March Madness

It’s March, and I’m caught up in the madness of the NCAA Basketball Tournament. Again. The fire was lit when inextricably, the Auburn Tigers won three straight games in the SEC tournament. Three straight! You have to understand, we won four conference games during the entire season! Of course, deep down inside, I knew that winning the tournament and getting an automatic invitation to the “Big Dance” wasn’t happening, not with Kentucky in the building. But it was sweet, really sweet, to still be there, fighting, after sending three other schools home.

I’m not the only one with this disease. Most of America suffers from bracket-itis. Office productivity is affected nationwide during March, as office workers secretly watch the games on their computers, form gambling pools based on their opinions on who will win every game, and spend significant portions of the work day, discussing and debating every school, game, coach, player, and commentator that comes to mind. Even the President of the United States fills out a bracket. On National TV! More than $3 Billion dollars will be bet on the tournament this year.

The “Big Dance” seems to overshadow everything else that may be happening in sports. We don’t hear about baseball’s spring training or the NBA. Nobody knows or cares about what golf tournament is being played, especially with Tiger Woods on the sidelines. The NFL becomes mute. We even seem to be a little less concerned about the news around the world.

Meanwhile, the NCAA is making some serious bank. In 2010, The NCAA signed a 14-year agreement with CBS and TBS to televise the tournament. The deal was for $10.8 BILLION.

Every once in a while, when I’m watching the games and anxiously checking and agonizing over my bracket selections, my conscience taps me on the shoulder and tries to convince me to get an attitude about the fact that the kids providing the labor for this incredibly entertaining economic enterprise are getting screwed. Instinctively, I want to say, “These kids should be getting paid”. But, after further review, the reality is, they are getting paid, and paid quite handsomely as well. Still, my conscience won’t let go.

The top four seeds in this year’s tournament are Kentucky, Wisconsin, Villanova, and Duke. The estimated cost of attendance for four years at Kentucky is $129,856. Wisconsin, $166,276. Villanova, $228,944. Duke, $254,120. Most of today’s college graduates will leave school with similar debt following them everywhere they go. The scholarship athletes playing in the tournament have an opportunity to leave school with a degree, and no debt, no interest, free and clear.

The difference in the lifetime earnings of a person with a college degree and one with a high school diploma is more than one million dollars.

For many years I had great admiration for John Thompson Jr. and Mike Krzyzewski. I admired the fact that Georgetown and Duke not only fielded tremendously successful basketball teams, but they also refused to de-emphasize academics. Their players graduated. I never felt that their players were being exploited. I always felt that their players got as much from the university as the university got from them.

Here is the real issue;

Too many college athletes don’t graduate. That is how the majority of them are misused and abused. Some of them are unprepared for the academic rigors of college, and should have been refused admission. Some of them are not given the academic support once they arrive on campus that would allow them to succeed in the classroom. Many athletes have their scholarships taken away, not for academic reasons, but because they may have been out-performed athletically. Some are not allowed to compete as freshmen, but they are “red-shirted” for athletic reasons, not academic reasons. This year, despite having rosters of twelve to fifteen players, Kentucky has 3 seniors, Wisconsin has 3, Villanova has 2, and Duke has 2.

Making all of this right would be both difficult and complicated.

 It has been suggested that all freshmen should be ineligible to participate in varsity sports. I believe that freshmen should be eligible based on their ability to perform in the classroom, not on the field or court. Let freshman eligibility be based on a minimum high school grade point average and/or their ACT/SAT score.

Stop taking scholarships from students based on an injury, a better recruit coming to the school, or a coach’s whim. Make all scholarships irrevocable and good for five years. Let the schools apply for waivers from the NCAA to increase scholarship limits if a student suffers a major injury.

Allow students to be paid for endorsements and outside activities related to their participation in the school’s athletic program. Require the school to negotiate the contracts and place all proceeds in a trust fund that would be made available to the student upon graduation or withdrawal from the school.

These three things won’t fix everything that is wrong with intercollegiate athletics, but it might just allow my conscience to leave me alone during March Madness, (college football season too).

By the way, I had SMU in the “Sweet Sixteen” and Virginia in the “Final Four”. Obviously that screwed up my bracket pretty good. In fact, right now my wife is beating me by one point. But, I’ve got Kentucky winning it all and she had Villanova.

Who you got?