Want to reform college football? Pay the players

"ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL?"

“It’s the most wonderful week of the year” chimes the ESPN commercial to the tune of “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.”

You got it, sports fans.  It’s college football bowl season.   For the next couple of weeks,  we will subjected to a litenany of meaningless college football contests that have taken on the names of their title sponsors.   Games that are mere consolation prizes for teams that finish with at least a .500 record. The Chick Fil-A Bowl (formerly the Peach Bowl),  the MAACO Bowl and the Meinecke Car Care Bowl are a few examples of the 35 contests where 70 out of 118 Division I-A (now known as the Football Bowl System Division (FBS)) get to partake in.  All of this leads up to the BCS National Championship game on Jan. 10th between #1 Auburn and #2 Oregon.

How did the college football get to this point?  How did big name corporations such as Allstate, AT&T and Pollan Weed Eater become so influential in the world of college football and contribute to this excess that we see today?  Don’t get me wrong,  I love watching college football as much as the next red-blooded American male.  I loved it so much, I actually suited up and played the game for four years.   Yeah, yeah I know it was only a no name Division III college in the Upper Midwest.  So what?  (For the record, I did play against the all time winningest coach in college football:  John Gagliardi of St. John’s (MN) University) Unlike Howard Cosell and many loud mouthed wanna be armchair head coaches, game coordinators and referees,  I actually played college football and believe I am more than qualified to make an assessment based upon my experience on that side of the coin.

If you want to pinpoint an event or date that changed the face of college football as we know it today,  look no further than this date of infamy. January 2nd, 1987 in Tempe, AZ: The Sunkist Fiesta Bowl between #1 Miami (FL) Hurricanes and #2 Penn State Nittany Lions.  For a superb analysis on this game and how it changed the landscape of college football forever, read Michael Weinreb’s “The Night College Football Went to Hell.”

(An aside: I am sending an e-mail to Weinreb to see if we can find someone to produce a documentary on this bowl game for ESPN’s critically acclaimed “30 for 30” series.  I believe it is a story that deserves to be told. I actually own the complete NBC Sports broadcast of this game on DVD and have been a Nittany Lions fan since I was 5.)

In a world where colleges, broadcast networks and corporations make billions of dollars on advertsing, merchandising and licensing of their likeness on TV, radio, apparel and video games,   the reality is that these student athletes only get a small stipend for their services.  Let’s say for the sake of argument, it’s about $1,500 a semester.   Some of these holier than thou college football purists will say, “why this kid is getting a free education on the taxpayer’s dime (if they go to a public institution like UCLA), so why should we pay him?”  If you subtract the cost of books and materials for classes for a full load of classes,  expenses for transportation if they live off campus and other incidentals that accompany the realities of college life,  you may be left with as little as $500 for the next 3 1/2 months to live on.  Do the math and their daily “wage” is $4.76 a day.  A homeless vagrant could possibly make more than that, if not up to 10 times the amount,  in an 8-10 hour day begging for spare change at the off ramp of the 405 or the ramp of the Newport Beach pier.

The reality is that the pockets of the college trustees along with the CEOs of major bowl sponsors are being lined with billions of dollars on the labor of 18-22 year old students who are only receiving these small stipends for their services.  In this day of wage labor and minimum wage laws,  some would consider this as “slave labor” and “exploitation.”

A lot of these athletes come from economically challenged environments where they live with a single parent (often a mother) who is working 2-3 jobs to keep a roof over their head to make ends meet.   If they are real standouts on the field,  the lure of the millions of dollars from the NFL can tempt them to skip out on their final college years which usually results in these holier than thou critics lamenting about how the purity has gone from college football.  I don’t fault a kid for making this move, especially since they are looking after their own, and more often their immediate family’s,  economic interest.   Besides, when did looking after your and your family’s economic interest become a mortal sin?  It doesn’t take a math major from UCI to figure out that a $10,000,000 guarantee is greater than a daily wage of $4.76

Here’s a rough draft resolution that I have been tinkering with on how to reform college football as we know it today.   Not an absolute solution to cure all of its ills, but a step to at least generate a dialogue and some possible controversy among those who show feigned disdain over anything that sullies their pre-conceived notions of a society of absolute purity and wholesomeness.

1) Eliminate athletic scholarships (a lot of them subsidized by tax dollars).  Instead of awarding athletic scholarships, have the colleges pay these athletes fair market value for their services just like they do for “work study” jobs for students who qualify for Federal financial aid.   The money used to pay these athletes would be pooled from the team’s annual budget and the revenues that they generate for their team’s sporting events: TV, radio, merchandise sales, video game sales, game concessions and actual paid game attendance.

2) The player would be on a job contract with the school that would be renewable on a year by year basis not to exceed four years of real participation.   Exceptions would be made for medical hardships or family hardships only.   Terms of the contract would be outlined by the respective institution to include conditions like class attendance, minimum GPA, on the job performance and anything else that the institution deems necessary in order to maintain employment with the team.

3) Create an tiered incentive program for these players to earn money throughout their collegiate football career.  Pay these athletes bonuses for every win during the regular season and if they reach a bowl game or a BCS game.  If employees or executives can get paid bonuses for achieving their benchmarked business goals, they why shouldn’t the people who do the actual work for a college football team be compensated in a like manner for winning and achieving similar goals?  This will give the players more incentive to perform on the field every Saturday (or Thursday).

4) Eliminate athletic dormitories.  In order to get these athletes ready for the “real world” (as many colleges state in their “educational vision’), have them live among the general populace on campus.   There is no need for our tax dollars to subsidize athletes for their own segregated cafeterias and dorms.

Just like any resolution, it is open to amendments and changes (and the usual smart ass remarks from people with inferiority complexes and huge voids in their sex lives).   In a sport that generates billions of dollars for campuses and corporate executives of the various bowl committes, athletic apparel companies and video game manufacturers,  why should these 18-22 year old athletes who do the actual labor be left out of the economic pie?

Now excuse me while I go back and watch the riveting action of the Beef O’ Brady’s St Petersburg Bowl on ESPN.