a way that wouldn't violate Title IX?

I don’t think we have a solution to this problem. There’s no way to pay “major” sports at a school and not violate Title IX. Even if a women’s sport has players who get paid, I still think it would violate Title IX in some fashion if all women’s sports don’t receive some monetary benefit.

So you know what caused me to do a 180 on the issue? That $11 billion deal -- OK, it's $10.8 billion to be exact -- between the NCAA and CBS/Turner Sports for March Madness between 2011 and 2024. We're talking $11 billion for three weekends of television per year. On top of that, there's a new four-year deal with ESPN that pays the BCS $500 million.

Apparently this was Mike Wilbon’s first realization college sports are big business. Was he just not paying attention over the last two decades? College sports have been big business for quite a few years now and this deal was the straw that broke the camel's back for Mike Wilbon. It seems a little naive to notice these large deals and say, "What a minute, you mean the NCAA is making money off showing athletic events these amateur athletes participate in? If you had told me that, I would have completely changed my mind on the idea of paying these athletes!"

I respect Mike Wilbon a lot, but it seems like he changed his mind because that's what a lot of other sportswriters have done as well. The reasons he uses aren't especially new, but I do guess a person has a right to change their mind.

So, if those two deals were worth, say, a combined $10 billion instead of $11.3 billion, would the games not be televised?

No, that is the market value of the two deals. The games are televised at the fair market value of how much these games are worth. Television deals for BCS games and NCAA Tournament games are worth a lot of money. I would think if the deals were for $2 million per year, wouldn't the same principle of paying athletes for participating stand? If athletes bring money into the school, perhaps they should get paid for it, no matter the amount of money be very large or very small? I'm just throwing this out there. Or is there some threshold for how much the NCAA and schools get paid for television rights before the student-athletes get a share?

What if people in the business of money took $1.3 billion off the top, invested it, sheltered it and made it available to provide a stipend to college athletes, how could anybody stand on principal and argue against paying the people who make the events possible in the first place?

Other than the fact amateur players aren’t supposed to be paid, it seems those who play in the events should be compensated. It does make sense, outside of the fact this isn't supposed to happen. What if part of the money from ESPN’s broadcast rights to women’s softball went to softball players? That’s not a problem is it? Or does women's softball not bring enough money into ESPN to justify the women's softball players get paid?

The problem, as I see it, lies in what happens to women’s and men’s swimming programs, as well as other sports like these? They don’t get money for broadcast rights because their events aren’t televised? The problem as many see it, what about these other programs, especially women's sports, that don’t get compensated? Isn’t this a violation of Title IX?

How about the kids who participate in the Spelling Bee that ABC/ESPN televises? Should they get compensated for the broadcast rights? I’m not trying to be cutesy, but where does this line of thinking about paying participants in broadcasting events end?

Let me declare up front I wouldn't be the slightest bit interested in distributing the funds equitably or even paying every college athlete. I'm interested in seeing the people who produce the revenue share a teeny, tiny slice of it.

There are two obvious problems with this declaration that makes this idea not realistic:

1. Paying certain college athletes and not others will never fly. For reasons, at least in my opinion, which go beyond Title IX. The idea of distributing the wealth for college sports among those who make the money makes a hell of a lot of sense to me on its face. In practice, outside of Title IX, if you are saying NCAA football players need money because they have expenses at school they can’t afford…well, this goes for the men’s swimming team as well. Yes, the football team makes the school money, but paying some college athletes and not others then becomes less of an issue of paying college athletes to help them have a stipend to live on, but more rewarding those who bring in money to the schools. You know, and maybe that's the entire point. I just can’t see the NCAA doing that. That’s what irritates me about some of the pro-paying college athletes crowd. They try to couch it in terms of college athletes being broke, when it is really about which athletes bring in revenue. I’m sort of glad Mike Wilbon skips this nonsense.

2. It won’t fly because of Title IX. Women's sports are going to need to be treated equally with men's sports, unless Title IX is overturned.

That's right, football and men's basketball players get paid; lacrosse, field hockey, softball, baseball, soccer players get nothing. You know what that's called? Capitalism.

It is called capitalism and I do love the idea of capitalism. Even in the United States, where we have capitalism, there is a form of limited capitalism though. We just don’t throw people who don’t make enough money to live on the streets (or don't generally do that). There are benefits available to these people, which essentially is government spending money on people who may not bring that exact amount of money in. So in the realm of this limited capitalism, even those sports that don’t bring some form of money into a school should get some form of compensation.

Not everything is equal, not everything is fair.

So I don't want to hear that it's "unfair" to pay the quarterback of Alabama more than all the sociology students in the undergraduate college.

I won’t argue that it is unfair. I will argue the idea the quarterback of Alabama has expenses or debts he has to pay while in college, while ignoring that normal sociology students or the 3^rd string quarterback have those exact same expenses isn't exactly fair.

