Break up the NCAA

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is an administrative body created to regulate college sports in order to make them safer. Eventually it was expanded to make rules and regulations generally. Schools choose whether or not to belong to the association, however because of its size and the revenue available to its members, belonging at some point becomes involuntary--you almost HAVE to belong. In choosing to belong to the Association, schools give away its intellectual property rights to the Association, thus the NCAA owns the exclusive licensing rights to all intellectual property (logos, performance of games, etc) of its members (with the exception of Notre Dame). This makes the NCAA sort of a monopoly (more on this later).

Student-athletes must also abide by any rules set forth by the Association by way of accepting a scholarship to play a sport at a member school. Student-athletes generally cannot receive any sort of benefit outside of their scholarship or any "swag" they may receive for participating in an NCAA sanctioned event per NCAA rules (which automatically are incorporated into their contracts). And here's where the problem lies.

We live in a society that loves to shower people of fame with gifts. Designers give actors and actresses free clothes because if their spotted wearing the shit, its advertisement for the designer. Car companies give away cars for winning things (like awards, sporting tournaments, or Wheel of Fortune) with the same idea in mind. However the NCAA frowns upon people not affiliated with the school giving student athletes "hook ups."

Take the Ohio State football program for example. Ohio State football is HUGE in central Ohio. There is pretty much nothing else to attract the love and attention of sports fans (with the exception of the Columbus Crew and Blue Jackets--but both of those fan bases combined can't compare to the love for the Buckeyes). Business owners are more than happy to give star players the privilege to "use" a nice car for free--in hopes that when they get big bucks they'll come back and buy one later. Others will ask for memorabilia--whether to keep for themselves because they're huge fans or to sell on eBay--in exchange for merchandise. Needless to say, stars on the Ohio State football team (and to some extent the basketball team) are the biggest celebrities in the city. Which makes this no different than Kobe getting hooked up in L.A. or Urlacher walking into Nike Town and leaving with free kicks.

In sum, this massive monopoly does not allow its contractors to participate in society and use their fame like any other member of society can. In any other situation, these people could sell their signature, accept free shit and be a VIP. Hell reality "stars" are better positioned to make use of their celebrity than student-athletes. In any other situation members of an association could leave the association (ex. Barry Bonds opted to not be a member of the players' association once he got to the Giants. He figured he should profit off his likeness and all things Bonds related--not baseball generally). However student-athletes can't leave the NCAA. Their choice is to play for another school which may belong to another association (the NAIA for example) which may not offer as much exposure, or the academic quality of the school may not be as good (if they care about those sort of things), or the ladies might not be as nice (because lets face it--chicks dig Division I). To a 17-20 year old this is no choice at all. When there is no other choice, you have a monopoly.

The solution isn't paying players or creating a "minor league" for football (the NBA already has the NBADL and Europe; baseball and hockey players can play professionally right out of high school), but to have the courts look into the power the NCAA has. Ultimately, the NCAA and it's rules influence the daily lives of players. Players are losing scholarships or being sanctioned for activity that should be beyond the purview of NCAA regulation--since the NCAA was created to regulate ON FIELD activity, and especially since some of the behavior doesn't tarnish the image of the NCAA. The fallacy the NCAA wants you to believe is that these young people are "amateur" athletes and for the purity of the sport all that should matter is free school, housing and books. Yet the NCAA rakes in BILLIONS off the sweat and hard work of the players and coaches in the sporting programs. There is something wrong with this picture. These players aren't "cheaters" and the coaches that don't snitch on them shouldn't be ridiculed. They're no different than anyone else in our society trying to capitalize on their celebrity status. If we can't stop Octomom from doing so, the NCAA shouldn't be trying to stop student-athletes from doing it either.