NFL
By: Brock Vierra
College athletics is as America as Apple Pie. You would be remiss to think the rest of the world values college athletics in the way Americans do. We start our year with college football’s best bowl games, the NCAA basketball Final Four and title game is played inside football stadiums, we even have a dedicated ballpark for the College World Series. College athletics is as American as Apple pie and as Americans, we want to win…at all costs.
The word “amateur” in college athletics means as much as the term “fitness” means for John Daly. There’s nothing amateur about a system that pays coaches millions of dollars who work for universities in conferences that are currently negotiating billion-dollar TV deals. Everyone used to make money from this system except the players. While Presidents and Chancellors, coaches and ADs, people who aren’t the ones putting their bodies on the line are cashing in, the players themselves couldn’t even cash a check for a happy meal without getting suspended. However, with NIL, that has changed and players are making millions before even getting drafted.
However, that has changed the landscape of college recruiting. In the past, players would get paid under the table but the backdoor deals would put a mask on the money being thrown around, and thus the market was controlled. With everything now out in the open, the prices for players have gone through the roof and the fake companies that colleges use to pay players are struggling to keep up.
In an environment where cash rules everything around me, the rich keep getting richer and promises are being made that aren’t being kept. Recent reports have come out that NIL contracts aren’t being paid on time or at all and the public reaction is pissing me off. Now the fight to stop college athletes from getting paid has been rooted in classism, racism, and a desire by the haves to never share with the have-nots. This thought process has called kids entitled, undeserving, and a whole host of names that I choose not to repeat.
These kids coming out of high school have worked a tremendous amount of unpaid hours to be at the top of their sport and their studies. It is commonplace for kids to spend over 100 hours per week working on both in pursuit of an opportunity to feed their families. NIL is putting food on the table and roofs over heads but coaches and their greed is currently meaning that promises aren’t being kept. Kids are committing to schools and signing deals for a reason and we need to see those who aren’t paying their financial commitments being punished.
But this goes into a deeper issue. Let’s not mince words, college athletics targets the poor. How many success stories do we hear every year from college athletes? Now this in itself is not a bad thing. It’s a great thing in fact. The not getting their money part isn’t. How would you like it if your job didn’t pay you for the work you put in? But if these players strike, they will be chastised by the media and their universities. The reason this isn’t a bigger deal is that it’s not happening to me or you or to our kids. It’s happening to the poor kids.
To have internet access is a privilege. To have the ability to read is a privilege. To have the ability to write this is a privilege but it’s so easily accessible that we treat this as a right. We’d give anything to play the game these kids want to profit off of that we can’t comprehend the big deal about the money. That money that people want us to believe is going to flashy cars, gold chains, and expensive things are going home to their families. These kids don’t have the luxury to just play the game, they got a lot more on their plate and the fact these coaches and people are making false promises in pursuit of winning a game is not only morally wrong but legally shady at best. However when these checks stop coming through, it won’t be the ones writing them that we criticize and that is just plain wrong but what do I care, my check always comes in on time and my team stays winning.