Here's another question. We aren’t paying the 3^rd string quarterback of Alabama as much, right? He doesn’t even play! Capitalism would say we don’t pay him because he doesn’t bring in any value to the school. Which brings me to the point of whether each individual player would get paid differently on the same team? Mike Wilbon wants capitalism, so let’s go there. The walk-on freshman 3^rd string linebacker wouldn’t get paid as much as the starting quarterback, so how do we determine his value? I’m not saying it can’t be done, but paying different players at the same position has a different effect if a coach promotes the 3^rd string quarterback to starter at midseason. Would the 3^rd string guy get a bump in pay because he is now winning games for his team rather than sitting? Can you imagine if that 3^rd string guy starts the next year and the original starter has to sit the bench and take a pay cut? So the original starter is now actually losing money out of his pocket to pay for school expenses because the coach didn’t choose him as starter and he isn't bringing as much money into the school now.

I’m getting a headache thinking of all this and going down so many rabbit holes.

Using the inability to distribute the funds equally as an impediment is an excuse, a rather intellectually lazy one at that. Nothing about the way hundreds of millions of dollars is distributed is equitable or even fair.

And as true as that may be, the amount of funds distributed to individual college athletes is currently distributed equally. Simply because certain conferences get more money based on the BCS, this doesn’t mean individual NCAA college athletes should make inequal amounts of money. I think it is somewhat intellectually lazy to merely state because the BCS doesn’t divide money equally among conferences, then that is a reason for the NCAA to not divide money evenly among college athletes.

At its heart, I have no problem with a non-equitable distribution of funds, but I believe it will be difficult to convince the NCAA this is a viable option in terms of paying players. To act as if this is a viable solution in ignoring the realities of Title IX and the reality the NCAA sees itself, perhaps in a deluded fashion, as an organization that looks out for the student-athletes isn't paying attention to reality.

Of the $174 million distributed from five bowl games, 83.4 percent went to six conferences in 2011. In question right now is whether the BCS even conducts its business dealings in a manner consistent with principles expressed in federal anti-trust laws.

So, the equitable-application excuse for not paying athletes doesn't hold water; at the very least there's a level of hypocrisy here that ought to make the opponents of paying athletes uncomfortable.

Well of course there is hypocrisy. This is the NCAA we are talking about. Hypocrisy is a lot of what they do. I still don’t completely buy the argument the equitable-application argument in regard to the BCS distributing money among schools, it doesn’t hold water for me. Paying conferences for money received in bowl games is very different from paying NCAA athletes, who currently receive $0, a stipend based on how much money they bring into the school. We are talking the BCS v. NCAA and crossing over business dealings for both. They aren’t the same entity.

Wilbon’s argument is, “If the NCAA is going to be hypocrites, why not go all the way” and I don’t know if I buy that. If you argue the NCAA needs to have equitable-application of bowl money (which is an argument that holds water), then inequitable distribution of stipends would no longer make sense under this “hypocrisy theory” of Wilbon’s. So what would Wilbon’s argument be for inequitable distribution of stipends if the BCS changed around their bowl distribution method?

Don't get me wrong, paying players out of individual athletic department budgets is beyond impractical; it's probably not feasible. Because so many athletic departments run at a deficit, it's difficult to make the case that schools should pay regular salaries to athletes, even football players who produce more income than anybody.

So schools shouldn’t pay players, the NCAA should pay players? This seems kind odd to me since the individual player is bringing money and attention, which can lead to more money, to a specific school. I would think if college athletes got paid, then individual colleges should do the paying. What do I know though? I am just a lowly blogger living in his mom's attic.

Why can't hundreds of millions of dollars be directed into those, and in turn make money much more accessible to athletes for the kinds of regular day-to-day expenses regular college students pay by working jobs that are off-limits to intercollegiate athletes?

This argument sort of irritates me as well. Poor intercollegiate athletes! They are too busy playing sports, which is how they got a free ride to college by the way, to work a job. I didn’t know it was impossible for a football player to work a job from January-May while in school. I guess you learn something new every day. I know the players still have some responsibility to their sport in the offseason, but the way Wilbon is phrasing this is as if regular college students are privileged to have the opportunity to work and pay for the expenses he wants the student-athletes to be handed to them.

Somehow a sociology major finds the time to go to school and work to pay for his expenses while in school. He may not be responsible for bringing a bunch of money into the school, but athletes certainly have eligibility for Stafford Loans to pay for their expenses. College students who don’t have time to work pay for their personal expenses with Stafford Loans all the time. Part of me thinks if an athlete wants to pay his living costs, that is what loans are intended for.

In the meantime, if they cannot be paid outright, surely the scholarship athletes should be able to engage in entrepreneurial pursuits that currently leads to costly NCAA investigations that have proven to be mostly a waste of time since, one, such activities historically haven't been checked and, two, the kids who commit the "infractions" aren't effectively punished. Their revelations, short of Heisman Trophy winners having to return their statues, wind up penalizing only the kids and coaches who remain on the team and in the vast majority of cases have done nothing to merit a penalty themselves.

