On O.J. Mayo, College Athletics and Money
by Jay Pearlman
First and foremost, in case there is any doubt, this is a column, not an investigative piece or even a news article. Second, if you’re still reading, you deserve to know a tiny bit about the writer whose opinion you’re being exposed to. I’m a lawyer, though not a sports lawyer (specialize in insurance coverage and appellate litigation), and a former three-time college basketball assistant, most recently on Dan Dakich’s staff his first year at Bowling Green. I first became part of the sports media three years ago, when Harvard Basketball Coach Frank Sullivan invited me to produce and serve as analyst on his radio broadcasts. I have spent the last two seasons in the same role for Northeastern Coach Bill Coen. At the invitation of Managing Editor Phil Kasiecki, I have spent the last two winters writing for Hoopville. However, the opinions expressed herein aren’t Frank’s, Bill’s or Phil’s, but are mine alone.
Preliminarily, utterly an outsider in connection with professional sports, it is my view that in the years since my childhood, pro sports have been horribly affected by money (perhaps more accurately, by lawyers and money). I often say that the worst thing about Major League Baseball isn’t steroids, it’s money. The payroll imbalance between the Yankees and small-market teams makes irrational any expectation of fair competition, of that level playing field so long the ground upon which athletic competition was based. Also, with salaries as they now are, no one plays hard for next year’s salary; rather players work hardest to avoid injury. And respectfully, I’ve always argued that from free-agency and anti-trust points of view, de facto players really work for the professional leagues rather than individual teams, and if a Red Sox player is told to report for work Monday morning in Seattle, well, that’s no different from an IBM executive being “promoted” to a post in Singapore.
Addressing the scourge of money more succinctly, I often run into old friend and Celtic legend Tom “Satch” Sanders at functions in Boston, New York and elsewhere. When I saw Satch on the morning of an NBA All-Star game in Cleveland in the late 90’s, he updated me that he’d become the league’s “Transition Officer.” When I asked, “transition between what and what?,” he answered one question with another: “what do you think is the single worst thing for players in the NBA?” Drawing on my basketball recruiting experience, I provided multiple answers: “booze, and drugs, and guns, and pregnancies.” Satch responded, “no, kids from poor neighborhoods can deal with all of those, have been dealing with them their whole lives. What these kids have no way to handle – and what’s ruining these kids – is the money.” Yes, Satch was the Transition Officer between being a poor kid from a bad neighborhood and then an NBA millionaire, and then again between having a salary in the millions and none at all. Of course, the money. (Editor’s note: Clark Francis, editor and publisher of recruiting publication Hoop Scoop, has reported that close to 70 percent of players in the NBA are broke when they retire.)
That said, you might think this academic lawyer would really love the structure of college athletics, promoting education, giving athletes an education they might not get otherwise, compensating them with “scholarships” (interesting word for free tuition for athletes). Not so. I often compare the traditional career paths in football and basketball with that in baseball (and north of the border in hockey). In short, in a distinction firmly and historically entrenched, while we play minor league baseball and hockey in small towns across the continent in front of dozens or hundreds, we play “minor league” football and basketball on America’s college campuses, drawing upward of 100,000 fans to football games at Michigan and Tennessee, and over 57,000 to the NCAA Regional in Detroit I attended six weeks ago. College football and basketball: as American as apple pie.
Yes, I know this article is about O.J. Mayo and money. But first, recognize that while universities and their presidents often disagree with the NCAA on this issue or that (particularly when the NCAA is enforcing its rules against a particular university), obviously the conferences and the NCAA are nothing more than extensions of their member universities. If most universities were dissatisfied enough to withdraw from the NCAA one day next week (heck, if 25 or 30 of the best known universities withdrew), well, by nightfall there would no longer be an NCAA, at least not as we know it. So accept the fact that the NCAA is nothing more than America’s universities.
So, whatever the reasons Harvard and Yale started having athletics 150 or more years ago (and whatever reasons those schools have sports today), as a whole America’s colleges and universities are deeply entrenched in the sports business; in fact, counting by dollars and cents the business of college sports is likely larger than all of the rest of the business of college education in this country. And of course, business is about money: money being charged, spent, received and distributed. Sports wasn’t nearly such a big business when most of the revenue generated was through ticket sales. But now with BCS bowls, the NCAA Tournament on CBS, three or four ESPN networks, and every single major conference football and basketball game on television, well, it’s big business now.
And I’m not even factoring in all of the money that changes hands through gambling on college sports, legal and otherwise.
