The Dark Realities of NCAA Sports: Corruption and Exploitation

There are two separate phenomena that occur in the world of the NCAA, Corruption and exploitation can be found at almost every Level of collegiate sports. Corruption generally speaking, has to do with the money that illegally and unethically changes hands amongst the parties involved. This money exchange happens boosters and players, and players and coaches. Time and time again Boosters and coaches alike have been caught offering money to players and the families of players for them to attend their school.

A lot of these college recruits come from low income families and coaches take advantage of their situation and bribe the players. This can result in the loss of eligibility for a player, expulsion and criminal investigation for coaches and boosters. Exploitation has to do with the way college players are treated by the university they represent. For example, a player worked to his death by a coach, a player being dropped by a college after injury, players not being permitted to return home after a family member has passed, and many more instances just like those that seem to be overlooked by the NCAA.

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This paper will also address the long-debated question of whether college athletes should be paid for their commitment to the school and its athletic program.

Corruption within the sports industry is a pervasive and complex issue that is threatening the integrity of sport as an institution. The political, commercial, and individual renegade group interests across the global sports industry provides a wide range of opportunities for both individual and organizational malfeasance to occur in both the for-profit and non-profit sporting sectors.

It is a multifaceted phenomenon as evidenced by the various conceptions of corruption, the multiple causes and consequences that occur in different contexts (sports, sport events, governance), and in various forms (bribery, fraud, lack of institutional oversight). Where there are significant amounts of money, sin and greed are not far behind. As elite sport has become increasingly commercialized, the new money in sports has led to more opportunities for fraudulent and corrupt activities ( Kihl).

Corruption in college sports is so big that the FBI have gotten involved in recent years. More bad apples added to the barrel include Auburn, Southern California, Oklahoma State and Arizona. All of these colleges have assistant basketball coaches who have recently been indicted on federal bribery charges for allegedly accepting money to push players toward a slew of moneymakers, financial advisers, Adidas and other companies. Louisville and Miami are also accused of spending more than $100,000 to gain the services of a player. It is known that this is a practice in sports and we should not be shocked that this is how college sports works. These programs have billions of dollars flowing through them including contracts with CBS and Turner Sports in excess of $8 billion while having a major part of the work force unpaid (the players), this will be the end result (Svrluga).

The surest way to solve the corruption in college sports is to recognize that what we call corruption is, for the most part, just commerce. If an agent or a shoe company or Joe’s Bar & Grill sees some advantage in making a deal with some undergraduate basketball or football player, why should anyone object to people getting paid for their marketable abilities? Where, exactly, is the harm?More to the point, perhaps, on what stone tablet is it written that college athletes’ compensation must be capped at tuition, books, room, board and a “full cost of attendance” stipend? (Sullivan).

In the midst of the current headlines, LeBron James slammed college sports as a corrupt and broken system. That's a point that economists and others have made for the past four decades if not earlier, albeit with wonky terms like 'cartel' or 'input price restrictions.' Particularly in the sports of football and men's basketball among the top conferences, college sports has long been neck-deep in the entertainment business. In spite of the educational window dressing, the economic fundamentals do not differ between a Knicks game at Madison Square Garden one night and the Big East Tournament the next night. It doesn't take any sophisticated economic reasoning or measurements to see that. The big difference in college and pro sports is the compensation of players. Many people had a sense of this 30 or 40 years ago, but the explosion of revenue since that time has made the nearly obvious now oh-so-obvious. As LeBron mentioned, the disparity between the revenue generated by college players and the amount flowing to them (near zero in actual cash) puts a glaring spotlight on a system that fit 1918 but not 2018. In fact, the flexing of the muscle of the 'Power 5' conferences in recent years is really an admission by those conferences of this reality. The money is so big that they decided not to let the little guys make the rules for them anymore (Goff).

“Evidence abounds that college sports are rife with corruption. Over a century of reform efforts have failed to bring about lasting structural and cultural changes” (Benford). The faculty-driven wing of the social movement has identified several problems with intercollegiate athletics including (1) commercialization; (2) university involvement in the entertainment industry; (3) damage to the integrity of higher education (4) exploitation of athletes; and (5) harm to nonathletes. Observers from a variety of quarters including former athletes, coaches, athletic directors, university presidents, and NCAA officials along with sports journalists and sports sociologists have concluded that college sports are in a sorry state in the United States (Benford).

Here you need to put in some examples of corruption and fraud. Well known stories about money changing hands and other corruption stuff, kids lose eligibility, bribes, payoffs, gambling on games (who benefits).

In his book Court Justice (2009), Ed O’Bannon, a former college and professional basketball player explains the exploitive system of “amateurism.” College athletes generate huge profits but see little from those riches. O’Bannon sheds light on the fact that college athletes are required to train nearly full-time, forced to tailor coursework around sports, often pawns in corrupt investigations, and have revocable scholarships. O’Bannon had put all of this in his past until 2009 when he saw a video game (NCAA Basketball 09) where the NCAA was using player likenesses to make money for themselves with no compensation to past or present players. So, when asked to fight the system for players past, present and future – and seeking no personal financial reward, but rather a chance to make college sports fairer – he agreed to be the face of what became a landmark class-action lawsuit.

