(Bob Donnan-USA TODAY Sports)
There are two main responses when a person is in the wrong: they can try to hide their wrongdoing in the hope that they don’t get caught or they can go on the offensive and try to confuse their attacker. Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim clearly believes in the latter. In speaking to the New York State Associated Press symposium last week, the coach of the Orange said, “[Paying college athletes] is really the most idiotic suggestion of all time. … I think you have to understand something. It's really very clear. This is really clear. … Our players get a $50,000 education. Some of them use Syracuse to develop their game, get the publicity they need, become a first-round pick and make money from basketball. Some of them like me get the scholarship, get the grades, get their education, get the chance to play basketball and then get to start life without any debt.”
As I’ve written in this space before, I am highly skeptical of the type of education that top athletes get at universities. I am sure there are some that take advantage the best they can to take classes around their practice schedule. My guess is that for many athletes the classes are simply a silly hurdle that must be crossed to play sports. And for the best athletes (who are the vast minority, but are commonly thought of), a semester’s worth of classes is the bridge that must be traversed before they go pro.
What Boeheim doesn’t mention in his statement is that the labor of the players is what pays his exorbitant salary. If I were making a few million dollars from coaching a sport in which my players were prohibited from using their fame to make any money, I’d go on the offensive too. Boeheim has been a coach for a long time, so I am sure from his vantage point (with plenty of yes men blowing smoke up his butt), he is right. He has spent his life coaching college basketball and has to believe in the system in which he was raised.
It would seem like the NCAA would want to fix this problem somehow, but they do not see it as a problem. In fact, it seems like their whole reason for being is to make sure the money keeps flowing into the pockets of people like Boeheim. On this point, the coach has a nice redirect: “"A lot of you said, 'Well, coaches make a lot of money.' Yeah coaches make a lot of money. It's a big business. It's a $16 million business for Syracuse University and college basketball. Am I going to be compensated? Yeah, sure I am. When I started the first five years I made zero to coach full-time. The next five years I made $10,000 to coach full-time. As a head coach, the first year I made $25,000. So I didn't, obviously, those first 11 years I didn't get in this to make money.” In other words,” I used to make nothing. Now, I make a lot – what of it? I’ve earned that money!”
Boeheim also notes in his speech that the proceeds of college basketball (and football) are used to pay for the other non-revenue college sports. Please note that at no time does Boeheim say that any of the money goes back to the school for actual education. I know I’ve hit on this point before, but it drives me crazy that universities are used for minor league football and basketball with no real benefit to the university. College athletics are well supported, but I don’t see how that has anything to do with an educational mandate for students or athletes (or the rare hybrid called the student-athlete, which may be a myth). Really, the NFL and NBA should pony up for a minor league system if they want to have their age limits supported.
There is cognitive dissonance here that makes me want to give up watching college athletics. Eventually, I think one of two things will happen. The NCAA will adopt the Olympic model, which Matt Norlander notes in the CBS article in which players will be allowed to use their name to make whatever money they can. Of course, this might cut Boeheim out of part of the gravy train, so he wouldn’t support that. The other possibility is what happened to boxing in which the money being poured in tore the sport apart. (Well, that and boxing is barbaric.) I am going to do my darnedest to put the incongruities of college athletics in the back of my mind, but it is sometimes hard to forget when a myopic coach is telling me what an idiot I am.
Perry Missner is a college basketball enthusiast who writes for RotoWire along with several other outlets. He welcomes your comments on Twitter at @PerryMissner or via email at [email protected]
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