I do agree in part with this statement, but if the program is worth a crap (or the coach doesn't run before sanction are handed down...um, Pete Carroll) then the coaching staff, the Athletic Director and others who were a part of the infraction are getting punished. Yes, an unfortunate side effect is the current players are penalized for doing absolutely nothing wrong in many cases, but when a team has a player de-commit and go to another school because he doesn't want to go to a school that has been sanctioned then the sanctions have done their intended effect. I do get what Wilbon is saying, but you can't punish the school and coach without punishing the players. Unless you fine the the coach/athletic director money or do something in a way not affiliated with the team (Steal their car? Rob their house? Sleep with their significant other?).

If somebody is willing to give A.J. Green $750 or $1,000 or even $2,500 for his Georgia Bulldogs jersey, fine, good. If one of his teammates, a tackle, can fetch only $50 for his jersey, then it'll be a good marketing lesson for both of them.

I do agree with this. The A.J. Green jersey incident was an infraction, just like the infractions where Ohio State players were selling signed memorabilia for tattoos. Still, idiots like Rick Reilly (in his latest column) called this "cheating." How is it that players selling signed memorabilia is cheating? How does the fact Pryor and other Buckeyes sold this stuff negatively affect the Wisconsin Badgers football team? Does Purdue have less of a chance of beating the Buckeyes this year because players paid for tattoos with memorabilia? Yes, this was against the rules. Don't call it "cheating" though, because it really isn't cheating.

The question from the opponents of paying college athletes inevitably comes back, "What would stop a star player from agreeing to shake hands at a local car dealership for $50,000?"

Well, that is completely true. I do think this is completely separate from getting a stipend or getting money from the NCAA for playing sports at a college. If an athlete can make money at a car dealership I don't see how this is too different from another college student using his ability or knowledge to make money. Sure there are differences, like the fact an athlete would make more money probably based on his fame compared to a regular college student, but I would favor this more than I would favor a school paying a player for being a student-athlete in a money-making sport.

In fairness to him, Mike Wilbon brought up this same point in the sentence after this.

The student-musician is no less a college student because he struck a lucrative deal. Neither is the student-journalist who spends his nights writing freelance stories and picking up as much money along the way as he can.

I'm not suggesting players should be able to go whore themselves out to make cash in college, but in my opinion, an athlete getting a free tattoo for signed memorabilia is much more preferable to that same athlete getting a stipend for living expenses because there are costs he can't afford to pay for while in college. Again, this goes for nearly all college students. So if a student-athlete should profit from the money he brings into his school, I would rather he do it in the private market and not because the NCAA is sending him monthly checks. My opinion on this has slowly evolved and it may very well evolve again, but this is how I feel right now.

The best college athletes in the two revenue-producing sports have always been worth much more than tuition, room, board and books.

This may be absolutely true. Many students who get full rides to a college are worth more than tuition, room, board and books when it comes time to donate money back to the school as well. Colleges recruit athletes that will make their school look good. The same goes for students who go to a school as well. College recruit students that will make their school look good. Granted, a full ride business major probably won't bring more revenue into a school than a college football player will.

The best football and basketball players in the Big Ten have produced to the degree that a television network has become the model for every conference in America, a network worth at least tens of millions of dollars to the member institutions. Yet, no player can benefit from that work.

To an extent, I see where this rationale is coming from. The problem, yet again, lies in the idea schools can't pay certain college athletes and not other college athletes. Schools CAN do this, but I would imagine lawsuits would occur. If college athletes want to profit from their ability in a sport, I am not sure I care too much about that, but I would prefer the NCAA and the college not be the one doing the compensating which leads to the profit. I say this simply because I don't see how all college athletes can get paid, so that would mean only certain college athletes get paid. Since (I would estimate) 95% of college athletes are part of a program that either (a) doesn't bring money into the school or (b) the athlete doesn't personally bring money into the school, I can see where the issue would lie.

If athletes want to make money on their own by selling memorabilia or appearing at a Burger King shaking hands and signing autographs, then I very well could have less of a problem with this.

The players have become employees of the universities and conferences as much as students -- employees with no compensation, which not only violates common decency but perhaps even the law.

So Wilbon's final statement is to essentially call student-athletes at the college level "slaves." I wouldn't say an athlete who is getting college completely paid for it as getting no compensation, though it is better to leave out small details that may contradict what you are trying to say when trying to prove a point I guess. This is backwards thinking to say an athlete who gets college completely paid for is an employee of the university while a student who has to pay his way through college, working jobs an athlete isn't fortunate enough to get the ability/time to work, has no ties to the university. A "normal" student has to pay tuition and other expenses for the privilege of being affiliated with the school.

This where part of the "pay college athletes" argument falls apart. So if those players who get a full ride are being exploited, what about those college athletes who don't get an athletic scholarship and have to pay their way through school? These "normal" students are paying to go to school and get the same education an athlete at that school is receiving for free, and then a few years later the alumni association calls these "normal" students up to donate money to the school to support the very programs and scholarships the athlete is using for his free education. So who is really being exploited in this situation?

At least the athlete is being compensated, even in a small way, for the money he brings into the school. Still, I think there is a really good argument for paying players in some fashion for bringing money into a school through participating in athletics. I'm still looking forward to reading it.