If the NFL and NBA want farm teams let the build their own.
The Washington Post has done a nice expose series on the money that gets spent on college sports. But even on its editorial page, the Post only talks about reforms that tinker around the edges.
I agree with Reynolds. I suspect that the romanticization of college sports comes from the same human tendency that produces the romanticization of government. Lots of people will tell you that they hate pro football and hate pro basketball, but they love college sports. Because it is non-profit.
I have the same problem with the Olympics.
And with non-profits organizations.
We over-rate the status of people who do things for “free” and we under-rate the status of those who seek to earn profits.
This is not a very effective way of arguing for limiting government. We do not need college sports. We do need some level of government.
Instead of going down libertarian rabbit holes, why not talk about what government should do and should not do, in specific contexts?
And while I agree that public employees generally deserve no more honor than anyone else performing useful work, and governments are of course frequently corrupt, incompetent and misguided, occasionally governments have to do things that call upon deeper human emotions than does calculating economic behavior. And some of the ends governments are supposed to serve involve principles deeper than private self interest. It would not hurt to acknowledge that.
I thought we were talking about sports.
I always find it odd how football works in the US. I’m Canadian and a big hockey fan, and I’d never heard of a High School or College hockey team before I moved here.
Canadians are something like 75% of all professional hockey players, and I’ve read that 50% are from the small area where I grew up (Toronto / Southern Ontario). Here in Wisconsin every High School near me has a hockey team, and my son’s (private) club is being bombarded with fundraising noise to try to get a Junior Varsity team going.
My buddies were up at 4am before school to get to practice and shower before the school day started, and it was all private club hockey. You went to High School to get educated and get ready for College, not hockey. Plus, there’s no way one High School would have enough slots for the number of players that wanted to play.
The big argument I hear for why College and High School football are so important here is that it keeps marginal students engaged at school. If a quality education requires football, then how does Toronto pull off fairly good educations without hockey? Toronto is in Canada but it is still a big city with some big city problems.
Of course… there’s almost no US-born, black hockey players. If your school isn’t providing the field and equipment, hockey is an expensive past time. Ditto lacrosse, Canada’s other national sport.
In the US, there is a strong tribal affiliation with high schools and colleges that does seem unique, even compared to other countries that are English-speaking, Protestant, etc. It’s unclear to me whether the sports gave rise to the tribal affiliation or vice versa. On balance, it seems like there are more non-sports reasons why tribal affiliation would have emerged first than there are non-tribal reasons why school sports would have become popular first. Admittedly, though, I don’t know why the US would be unique in developing strong school-based tribal affiliations.
“Lots of people will tell you that they hate pro football and hate pro basketball, but they love college sports. Because it is non-profit.”
Have never actually heard or seen someone make that argument, and since I drive a lot I listen to tons of sports radio. What I do hear is people angry and claiming that greedy owners move teams or greedy players leave their team to go to another for more money. I think this is actually mostly because they want continuity in their teams, and they want the team to win. Your team scouts and brings up a star pitcher, then he signs for more money with the Yankees than your team can afford to pay. You simply don’t see that with college sports.
Note that fans also get angry when owners who can afford to pay don’t do so to sign fan favorites. Note that fans by and large don’t care how much someone gets paid, if they produce. Not a lot of NE fans complaining about Brady’s salary.
Steve
I do agree that people are irrational in giving much higher status to non-profit vs for-profit organizations (apparently a modern version of the old patrician disdain for those uncouth, grasping people in ‘trade’).
But I’m not sure that’s the main thing going on with college sports where much of the fan allegiance seems to come from having attended (or having friends and family who attended) the schools. Which makes the money part complicated. Minor league sports, in general, play for few fans in small, out-of-the-way places and pay very little (it’s not clear that it’s substantially more than the value of the tuition, room and board that college athletes are provided).
Supposing that the NFL established its own minor leagues and drew the very best high school players directly into those league — I’d predict that those teams would find themselves playing in small stadiums in 2nd and 3rd tier markets (like minor league baseball and hockey do now) and that the big college programs would still be drawing 100,000 every Saturday in the fall even with the very best 18-22 year olds no longer in the college game. It looks to me that most of the value-add in big time college sports is — for better or worse — in the university allegiance and branding and not in the particular players on the field. Keep in mind that they’re already making enormous sums of money even though 95% of their players are not good enough to make it in the pros.
But I don’t think the football minor leagues would ever get off the ground because they’d have a hard time competing for players–being a big man on campus at a major football school for 4 years looks like a LOT more fun than the lives of minor league baseball and hockey players even though they’re being paid for their labor.
