Wednesday at the IMG Intercollegiate Athletics Forum, NC State AD Debbie Yow and Alabama AD Bill Battle took a brief detour from a discussion of college athletes’ cost of attendance stipends.
College sports administrators are now arguing athletes are too stupid to be paid
College athletics administrators aren’t even arguing athletes don’t deserve to be paid anymore. They’re just saying athletes will misuse the money, in spite of adminstrators’ own frequent financial failures.
NC State AD Yow: "you’ve failed athletes [in financial responsibility] when you see them on hoverboards. Bill Battle: "Or tattoos and rims."
— Steven Godfrey (@38Godfrey) December 9, 2015 Battle later tried to explain his comment, which many felt had more than a bit of thinly veiled racism.
Thursday, NCAA executive Oliver Luck argued college athletes aren’t mature enough to handle cash.
NCAA's Oliver Luck on why there's an open market for coaches pay and not athletes: Coaches are adults.
— Michael Casagrande (@ByCasagrande) December 10, 2015 The first funny thing is that this is kinda the opposite of what Luck said last year when he was West Virginia’s AD and not getting checks from the NCAA. The second is that he’s wrong.
College athletes are adults.
College athletes are 18 and older, and that means they’re not minors. They can vote, buy cigarettes, gamble, serve in the United States military and do a lot of other things without a legal guardian’s consent. If they commit a crime, they will be charged as adults. Coaches are adults, but college athletes are also adults.
We have heard a lot of rhetoric on why college athletes shouldn’t get paid. They shouldn’t be paid money because hey, they’re getting a scholarship, and isn’t that enough? They shouldn’t be paid because paying athletes would ruin the sanctity of amateur athletics. They shouldn’t get paid because people actually watch college sports to see college football stadiums and not the actual sports being played by the players in those stadiums.
These arguments have tried and failed to explain why college athletes aren’t entitled to the millions of dollars generated by the sports they play.
But this is a new tack. Yow and Battle and Luck aren’t necessarily arguing that college athletes are legally deserving of money. They’re just saying that college athletes shouldn’t get money because they wouldn’t use it wisely.
They’re just saying that college athletes are too young, and therefore too stupid, to be paid.
This is an argument for not giving your middle schooler allowance. It is not an argument for denying the employees of a multi-billion dollar industry payment.
I often spend money on things I should not. I suspect you have either made a poor financial decision in your past or currently make poor financial decisions. This has nothing to do with your age or race or educational background. Humans often spend money poorly. We buy things we want, but shouldn’t. In spite of this, our employers aren’t allowed to look at our credit card history and deny us payment because of dumb things we’ve purchased.
Some pro athletes have spent money poorly. Often, these players have been even older than college athletes. Often, they have had college degrees, the piece of paper that supposedly separates college athletes from athletes who make money for their jobs. Yet the owners of pro sports teams cannot sit down at free agency meetings and say, “Well, a guy on my team bought a gold-plated jacuzzi and is poor now, so I will be paying you $12 this year.” The owner must pay money regardless of the possibility that the player will spend it poorly.
But we aren’t talking about millions here. We’re talking about people not receiving any salary who aren’t allowed to get outside jobs and who are often asked to be the eventual financial providers for their family. College athletics administrators are asking you to believe that if we give athletes a few thousand more dollars, their families will starve while their houses fill with rims and hoverboards, like freakin’ characters in The Sims.
Meanwhile, college athletics administrators are often fiscally irresponsible themselves.
Yow, who criticized lavish athlete purchases, sent Maryland's athletic department into financial disarray with a combination of lavish building projects. Battle criticized athletes for buying flashy "tattoos and rims" instead of more wholesome things, but also is an administrator at a university department that spent money on an indoor waterfall, which might be a good investment, if it helps court more players, who can't be paid.
Last week, the University of Georgia paid $4.1 million to fire Mark Richt, a perfectly good football coach. Florida paid Will Muschamp $1.5 million to be Auburn’s defensive coordinator, and UF will pay him $1.5 million the next two years to be South Carolina’s head coach. Auburn also paid Muschamp, as will South Carolina. LSU almost paid $15 million to fire Les Miles even though he’s a good coach.
College administrators often look like they’re doing a good job making money for their school. A lot of us would be able to do that in an industry where the primary employees don’t get paid salaries. But let’s remember that these well-paid people often mismanage millions while they cast aspersions at the way young people spend thousands.
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