March Money Madness

Watch Money and March Madness on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

This PBS Frontline video is nearly two years old, but much of it still rings true today.  The Ed O'Bannon lawsuit against the NCAA is still making news, and UConn's low graduation rate kept it out of the Big East and NCAA tournaments this month.  Still, it's only two years old.

I used to be dead-set against players making any kind of money off their athletic prowess in college.  College sports started with the same intent that high school sports did, to offer young men a worthy athletic pursuit in the midst of their academics.  Of course, that model's been dead for a long time now--the first cheating I heard of happened in the '40s when World War II vets came home and given cash to play for one school instead of another.

What really turned me into a recent concert of compensation for players is the warp speed in which conferences are re-aligning, and how schools are leaving behind decades of tradition for a few more million dollars of a more recently negotiated television deal (looking at you, Texas A&M and Maryland). It's gotten to the point that my students look at a conference map and can't understand how schools from such different part of the country can be part of the same association.  And they're right, it doesn't make sense.

I don't support paying college players while they're in school--they still get a scholarship, and everyone not getting a 'ship bemoans the high cost of higher ed. I do think they are entitled to some post-school compensation for their likeness being used in video games (see the O'Bannon case) and a cut of jerseys sold with their number on them.

The odds of any of this happening.  Well, it depends on the lawsuit, I believe.  Looking at the video, I don't see the NCAA changing its mind in the near future.