In fact, at least for basketball, high school sport is more and more of a business, with McDonalds and other all-star games televised, lots of LeBron James’ senior season on ESPN, and all of the radio, internet and other outlets for audio and video. So feel free to transfer anything I say about college sport in this article to high school.
And here’s a shock: college kids could use a few bucks in their pockets, and most will do anything that doesn’t hurt themselves or others to get it. I checked ID’s at the pool and tennis courts during college; a friend smarter than I got summer jobs at the U.S. Post Office. You know the drill. College basketball players – and yes, good high school players – are offered money to attend this school or that, play here or there, and in fairness, would any of us refuse that money? If we were poor, middle class, or Bill Gates’ kids, would any of us refuse?
So here’s what has really happened: back in the day, when there were neither professional football and basketball leagues nor television, the colleges kept what little income was generated from football and basketball ticket sales, gave players free tuition, room and board, and no one complained. (Ok, in addition, boosters at lots of schools – including the best academic schools – gave the better players envelopes filled with cash). But as television grew, ESPN prospered, and NBC became a network Notre Dame football could be proud of, in flowed the money. And being a tiny bit smarter than their 18-22 year-old players (and both better financed and better represented), America’s universities desperately wanted to keep all of this new-found revenue, rather than give it to (or share it with) the players. Thus was born the NCAA, which more accurately should be called the “National Collegiate Allocation Association.” Allocate 100% of the money to the schools, none to the players.
Fast-forward to 2008. Big-time college coaches make millions a year, big-time athletic directors not much less, university presidents more, faculty members more than ever, etc. At major athletic schools we build university buildings with income generated by football and basketball, new libraries, fund non- or lesser-revenue sports. In fact, we have funded and built a parallel universe called women’s athletics, complete with its own millionaire coaching icons and Hall-of-Famers.
Now, this is not to disparage swimming, wrestling, golf, or any women’s sport: in my view all of these sports have intrinsic values precisely equal to those of football and basketball. Nor libraries and research laboratories: places educating our next generation of leaders, and where cures to our worst diseases are sometimes found. But let’s face it, when you and I turn on ESPN to watch college football or basketball, we are interested in watching the players (ok, players and coaches). We want to see O.J Mayo, and Stephen Curry, and Tyler Hansbrough, and Eric Maynor. And we also want to see Bob Knight, et al. (I meant as a coach, though he’s also a pretty darned good TV commentator.) And our choice to turn on ESPN just isn’t influenced at all by prospects of new libraries, research laboratories, or women’s athletic programs. And by forming the NCAA, America’s universities have simply created another level of political bureaucracy with the primary purpose of insulating themselves from the various and sundry forces out there who would share the fortunes generated by football and basketball, or require different allocations.
There are obviously some closely related issues, not the least of which is academic dipping for athletes not academically qualified to attend college. That’s another story for another day. But consider this: how many non-athletes are admitted to America’s colleges (and certainly junior colleges) who don’t read or do math on the grade 13 level? Do America’s colleges serve primarily as employment agencies for erstwhile professors, even if their students barely read on the high school level? Even outside of the athletic setting, are “junior colleges” nothing more than junior high schools masquerading as colleges, “colleges” that charge tuition and seat students too old to comfortably attend junior high? Yes, stories for other days.
So for today, everyone is screaming about supervision of athletes at USC, those big bad boosters, and the “death penalty”; also about how bad a kid O.J. Mayo must be to take that money and expose his university to sanctions. (And as bright and talented as former Duke player, lawyer, and analyst extraordinaire Jay Bilas is, neither in his radio interview this morning nor any other time I am aware of has he really talked about that unspoken issue underlying every conversation about college sports: the money). Perhaps closer to the truth: USC – really all of America’s colleges, certainly all of our major athletic institutions – used O.J. Mayo to generate huge income, and shared none of that income with him. That’s slavery, pure and simple. And don’t think that Mayo’s scholarship was payment; in truth that was a burden, one with zero economic value to most big-time athletes. And even if forcing Mayo to attend college did make the scholarship of some value to him, do you think that scholarship alone was adequate compensation for all of the ESPN and CBS revenue received by USC, the Pac Ten, and the rest of the NCAA’s member institutions?
So circle the wagons, punish USC (a punishment USC will accept without much objection), and don’t rock the boat. And whatever you do, don’t put at risk the zillions of dollars received by the universities, allocated to coaches, athletic directors, libraries and non-revenue sports, but not one red cent of which is allocated to the kids we turn on our televisions to watch. And ridicule that horrible awful O.J. Mayo for taking the money that was handed to him.
