South Park - College Athletics PDF

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Schooled, Crack Baby Athletic Association, and College Athletics

College athletics have always been a way for high school athletes to further hone their skills on the field, court, diamond, etc. It’s usually seen as a program to see if their skills shown at the collegiate level could be beneficial at the professional level. However, there is a level of controversy levelled on whether or not athletes should be able to enter the pros straight out of high school without having to go to college and if student-athletes should be given compensation for their efforts on the playing field. This issue is addressed in the 2013 documentary Schooled and the South Park episode “Crack Baby Athletic Association.” In Schooled, it is noted that over 1,200 universities across America form the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). High school athletes are rewarded scholarships to play their respective sports on the collegiate level on the conditions that they receive no sort of payment and help advertise the university that they play for, despite college sports bringing in $12 billion annually. However, in the case of former Tennessee running back Arian Foster, this rule left players’ refrigerators empty on a normal basis. When his coach brought food for the players, Foster revealed it was an NCAA violation and players have to keep quiet about it or they would risk their chances of entering the pros. It is then revealed that the main reason why colleges offer free scholarships to student athletes is to reduce the risk of them accepting money under the table due to them being labelled as “amateurs.” This means that they are generating revenue for their respective college or university and they receive nothing, which is a point that Taylor Branch argues is a fraud and does not grant a student-athlete their

rights. This is another main point about college athletics in Schooled: The students are not considered “employees” by the school they play for. They are considered “students”, which would make them ineligible for workers’ compensation. The film cites the failed 1974 case of Kent Waldrep when he tried to sue Texas Christian University after the university cut his athletic scholarship due to Waldrep becoming paralysed during a football game against Alabama as an example. With Walter Byers’ coining of the term “student athlete” in the 1950s and Sonny Vaccaro’s deal with Nike through the 1970s and well into the 1980s, it led to more revenue for the respective universities through advertising deals. However, despite the extra money that universities were pulling in, Vaccaro admitted that student-athletes received none of the money. It’s also noted that out of all student-athletes competing at the collegiate level, only 1.5% go forward to the pros. The film then focuses to another main point: student-athletes in the classroom and how some top prospects are illprepared for the classroom. The film uses an example with a football prospect out of Chicago, Illinois, who “couldn’t write his own name” and majored in engineering because “he wanted to learn about choo-choo trains.” Mary Willingham, who was a learning specialist at the University of North Carolina, exposed 50 of what she called “paper classes” that did not really teach student-athletes anything because all they required was, in Willingham’s words, “a paper at the end of the semester and it was 100% of the time graded A or B.” UNC was found innocent after a series of investigations and the blame was placed on just one African-American studies professor. Devon Ramsay then explain his story of how he as convicted of academic

fraud under NCAA rules despite having no evidence against him and the UNC Honour Court throwing out the case because of how ridiculous it was. Schooled also brings up another main point in the theory that the NCAA is a cartel because they set the rules on how collegiate sports should be played and how they banded together to the decision that student-athletes should not be paid. Arian Foster even states that cheating the rules is guaranteed because players are abiding by “made up rules” and that the NCAA does not want to pay them for their skills. At the time that the film was released, a case was making the rounds with the goal of giving student-athletes compensation. The people who helped give it leverage were Sonny Vacarro, who toured various universities to speak out against how student-athletes earned nothing for their work, Ed O’Bannon, a UCLA basketball player who was never given compensation for his talents even after being featured in the NCAA Basketball 09 video game, and Michael Hausfield, a lawyer who oversaw the Exxon-Valdez case in 1989. The film also uses the Amateur Sports Act of 1978, which gave Olympic sports governing bodies for each of them and players represented 20% of each body. Because of this act, it led to athletes being allowed to receive compensation through endorsement deals and the like. At the end of the film, it is revealed that the NCAA denied interview requests for the film, Devon Ramsay was reinstated into the NCAA, and that as of July 2013, the O’Bannon case was still active in the court system. The issue of the NCAA unfairly treating student-athletes that are playing under NCAA-affiliated colleges and universities is addressed in a season 15 episode of South Park called “Crack Baby Athletic Association.” In the episode, Cartman and a few buddies start a basketball league for crack babies from six local hospitals who play with

a ball filled with cocaine. He also states that it caused his company to earn $1,000 in just 11 days while stating that they are not harming the babies at all. Cartman reveals some of the episode’s feelings on the matter by stating that the crack babies are playing the game for free, which gives the company tax exemption status as a non-profit organisation, which borrows a page from Schooled and how the NCAA is also tax exempt. Cartman then tries to recruit a woman’s unborn child to “compete” for St. Mary’s Hospital. When the woman complains that her child won’t be able to make money and how it’s not fair, Cartman explains that he “doesn’t make the rules and [Cartman] makes them up and writes them down.” This is echoed when Kyle argues that the crack babies should receive compensation from EA Games because of their likenesses being used to promote the game and Cartman dismisses it because it violates one of the rules of the CBAA. At the meeting with EA Sports, Peter Moore states that he now owns the rights to the CBAA and tells the boys and crack babies to “fuck themselves.” This shows that the episode’s position on college athletics aligns in a similar manner to what was discussed in Schooled. South Park is showing that the NCAA runs like a business that doesn’t care about student-athletes and only seems to care about the revenue that they generate for the company. Several news reports have come out in the last several years regarding various individuals and their views on the matter. In June 2017, Matt Norlander of CBS reported that in an interview with ESPN Radio, Mike Krzyzewski of Duke stated that he believes that the NBA “should be responsible for having a minor league affiliate” and that the NCAA has rules “that haven’t advanced with the game that [the NCAA] impose on the collegiate players.” (Norlander) This mentality that more “mainstream” sports like

