The NCAA's Racist Argument
On Monday night, Villanova’s men’s basketball team dominated Michigan to become national champions, thus concluding an eventful and eye-catching tournament. Around 17 million people tuned into the National Championship two nights ago. Ads from noteworthy companies ran during the plethora of commercial breaks on the national television stream. Throughout the rest of the tournament, some 70 million brackets were made. Millions of people were indubitably drawn to the tournament, just as is the case every other year. March Madness is a revenue machine for the NCAA, a tournament that attracts millions of fans across the country to watch groups of young men battle it out in the spotlight. Each year, the NCAA rakes up to $1 billion off of the tournament, but for many, it’s hard to neglect that not a penny of that pile of cash is going back into players’ pockets.
The long-debated argument of paying college athletes still persists, and the conversation always heightens after major events in college sports like March Madness. Ultimately, college sports fans must realize that the basis of the pathetic argument of the NCAA rests in racial discrimination. It is because of these discriminatory attitudes that — despite the fact that is the players themselves who enable the wealth of the NCAA — student-athletes continue to be enslaved by a system that deprives them of the fruits of their labor.
The primary evidence of the NCAA’s discriminatory attitudes is in its structure. The head of the NCAA is composed primarily of white executives, led by Mark Emmert -- who you probably correctly guessed is a rich white man. Beneath this comes conference commissioners. In the Power Five conferences -- the ACC, SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, and Pac-12 -- all five commissioners are white. Below the commissioners are athletic directors. For the colleges of Power Five conferences -- conferences who historically have had the best teams in men's basketball -- 71% of athletic directors are white. Even more drastic numbers are seen in football: in the 2012-2013 season, 84% of athletic directors were white men. Below athletic directors are coaches. Amongst the aforementioned Power Five institutions, head coaching positions in men's basketball are disproportionately held by white men: 79% of the head coaching positions of these teams have been assigned to white men. College football again reflects a similar structure, as 85% of the head coaching positions in the aforementioned season were held by white men. Finally, stuck beneath this is the body of student-athletes. The majority of the NCAA’s student-athletes are black, even though blacks make up below 3% of student bodies of non-HBCU Division 1 institutions. In the powerhouse teams of the Power Five schools -- who have won the NCAA men’s basketball championship all besides four times since 1991 -- black male athletes constitute 56% of the basketball players. Statistics from the 2005 NCAA tournament show that almost 70% of scoring came from black athletes. Additionally, from an anecdotal perspective, there are times during the tournament when only black athletes are playing on the court.
Based on these observations, a clear racial paradox is evident in the NCAA. It is quite apparent that black athletes are being enslaved in a system in which their work comes at the benefit of the white men above them. Take Mark Emmert, for example; Emmert makes just below $2 million annually. Moreover, the white Power Five commissioners make above $2.5 million, while the predominantly white group of basketball coaches in the aforementioned Power Five schools make an annually average of $2.7 million. Furthermore, the predominantly white group of athletic directors averages $700,000. All of this money comes directly from the hard work and commitment of student-athletes. In sports like basketball -- which gives the NCAA its most money due to March Madness -- young black men are the primary reason for the wealth of white men. The attention that their stardom brings to the sport brings millions of dollars to the NCAA through ticket sales, jersey sales, sponsorships, and TV rights. Despite this, these players are not getting any of the cash they are generating. The unfortunate reality is that as the NCAA and its white leadership rakes in loads of cash, its black-dominanted student-athlete body is left with nothing.
Many student-athletes, especially black student-athletes, enter college with nothing. They come from troubled backgrounds -- caused by similar institutionalized racism -- and look to utilize the spotlight of college sports to rise out of their disadvantaged situations. Shabazz Napier was the star of the 2014 tournament, becoming Most Outstanding Player after leading the cinderella team of UConn to a national championship. While Napier shined in the NCAA’s convoluted spotlight, off the court, he struggled to merely survive. Despite the fact that he was expected to play at a premier level, college basketball’s best player stated that there were some nights when he went to bed “starving”. The truth of the matter is that college athletes are being used to generate hundreds of millions of dollars while being held in a system that oppresses them and thus restricts them to racially-derived glass ceilings.
Some may contend that student-athletes are being offered plenty with their scholarships, but this is simply ludicrous when considered contextually. Firstly, college athletes are putting their bodies on the line year round through strict training regiments and tightly scheduled games. The risk of injury is high, and career-ending injuries are not uncommon. If an athlete suffers an injury, a loss of scholarship is entirely possible and is often initiated by many universities. This would result in the student-athlete being left with no education, no money, no further athletic opportunities, and thus no opportunity for social mobility. Secondly, less than 2% of college athletes end up turning professional, meaning that the vast majority of student-athletes end up entering the workforce. If student-athletes do graduate, the degrees they are obtaining with their scholarships do not often lead to lucrative jobs. Instead, they lead to the prolongation of racial borders created by socioeconomic divide. However, even with a scholarship, graduation is not a surefire scenario. This is reflected by the fact that just 42% of black male college athletes graduate and that student athletes graduate at a rate around 20% lower than normal college students. A scholarship offers no guarantee of a better life for student-athletes. In reality, it is just an excuse that enables the NCAA to hold their student-athletes -- specifically black student-athletes -- captive in a system that is effectively dicated by institutionalized racism.
The NCAA’s actions seem all too familiar. Essentially, white men are profiting off of the work of black individuals and are impeding these black individuals from securing a chance to elevate their status. What does this remind you of? Not only is this unambiguously institutionalized racism, but its uncomfortably akin to a model of slavery. Student-athletes -- it is important to keep in mind that black athletes make up the majority of student-athletes -- are slaves to a system of deprivation. By continuing to avoid paying its athletes, the NCAA is allowing racist policies to enforce discrimination-based norms. Just remember, until the NCAA pays its athletes, each year we tune into March Madness, we are watching what feels to be a new model of slavery.
