Our columnist welcomes significant changes to the amateurism rules that undergird the N.C.A.A.’s business model in the hope that young athletes might flourish, as he did, playing college sports.
I like to say I owe my life to college sports. In the 1950s, my father became one of the first African-Americans to play basketball at the University of Oregon. My parents met on that campus, and the scholarship my father received for his athletic skill paved the way for an education that moved our family to the middle class.
Decades later, I earned an athletic scholarship to the University of California, Berkeley, and became the first Black captain of the highly ranked men’s tennis team.
All that is to say that my love for college sports is deep, and personal. And yet the system that helped me flourish has a dark side I loathe: the relentless exploitation by a multibillion-dollar industry of its athletes, particularly African-Americans, who make up the bulk of the players in big-time football and basketball.
The good news is that change is on the way. The N.C.A.A. business model teeters on the brink, with pressure coming from multiple directions. From players who feel more emboldened to speak out than ever before. From courts, Congress, statehouses and eager start-up leagues that could strip the organization’s cash cow, the Division I men’s basketball tournament, of high-voltage stars.
What will the future look like? Will changes be carefully considered, allowing the many benefits of the college sports experience to survive while stripping away the exploitation and phony amateurism?
Consider the possible effects of Overtime Elite, a nascent basketball league that says it will soon offer contracts worth at least $100,000 annually to top boys’ high school players, some as young as 16. As reported last week by my colleague Kevin Draper, Overtime plans to develop its athletes into bona fide stars who are capable of playing in the N.B.A. or in foreign professional leagues.
There will be a significant catch: Signing with Overtime, or any other professional league, would prohibit players from competing in college.
There’s also the Professional Collegiate League, which will aim to start play after signing blue-chip players to contracts worth as much as $150,000 right after they finish high school.
The N.C.A.A. is plenty worried. It should be. “There are certainly a lot of holes in the dam right now,” said Ricky Volante, a lawyer based in Cleveland who heads the Professional Collegiate League along with the former N.B.A. player David West.
The Supreme Court will soon hear a case centering on whether the N.C.A.A. violates antitrust law by limiting athlete compensation. Congress is considering various pieces of legislation that would give athletes a bigger slice of the millions they earn for universities. Multiple states have passed laws that allow athletes to make money off their fame, through endorsement deals and monetization of social media.
All of these options are tantalizing, and the demands for athlete empowerment will continue unabated — only louder now, after the invigorated calls for racial justice that followed the killing of George Floyd.
The movement toward compensation is seen by some as radical. But it actually aims to undo a system that defies capitalism.
The N.B.A. and the N.F.L. have long used collegiate athletics as minor leagues that lack the paychecks. For those leagues, the more polished and famous players are in college, the better. To keep this pipeline flowing, the leagues established arbitrary age requirements for players entering their drafts.
The rules make it so most rookies don’t come to the N.F.L. until they’re at least 21, after a minimum of three years of college football finishing school.
In basketball, the age limit is 19, and a full N.B.A. season after an athlete’s high school graduation. (This despite the greatness of players like LeBron James, who became an N.B.A. star straight out of high school, before the current rules came to be in 2006.)
I’m no fan of such restrictions.
In 1984, with the help of Arthur Ashe, I attended the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Bradenton, Fla. My first roommate was Andre Agassi, then the world’s best 14-year-old player, who struck each ball with a clean heaviness I’d never seen before. Two years later, that spry teenager turned pro. You know the rest.
But that’s tennis, a sport in which players as young as 14 can begin playing professionally. It’s also, of course, a sport known for its whiteness and wealth. The desire to control opportunities in sports dominated by Black athletes, to take advantage of Black labor and skill, is a whole different deal.
It’s fair to worry about what deep change would look like for N.C.A.A. sports. What will happen if we give star players more freedom, allow them to earn what they’re worth, and give all athletes labor protections? The collegiate powers that be predict doom for the entire undertaking. Don’t buy it. Doom was also predicted when athletic departments were forced to follow Title IX, finally giving equal opportunities for women’s teams.
Real transformation is more than justified right now, but it makes sense to proceed carefully. For all of the flaws in the college athletics model, there is an upside to the experience that is sometimes overlooked by those who want to take a hammer to the system.
Playing a sport, so vital to the fabric of life on most campuses, can boost an athlete not just for a few years, but for decades. I felt that lift in powerful ways as I shifted from tennis to the working world. The combination of Cal tennis on the résumé and alumni who had watched me play didn’t exactly hurt.
Years later, whenever I go back to the Berkeley campus, I’m still remembered and supported. I speak to the team. Retired professors come up and share memories of days when the stands were packed for matches against Stanford and U.C.L.A. Our indoor national championship trophy from 1989 has long been on display.
It was the same for my father, Mel Streeter, until his death in 2006. Even when he was in his 60s, on trips to Eugene, Ore., people stopped him to remember his games at the fabled McArthur Court. These days there is a scholarship in his name, and his image is displayed in a prominent spot on the Oregon campus, right next to an image of Phil Knight, the Nike founder.
That kind of benefit — I call it the nesting effect because it feels as if you’ve always got a home — isn’t tangible in the way a pro contract for $100,000 might be. But it is real and lasting, nonetheless.
So what would I say to a high school player thinking of signing up for one of the leagues aiming to compete with the N.C.A.A.? Know what you’re gaining: a short-term boost to the pocketbook, a chance to focus fully on your skills, an opportunity to steer clear of a system that at its highest levels is a sham.
But know, too, what you’re missing.
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