The comment about NFL and NBA teams establishing their own farm teams seems off the mark. Where is the evidence that colleges have sports programs *because of NFL or NBA influence*? If colleges establish sports programs for their own and athletes’ benefit, and there is some side benefit to the NFL and NBA, then that is a positive externality. Positive externalities are usually underprovided, not overprovided.
The libertarian analysis of college sports should start with examining whether government subsidizes or coerces colleges into establishing sports programs. The whole argument behind paying college athletes, which the Reynolds comment is in reponse to, is that these college sports programs earn more than enough revenue to support themselves so I don’t see how taxpayers are subsidizing these programs. If colleges believe that the programs enhance the student and student-athlete experience and student-athletes voluntarily agree to participate, then the libertarian “solution” should be to argue that government refrain from interfering in these voluntary arrangements.
Even the anti-trust argument that colleges are colluding when they agree not to pay athletes is somewhat off (although defensible). Competition for athletes’ services *could* come from professional sports leagues. The fact that the pros don’t bid for these athletes’ services indicates that the market for their services isn’t quite there yet. One could argue that NFL and NBA rules should not be allowed to prevent teams from signing college-age players. (I don’t know whether they still do; I think they did in the past.) If there is an anti-competitive practice, it comes from the NFL and NBA, not from the NCAA.
Absent identifiable coercion, the evidence seems to be that colleges maintain sports programs for the benefit of students, most especially student-athletes, and those student-athletes voluntarily participate in them.
I agree but it is even deeper than that. The government subsidizes colleges at the expense of whatever else might exist absence the subsidies (including degree requirements etc.). They also make education so expensive that athletes almost have to take scholarship offers. Then as winner takes all why would the professional level create their own signaling farm system when one is sitting their free to them. Saying that equals “voluntary” stretches the term.
Just pay the players.
Would they still also have to be students? If not, would the schools actually save money hiring minor league football players straight up assuming they didn’t have to provide tuition, academic support, and all that? And then there’d be no reason to limit practice hours or the number of games in a season. No concern for conflicts with finals, etc.
Problem solved then, right? They’d be like soccer clubs.
But was thinking a trust fund. Or anything, really, other than the NCAA spending millions of dollars to make sure the athletes don’t get a share in the billions.
Well, yes, paying players and separating the teams from the universities except in brand name (e.g. blowing up the current system) would ‘solve’ the problem. But, as far as I know, nowhere else in the world is there such a thing as ‘big time’ minor league sports, where fans and TV networks pay huge sums to watch developing young players most of whom will never be good enough to ever play at the pro level. The chances of major changes meaning the end of big time college sports (and revenue streams that could pay players) seem fairly high.
My own modest proposal would not have universities pay players directly at all. Instead, the NCAA should simply lift the ban on players earning money on their fame. Players should be able to sign endorsement contracts, share in the proceeds of sales of their jerseys, and earn appearance fees. In this way, the stars would earn what they deserve, and the run-of-the-mill players would continue to get their free schooling, which — for them — is a reasonable deal.
That sounds good. The trick is doing it in a way that minimizes advantage. But since schools now compete in recruiting based on advantages those ideas may even help.
If players can’t get paid, then they want to go to Alabama or a big name (highly paid) coach who maximizes their exposure and pro prospects. If they don’t have to do that, parity could be increased.
Profit or non profit has nothing to do with it.
I love college football because it is the closest thing to Scottish clan warfare in modern sport.
I love college sports because I attended and graduated from a college; I did not attend or graduate from a pro.
“At its best a football game is the most impressive pageant that American life affords, and I, for one, would not willingly forego that pageantry.”
–“Athletics” by Percy Marks
http://www.unz.org/Pub/TinkerHarold-1934-00195
Marks wrote an excellent essay on college athletics in 1926. He cited the “professionalism” as one major problem. The professional coaches, but also the alleged amateur players who played like they were playing for money, i.e, not for the love of the game but with all due earnestness.
Saying this to a professor might not be the best audience, but the best way to understand all the oddities of college campuses it to come to the realization that they are not educational institutions. They are social institutions for which education serves as the organizing principle.
All dedicated college sports fans know well and good that no big-time athletics programs are in any way “amateur”. That was an important part of the selling point and image 20 years ago, but just doesn’t matter anymore to anyone under the age of about 50.
The romanticization of college sports is due to the social-institution aspect of colleges. Where you went to college is a big part of the identity of most college-educated Americans. The sports attachment is 95% tribalism. The exceptions that prove the rule are the programs that are such a big deal as to be emblematic of the state (Alamaba / Nebraska / Oklahoma footall, Kentucky / Kansas / North Carolina basektball, e.g.).
The issue with big-time sports is that despite their money-losing aspects, they are the best marketing tool of the universities. Schools that drop football usually see big drops in alumni donation and applications from men. If universities were genuinely educational institutions that wouldn’t be the case, but it is and they aren’t