Indentured Book Review

 

A few years ago, I read a book called Crashing the Gate by Makos Moulitsas Zuniga and Jerome Armstrong about the effect that liberal bloggers had on the 2004 presidential election. I assumed social media only affected social media, but I figured it would be a good look from the inside. The bloggers were able to schedule meetings with politicians and make their views known, but they had minimal impact. They claimed that they had helped Howard Dean to become DNC chairman, but I thought that was like having no effect. I had a similar feeling about the proceedings of Indentured: the Rebellion Against the College Sports Cartel by Joe Nocera and Ben Strauss.

I have written about the NCAA and its profit-gathering but not profit-sharing ways in the past. Without being a rich, white guy, it is hard to feel much sympathy for the administrators of the NCAA rules. By hiding behind the auspices of amateurism, the NCAA has created a huge business in which the laborers are not able to profit. The athletes are seemingly unable to make any money while they are playing for colleges. The system benefits the few rather than the many. The book provides plenty of examples of this unfairness. For example, a quarterback had an off-campus internship in the spring. The school brought in a new coach and he was not willing to let the player continue his internship away from the team and cut his scholarship. Injured players lose their scholarships and are unable to pay for school.

The authors provide details of the various class action lawsuits against the NCAA. The most famous of these was the Ed O’Bannon case from a few years ago in which the UCLA forward headed a suit so that he could get paid for the NCAA using his image in a video game. Sonny Vaccaro, the former shoe shill, was a prominent plaintiff backer. The NCAA has huge reserves of money and litigators, and is willing to wear down opponents. While the judgment went for the O’Bannon side, the actual effect was minimal.

The NCAA deserves plenty of derision, but I thought the book would have been more effective if the authors had showed some of the positive effects of college sports. I also wasn’t sure who this book was for. Are there people who think the NCAA and its enforcement of amateurism is a thing of purity? There are plenty of examples of people going to school on athletic scholarships and making good, despite working a full-time job in sports. However, the authors could not hide their contempt for the NCAA and it made me sigh from time to time.

The football players from Northwestern tried to form a union. It was a hearty effort, but came against the usual resistance from the establishment. Because college sports are popular, it is hard to see this situation changing at any point in the near future. It would take a mass movement of players, coaches, and/or fans (likely in that order). For the most part, fans don’t care about the hardships of college athletes. Coaches are part of the system and are paid well to believe that they are educating young people. That leaves the players…

We have heard of potential player boycotts before. For example, the Clippers were considering boycotting Donald Sterling in the playoffs a couple of years ago. It didn’t happen. Perhaps socially aware players profiled in this book, such as Northwestern quarterback Kain Colter and Ramogi Hoga, will lead a new generation of people to the road to fairness. Maybe the publishing of this book will lead to changes. One can hope.

 

Grab a copy here:

 

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