Dollars Making Sense

Similar to the greatest basketball player of all time (Michael Jeffrey Jordan), I usually look for some sort of motivation when writing my articles. Just sitting down in front of a blank computer screen can sometimes drive me insane! There’s just no challenge to be creative. So without further hesitation, Skip Bayless, Jay Bilas, Dick Vitale, Charles Barkley, and a colleague of mine who will remain anonymous, I would like to take this time to thank all of you for motivating me to write this particular article.

For the countless naysayers and non-athletes across the world, I would like to lay out exactly why relegating college basketball players to more than one year in school is ridiculous! Advocates for these kids to stay in school are usually the ones who never played the game at a high level (college or pro) and if they did, they weren’t good enough to advance and create a career for themselves in the pros. On a lot of occasions I tend to look at things from the inside, looking out, because it’s so much easier to follow the status quo and not stand up and be a leader.

When you step back and begin to look at the situation from the outside looking in, I see why these commentators, school boosters, and members of the media, lobby so hard for these talented kids to stay in school a little longer than they actually want to. Dollars! That’s the bottom line and it really puts things into the proper perspective when it comes to a player’s education versus his profession.

Courtesy: Fox Sports MSN

For those of you who want the inside scoop on these accusations, I will gladly map out a University’s revenue for participating in March Madness. Most schools receive $245,000 per game and that’s after food and travel expenses. That number expands depending on how far the team goes in the tournament. If the school makes it to and win the entire tournament, they stand to receive roughly $1,960,000! Do we need to get into how much the coach will receive? Let me help you out; MILLIONS! I

‘m so tired of people talking about how much tuition costs at these schools. Granted, tuition isn’t cheap and without the help of an athletic scholarship, most of these kids probably wouldn’t get the chance to attend a major university. On the other hand, the revenue that these kids generate for these schools and the cost of tuition simply do not match. Isn’t even close!

The fact that most college graduates don’t come close to earning a six figure salary until maybe their tenth year in the work place makes matters worse. Yes worse! You’re telling a kid that instead of taking advantage of his talents and start his career early, he should defer that dream and risk a career threatening injury just to satisfy someone else’s ego? How is that in the best interest of the player? Just look at Kevin Ware from Louisville University.

A young promising player with his entire future ahead of him. None of us know how good he was going to become later on in his career. None of us know if he would’ve blossomed into a stellar player and earned himself an NBA contract. Now thanks to a routine play that turned out completely wrong, Ware not only broke his leg in horrific fashion on national television, but he had to redshirt this season after experiencing reoccurring pain in the same leg. How much of that championship revenue do you think Kevin Ware and his family received? I’ll give you a hint; absolutely NOTHING! Not only did Head Coach Rick Pitino earn $5.7 million for the season, but he earned an additional $500,000 for winning the championship. By my calculations, Pitino didn’t play any minutes during the regular season or the tournament. He didn’t shatter his leg so bad that he could barely watch the sports channel, because he was the highlight for months and months.

The advocates for keeping student athletes in school longer than one season are forgetting a very important part of their argument. The word that comes before athlete is STUDENT. These players are fulfilling their obligation by maintaining a certain grade point average and staying eligible. In return, they compete and give it their all while struggling to sustain a decent lifestyle. Financial hardships and in some cases children play a major role in an athlete’s decision to enter the draft and provide for their family.

I will delve further into my explanation so I can make it clear for those who are still confused. Athletes who are on scholarship can’t even work! Let me rephrase that. They can work they just can’t earn MONEY! So the schools can’t give them a stipend and if they’re lucky enough to find work, they can only work as an intern or earn credits towards graduation. Yet they can go out and compete for these schools and make the university millions! A blue chip recruit(top 100 players in the country) is being heavily recruited by a number of schools. He narrows his choices down to a handful and eventually selects a school to sign his letter of intent with. The sneaker company that sponsored this kid’s AAU traveling team, will now be in the running to outfit the University’s basketball program. Sneakers, warm ups, jackets, bags, socks, shooting shirts, etc. They also strike a deal with the networks so they may air commercials during the school’s nationally televised games.

With all that being said, exactly how much of this money that has been hemorrhaged from this star player’s skills are going to this kid or his family? This isn’t a subject of whether college players should be paid for their services, it’s just a point of reference that shows the imbalance between what the University provides(education, free tuition)versus what it receives (MILLIONS OF DOLLARS) due to having a winning program and a star athlete on its roster. There can never be a fair debate on this subject because no one wants to really identify the truth. I’m just here to shed some light on these ridiculous opinions regarding draft eligibility, and the so called “experts” who conveniently bash players for wanting to earn their living sooner rather than later.

Courtesy: Sports Illustrated/CNN

It actually makes me laugh when I think about other professions that allow youngsters to earn a living before their twentieth birthday. You can go fight for your country at the age of eighteen but the minute some kid declares for the draft after his freshman season, it becomes a media frenzy and the kid ends up getting raked over the coals. In both tennis and golf, players can earn their pro card before turning sixteen. I’ve not once heard any commentators, members of the media, or stay in school advocates, make a big deal over those instances.

Do we really want to go down that path and examine what the truth really is behind the uproar? I don’t think anyone seriously wants to fill out that dance card. In closing, I would like to give a shout out to my very ignorant colleague as well as Sir Charles himself. A guy who declared hardship in 1984 from Auburn University to turn pro. He’s once again proving that he wants to live by a different standard than everyone else.

He proved this a few years ago when LeBron James defected to the Miami Heat. Barkley criticized James for teaming up with another superstar to win a title, when he himself did the same thing years ago. After his stellar run with the Phoenix Suns, Barkley teamed up with Hakeem Olajuwon in hopes of winning a title. Sadly he failed to reach the mountain top. I know that was a long closing but one that was extremely necessary. There’s an old cliché that I absolutely love and it fits here so perfectly. “People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones”.