Whenever I go to a college basketball game here’s what I’m thinking: Why are these kids playing for free?
Basketball was on my mind this week because the wonderful Big East tournament was going on at the Garden and this great competition will never be the same — because of money.
This is the last year that Syracuse will play. It’s changing conferences, as are the University of Pittsburgh and Rutgers.
Rutgers and Syracuse are teams I’ve followed for years. I have a personal connection with three Big East teams, either because my kids or I went to the schools.
Pitt and Syracuse will be playing in the Atlantic Coast Conference; Rutgers is joining the Big 10, home for a dozen teams. (Go figure.)
Don’t get me wrong. The Big East will still be a great basketball conference when it cobbles together enough Catholic schools to make things interesting. The annual Madison Square Garden event will be a killer each year. And the remnants of Big East football — Connecticut, Louisville, Cincinnati, etc. — will also find their niche.
Rutgers, Syracuse, Pitt and all the other Big East schools that defected before them did so for a good reason: cash. TV rights in the ACC and Bigger Ten (that, by the way, is what I’m calling the conference) are much more lucrative and no school president ever passed up a bigger payday.
So, back to my point: Why don’t college players get some sort of reward for making their school’s rich?
In this day and age not even Olympic athletes are amateurs anymore. For example, players on the USA men’s basketball team, owners of multimillion-dollar contracts, play a week or so every four years for national pride.
I spent part of the past two days at the Garden watching college players who will never make the NBA dive for loose balls, block shots, take elbows to the face and work harder than I ever did — all for no pay.
They are missing spring break, and instead, will spend the week working on the court and, if their team is lucky enough to make the NCAA tournament, they will spend another week or longer doing the same.
Sure, they do get a “free” education. I won’t even get into the graduation rates of college athletes, which obviously vary with the school involved and the coaches’ commitment to book learning.
I’ll concede that there’s something of value given to the athlete-students involved. But a scholarship isn’t really a cost to the school. Sticking one more student — albeit an extremely tall, muscular one — into an already existing class doesn’t really add to a university’s costs.
The schools like to call them student-athletes, but with all the time taken out of these kids’ lives with sports should we really put the word “student” first?
Colleges, of course, are making a whole lot more money because of their indentured servant players. What company wouldn’t like its workers to toil for free?
When Rutgers moves to the Bigger Ten — along with the University of Maryland — the league expects its revenues to increase by $100 million to $200 million a year. Bringing Bigger Ten teams like Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State to the New York City/Washington media market is very promising.
Nobody should begrudge the Bigger Ten or the ACC their bonanzas. And hooray for college sports in general. At least something is thriving in this economy
But in fairness to all the athlete-students who will never go onto the next level and whose grade-point averages suffer because their lives are consumed with sports, the schools should cut the kids a check ever year.
Call it a stipend if the word “pay” is awkward. Let boosters kick in a few bucks if the schools are too cheap.
Make it a fixed amount that isn’t too excessive so big-budget sports colleges don’t have an unfair advantage. Make the money come out of a fund administered by the NCAA.
Capitalism has already taken over collegiate sports. But capitalism should flow down to the proletariat: the athlete-students.
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There have been rumors of liquidity problems in the bond market because traders were having difficulty delivering — or repo’ing — their securities.
The fear is that an event like this could cause interest rates to rise despite the Federal Reserve’s desire to keep them exceptionally low.
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Just a friendly reminder: in the past three years the stock market has had a nice rise into April, then has pooped out.
Why? The old motto is, “Sell in May and go away.” But some traders have been getting a jump on this trend by selling in April. And once it gets known that the pros are selling in April, it’ll be March.
So I’ll repeat my theme of recent weeks: With the economy in the blahs and Washington in the duhs, be careful investing in this irrationally exuberant stock market.