basketball do not really take in younger than average players is echoed by Shannon Ryan of The Chicago Tribune. However, Ryan goes a step further and lists several examples of other student-athletes that went to the pros at a young age. Ryan also deduces that there’s a “racial implication” due to the fact that “the majority of players drafted are African-American and many are disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds.” (Ryan) In contrast with the previous two articles, Fred Carter of ESPN goes a different route and provides three pros and cons of high school student-athletes going pro. According to Carter, pros give student-athletes the ability to make money, more time on their hands, and get straight to the “second contract” to play in the pros. However, the problems with this decision, Carter says, is that there are “bad elements”, an extremely rigorous work ethic, and that “most kids coming out of high school lack physical and mental maturity”, which means that some high school student-athletes will not be able to fully experience what fully-grown athletes experience playing for the pros. (Carter) Jason Clary of The Bleacher Report also lists three points for each side of the argument, but Clary also explains what his definition of professionalism is. According to Clary, professionalism is “the act of making a living in any field, whether that means being an athlete or working in a cubicle in your metropolitan broker’s office.” (Clary) This means that anyone, student-athletes included, can make a living doing what they love to do. Despite this, according to Clary, student-athletes are students first and athletes second. Andrew Doughty of Hero Sports forms his argument by citing the case of famed Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson due to the fact that Peterson believed

that he did not need to play college football in order to be drafted into the NFL. Doughty also states that even with more training at the high school level, the transition from high school to the pros “borders on impossibility” and in the case of high school quarterbacks, there is zero chance. (Doughty) At the end of his article, it is stated that “there is unanimous agreement that it’s too risky for NFL teams to gamble on teenagers.” (Doughty) In the final article, however, Gerry DiNardo, writing for The New York Times, argues for why the NFL and NBA should take in prospects straight out of college due to his experience as the head coach for the Birmingham Thunderbolts in the very short-lived XFL. With the number of college football investigations taking place in the NCAA, DiNardo argues that if high school student-athletes could develop their skills outside of a university, “athletes would not be forced to go to college to pursue an NFL career and the universities could eliminate those who did not want to be in the classroom.” (DiNardo) DiNardo ends his article by stating that the system itself be criticised and not the players and coaches who play for it and that it’ll become “pro football’s answer to minor league baseball.” (DiNardo) In conclusion, my views on whether or not student-athletes should be paid remains mixed. While I do agree with the notion that student-athletes should make some compensation through endorsement deals, having their names on jerseys, advertising their university as a whole, and the like, they are termed “student-athletes” for a reason. They are students first and athletes second, but if their athletic scholarship is less than the average tuition for the university that they play for, they have every right to accept compensation in order to make ends meet. In addition to this, the choice of whether or not they want to forego a year or more of their college career to enter the

pros, they have every right to do so. I agree with Gerry DiNardo’s point of there being a minor league basketball or minor league football league to give up and coming prospects a different option than going straight to university or college just to play for the NFL. It’s an idea that should be implemented in the near future as a means to combat the NCAA and their monopoly on college sports.

Works Cited Carter, Fred. “Fred's Points: Pros, cons of high schoolers going pro.” ESPN.com, https://a.espncdn.com/nba/columns/carter_fred/1537641.html. Accessed 17 Sept. 2017. Clary, Jason. “College Vs. Pros: Should Athletes Leave School Early?” Bleacher Report, Bleacher Report, 12 Apr. 2017, https://bleacherreport.com/articles/307746college-vs-pros-should-athletes-be-allowed-to-leave-school-early. Accessed 17 Sept. 2017. DiNardo, Gerry. “Why Not Let 18-Year-Olds Head Straight for the Pros?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 27 Aug. 2011, https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/28/sports/ncaafootball/why-not-let-18-yearolds-head-straight-for-the-pros.html?mcubz=0. Accessed 17 Sept. 2017. Doughty, Andrew. “NFL Draft: Can High School Prospects Make the Jump Straight to the NFL?” HERO Sports, 8 Apr. 2017, https://herosports.com/news/nfl-draft-highschool-leonard-fournette-myles-garrett-adrian-peterson-ahah. Accessed 17 Sept. 2017. Norlander, Matt. “Mike Krzyzewski renews call for high school players to be eligible for the NBA Draft.” CBSSports.com, 21 June 2017, https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/mike-krzyzewski-renewscall-for-high-school-players-to-be-eligible-for-the-nba-draft/. Accessed 17 Sept. 2017. Ryan, Shannon. “Enough already: High school stars should be able to go directly to NBA.” Chicagotribune.com, 14 Apr. 2015,

https://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/college/ct-smack-ryan-spt-041420150413-story.html. Accessed 17 Sept. 2017....