By Alhijaz Althigafi
Contributor
Where does an 800-pound gorilla sit? Anywhere it wants to. Ba dump bump.
It’s one of the oldest, corniest jokes in the world….except when it’s not funny. Because there is an 800-pound gorilla on every college campus in the United States. We all know it’s name. We all know what it does. But apparently there is nothing anyone wants to do about it, especially acknowledge it. What is the name of the 800-pound gorilla on campuses? The NCAA.
The NCAA is blandly described in Wikipedia as being a “non-profit” organization which generates “almost a billion” dollars a year, mostly from March Madness. It is also described as ‘regulating’ athletes in over 1200 institutions. Over the years, the NCAA has graciously added women, after it was forced to do so by Title IX. It has also been sued for violations of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in its control over television rights. These are just two very small examples of the Gorilla’s reach. There are many more.
The weird thing is that everyone seems to know about it. As a college student and a sports enthusiast, I was very eager to see how many sports there were at college level. I was impressed at how well organized they were, how televised they were and how popular they were. But the more I found out about this organization, the NCAA, the more I began to see that there was something very wrong going on. Athletes were generating huge amounts of revenue for their schools and they were compensated with scholarships.
Fair enough, I thought, except that when I spoke to a few athletes I discovered that it was anything but fair. Athletes are forced to adhere to very professional schedules of practice and play. That means they cannot always take the classes they want because these may interfere with practice, for example. What? A student-athlete, who makes money for the school, which professionalizes their sport, cannot take the classes they want? How is that fair?
The more I looked, the worse it got. Student-athletes are completely under the control of the NCAA, and they have no recourse but to sue to get their rights. Recently, it was discovered that many of the more famous ones were having their likenesses used by sports companies to sell jerseys and other paraphernalia. No compensation was offered to them, of course, because they are not employees, but student-athletes, a designation that allows the schools to profit from their work. A better name might be ‘indentured servants.’
“Today the NCAA Presidents Commission is . . . firmly committed to the neo-plantation belief that the enormous proceeds from college games belong to the overseers (administrators) and supervisors (coaches). The plantation workers performing in the arena may only receive those benefits authorized by the overseers.”
The author? Former President of the NCAA, Walter Byers, who has no problem describing a gorilla when he sees one.