Many fans and sports enthusiast believe that the NCAA’s rules are inconsistent and hypocritical with regard to the way they enforce the rules for some athletes and not for others. Since the rules are not enforced consistently across the board, many believe the rules should be relaxed for all college athletes regardless of the sport.

Two examples of involving inconsistent application of the rules about its athletes receiving payment are the cases involving Kyle Parker’s $1.4 million baseball signing bonus while serving as Clemson’s quarterback in 2010, and the situations where tennis players can receive up to $10,000 per year in prize money (and additional cash on a per event basis). Many see it as unfair and unbalanced that in these cases the NCAA allows athletes to be paid while restricting those is other sports. The challenges are adding up for the NCAA both in the courtroom and in the court of public opinion. Speaking at a 2017 meeting of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, Emmert released internal NCAA polling showing that among all Americans, 79 percent say major universities value money ahead of college athletes (Solomon).

One of the most horrific examples of exploitation of a student athlete involves A 19-year-old freshman named Jordan McNair, a member of Maryland University’s football team, who died of abuse during football practice. Jordan McNair died because his humanity was secondary to the egos of the members of the Maryland coaching staff. He died because he was physically abused in the course of what was supposed to be training for the upcoming season. He was a victim of both workplace violence and of domestic abuse.

It was workplace violence of the classic sort, the kind of thing that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration was developed to prevent, no different in kind from the slow death of asbestos workers or the victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911. Under head coach D.J. Durkin, the Maryland football program was quite literally a sweatshop. On May 29, Jordan McNair collapsed after running a series of 110-yard sprints. The coaching and training staffs did not follow the appropriate steps to cool him down despite that fact that McNair had quite obviously slipped into heatstroke, and they delayed calling 911 for an unconscionable length of time. By the time he got to the hospital, Jordan McNair had a body temperature of 106, and he needed an emergency liver transplant. Then, he died. What happened to Jordan McNair is domestic violence. McNair was worked until he collapsed, and there seems to have been a strong immediate reaction that the real problem was that McNair was malingering or, at best, “soft.” The death of Jordan McNair opened up a chamber of horrors for all to see. has produced tales of almost inhuman abuse under the guise of coaching, and a reckless disregard for the health of the athletes in the name of “coaching.” Players forced to eat until they vomited because coaches thought they were fat. Verbal abuse more suited to the SERE training given to Navy Seals than to young football players in a college weight room.

One of the most sympathetic reasons for advocating for college athletes to be compensated by their athletic program is the injury and/or loss of scholarship argument, the time commitment argument. There are roughly 12,000 division 1 football players in the game and each one is at risk for incurring a traumatic brain injury (TBI) or some other serious injury. This could possibly result in long-term or permanent injury, including traumatic encephalopathy, early-onset Alzheimer’s, dementia and other brain conditions. As players are subjected to these risks, the NCAA and many of its member institution obtain extreme amounts of revenues while insisting that the scholarships and education the players receive is an invaluable opportunity in exchange for the athlete’s participation. The scientific debate over the causal relationship between football and TBI is getting stronger in for causation. There is argument that because the threat of TBI increases the cost of playing college football for athletes – while decreasing the value of a college degree- the athletic scholarship as currently constructed for college players she be voided for unfairness (Lee).

There are those who say that college athletes are compensated in that they get free college tuition, they are fed well, they get expert level coaching, and other fringe benefits like athletic clothing, medical care, and all for free. Some argue that college athletes are not professionals and they are attending college to get an education and they make the choice to play sports. These arguments are true to a point, but considering what the athlete gives up, it can’t be said that tuition and food and sneakers and shorts are all for free. College players put in more hours in a week of practice (working extremely hard) and required sports related activities than they put into the classroom and study time. Participation in college sports in literally a full-time job. Medical care for serious injury is not a guarantee for players. In the event of serious injury, a player can be left on his own to pay for continued medical care. Most of the clothing provided for players is promotional from the athletic companies who pay colleges millions of dollars.

Nicholas Warren (2017), addresses the ability of Division 1 athletic programs to pay their college athletes and annual salary. He states that it has long been debated whether college athletes should be paid for the revenues that they bring in from ticket and apparel sales. His study data supports the position that within the current operations of the NCAA and the colleges in Division 1 athletics, there is no way to pay athletes from the profits of the athletic programs. Themselves. Also, the data related to the gap between the conferences have’s and have nots, and the difference in women’s sports and men’s sports show the potential for conflict if the NCAA was to move to a system of payment that operated like the business world without the subsidies or intervention of the organization as a whole.