Congratulations Liberals, You Have Finally Destroyed Major College Sports

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Cyndi Lauper: “Money… Money changes everything.”

One of the strangest of our many human failings is the apparent pathological need to destroy anything truly extraordinary. The increasingly obvious demise of our formerly great nation as a whole is an excellent example of this, but it is hard to beat what a coalition of mostly extremely liberal factions have just done to the basic goodness — despite all the imperfections — of major college sports, all under the guise of a fake civil rights crusade.

In case you missed it over the holiday weekend, the NCAA officially announced that, for all intents and purposes, there is no longer such thing as amateurism in big-time college athletics, as players can now be paid lots of money for their “name, image, and likeness.” It is clear that elements of the NCAA did not want to make this move, but their hands were tied by the actions of California Governor/King Gavin Newsom, who two years ago began this snowball rolling down the mountain, in a move which I predicted at the time would eventually result in a disastrous avalanche.

To someone with a third-grader’s view of the world (which includes many of the super-woke sports media personalities who have championed this foolhardy cause for many years), this radical change seems like basic “fairness,” and likely very beneficial to financially poor students, so it must be inherently virtuous. After all, in America, shouldn’t someone who is creating value for a business be allowed to profit from that? Even some conservative commentators have been hoodwinked by this initially-enticing argument.

However, even beyond the confusion and chaos this plan is sure to cause, there are many flaws with its justification, and the unintended consequences (something liberals, especially the woke crowd, are notoriously horrible at anticipating) will be both extensive and, in time, devastating to the entire foundation of big-time college athletics. The most obvious fallacy is the premise that the athletes who would have real value in the open market were not already handsomely compensated with full scholarships, quality room and board, top-notch medical care, and massive amounts of free branding/business connections from their schools PR machine. The claim that celebrity college athletes are not already paid substantially is just totally false.

The next defect in the liberal view of this topic is the idea that it is the players themselves who are really generating the millions of dollars which major college football and basketball programs, and their often overpaid coaches, “unfairly” reap. The easiest way to prove this to be patently untrue is to imagine what would happen if the top college players decided to start their own minor professional league. It is a 100% certainty that such an endeavor would be a financial disaster, while the amount of money generated by college athletics would surely be un-impacted by such a development, even if the level of play on the field was less spectacular.

The obvious reason for this is that the passion which fans have for college sports is NOT based on the individual players, but rather on the school and community whom these athletes represent. Even if you consider situations where schools have been able to sell lots of jerseys with a particular player’s name and number — from which the player obviously should be able to benefit AFTER they leave school–there are only a tiny handful of superstars (like Tim Tebow, who, ironically, is vehemently against all of this madness) in the modern era who REALLY moved the economic needle in this realm.

The fundamental problem with the “free market” view of this issue is that the NCAA is NOT really allowing a very select few players who truly create value to finally cash in on that. Rather they are, perhaps partly unwittingly, generating a totally contrived and artificial market—more of a Pandora’s Box really–where the fans of schools have a huge incentive to grossly overpay even those athletes who barely play, thus making all future recruits know that THEIR college program is the right one to choose. This problem is particularly ill-timed because the NCAA has also recently made it FAR easier for a player to transfer schools, which means that top athletes will now be able to effectively blackmail their own fans to directly pay them money in an effort to get them to NOT transfer. This means that the metaphorical inmates will now be running the asylum, and coaches will have no real power over even marginally prominent players, while huge intra-team jealousies are a certainty.

All of this will make competitive balance (hey, wasn’t “fairness” a prime goal here?!), which is already a huge issue in football where the SEC conference reigns supreme, a catastrophic problem. How can anyone possibly compete with a top SEC school like Alabama which has a rabid fan base willing to pay even back up players rather large salaries (through the totally absurd autograph loophole, which is effectively a license for a wealthy person to directly pay an athlete whatever they feel like)? Schools–even some in major conferences–without such followings, who everyone knows has no chance of really competing, will get even more crushed in recruiting and on the field than they previously did.

In basketball, where just two or three great players can effectively make a team a serious national contender, the advantage for the marquee colleges may even be more pronounced, though I predict that we will see one super-wealthy booster, now free to effectively create a pro team, cause a school to come out of nowhere to be a Final Four participant. Then there is the issue of how paying players will surely bleed into high school sports as the NCAA has clearly lost the moral, and probably the legal, authority to punish such athletes or schools who are involved in such students being paid for their “NIL,” which won’t be based on current income being generated, but on the hope of influencing their future college decision.

As for the non-major sports, there will be potentially negative consequences as well, where it will be incredibly easy for just one booster with a large ego and bank account to effectively buy their college a title. In golf, the United States Golf Association, which claims to uphold the concept amateurism, has already waved to white flag in deference to the NCAA and effectively ended the essence of their very prestigious “amateur” championship out of fear of being left in the dust of the stampede for cash.

In women’s sports, it is an absolute mystery how none of the liberals applauding this move have apparently even considered the inherent dangers in essentially allowing rich adult men to pay young female athletes, potentially based almost purely on their physical attractiveness. Many of these women are teenagers in financially compromised positions, and men can now pay them lots of money for say an “autograph,” or an endorsement of their business, all with inherent plausible deniability. Gee, what could possibly go wrong there?!

To be clear, there likely will be some positive results in the short run from this fundamental alteration of college sports. Yes, some financially disadvantaged athletes will get paid money they would not have been previously, and there is an outstanding chance fewer top players will officially turn professional early because they won’t have as strong a financial incentive to do so.

However, in the long run, the negative implications from this wild new frontier will far outweigh the good, and the golden goose of big-time college sports will eventually die of exhaustion and cynicism. In short, you can’t build an economic model based on being a religion (as especially major college football has successfully done), turn yourself into a blatantly crass business made up of mercenaries, and expect that your fans will still treat you with religious conviction. When a celebrated virgin (even if their virtue was often an illusion) suddenly becomes a paid player, it initially creates lots of excitement, but once everyone finally realizes that the reason they cared in the first place is no longer relevant, much like the audience for The Oscars, all of that interest rapidly fades away.

No one can know for sure how long it will take for fans of college sports to realize that the object of their devotion is now nothing like the entity with which they once fell in love, but it will happen. When it does, the entire system is going to collapse, and it will be liberals in academia and the sports media who will both own it and, perhaps appropriately, suffer from, the death of one America’s greatest institutions.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.