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College Basketball Is a Mess. Let’s Pay Players.

As an epic scandal roils the sport, it’s time to get real about the business of schools playing games


By Jason Gay / Wall Street Journal

Sept. 28, 2017

Before we get into this NCAA basketball scandal, a quick question: Has Steven Seagal weighed in?

Anyone know? Not yet?

I guess we’ll have to wait for Under Siege Stevie to opine from Moscow, as he helpfully did on the Trump-NFL contretemps.





As for the NCAA, by now you’ve heard the stunning news that our multibillion-dollar men’s collegiate basketball economy might not be completely on the up-and-up.

It’s true! The feds have swooped in and busted a high-ranking Adidas executive and a handful of college assistant coaches in what is alleged to be a wide-ranging series of bribery and fraud schemes designed to steer players to collegiate programs, and later onto financial advisers when they depart college and turn pro.



The debacle has already claimed a high-profile name, Louisville coach Rick Pitino, who has been put on unpaid administrative leave by the school, along with the program’s athletic director, Tom Jurich. (The gorgeous euphemism Pitino’s lawyer deployed for his client’s status is “effectively fired.” I like to think of Louisville freezing him in carbonite, hands raised, as the Empire once did to Han Solo.)

Meanwhile, more Adidases (Adidae?) are expected to drop. Maybe even some Nikes. The fallout from this still-ongoing investigation is expected to last many months, if not years. The prospect of a drawn-out caper is so exciting I can hardly contain myself; the farcical NCAA hasn’t even gotten around to punishing North Carolina for allegations now years old.

I get why this is a big story: it’s got major names, a major shoe company, and the potential to spread long tentacles across a massive sport. To be honest, I’m not crazy obsessed with the individual targets, though there’s an interesting question as to why the government is so invested in what is really supposed to be NCAA’s job. The Journal’s Nicole Hong had an excellent story examining whether or not the misconduct alleged in the government’s case actually violates federal law—something Bloomberg View columnist and noted NCAA skeptic Joe Nocera has wondered out loud about as well.

This is what I care about: what happens next. The worst thing that could happen here is what always happens: penalties are handed out, we moralize at the offenders, forget about it, go back to burnishing the images of coaches and programs and then repeat the whole dance when the same shenanigans happen somewhere else.

It’s true madness. We all know the system is broken. Let’s get bold and fix it. Two discussion points:

1. Pay the players. Finally! This should be the come-to-our-senses moment, yes? How is this scandal not a clear byproduct of an economy in which every party (the conference, the school, the coach, the AD, the shoe company, and so on) is allowed to financially benefit except one (the athlete)? How is it not a symptom of what happens when you shut off a key valve in an otherwise open market? “There’s so much money on the table, it just invites black markets and illegal activity,” says Allen Sanderson, an economist at the University of Chicago.

Once more, a scandal shows the monetary value that young players have—a value that extends beyond the incentive of a college scholarship, which, in the case of a player who intends to only stay a season, is basically meaningless. It’s time to get real. Opening the market and compensating athletes may not square with the romantic ideal of college amateurism, but it would likely cut down on under-the-table nonsense. “The incentive goes down,” Sanderson says.

I’m not holding my breath. Paying athletes in high-revenue sports like men’s basketball and football is an idea that remains controversial, and would necessitate major changes—reclassifying college athletes as employees, for example, which would allow schools to circumvent Title IX requirements. Sanderson thinks a more likely scenario is a pair of conferences—the Pac-12 and the Big Ten, for example—breaking off from the NCAA to create their own, compensated system. Intriguing! A real Rose Bowl, baby! But not happening tomorrow.

2. The NBA is going to step in. Why do we let pro leagues stand on the sidelines of these disasters—they’ve been getting a free ride from college sports for decades; don’t they bear some responsibility to reform the system? Donna Lopiano, a former University of Texas women’s AD and a co-author of the recent book “Unwinding Madness: What Went Wrong with College Sports—And How to Fix It,” is skeptical of schools going pay-for-play and even further commercializing sports. “The answer is a minor league system,” she says, pointing to examples like Pacific Pro Football, a developmental league being planned by Tom Brady’s agent Don Yee.


In basketball, it’s possible the NBA will widen its role. The signs are there. League commissioner Adam Silver has publicly acknowledged that the one-and-done set-up (a byproduct of the league’s 19 year old age minimum) is lousy for both schools and the pros, and has been pushing for reform. The NBA is broadening its own developmental league, the G League—it already exists as an option for an 18-year-old prospect (an 18-year-old can play a year of G and then declare for the draft), and “two-way” contracts for players 19 and up allow a player to move freely between a minor-league team and a pro parent. It doesn’t have the glamour of March Madness, but look for the G to develop as a more popular alternative to college.

Down the road, an academy system could blossom. This latest scandal shows how toxic AAU basketball is—how did anyone think giving shoe companies control over national high school player development was a good idea? It’s possible the NBA may want to extend its reach even further down, creating an academy-type system not unlike what’s seen in high-level soccer. The league is already doing this overseas in Africa, as well as countries like China, Australia and India, identifying talent earlier and overseeing their progress.

This isn’t an idea without eyebrow-raising implications—get ready for 15-year-olds paid to play basketball!—but let’s not act like that’s not already happening. An academy system would push more of basketball’s illegitimate economy into the sunlight. It’s unclear what it would mean for big-time college basketball—whether it would hurt the sport by pushing away top-level talent, or if it would be fine, because we’re just rooting for our alma mater’s laundry anyway.

However the legal case shakes out, college basketball has lost the public’s confidence to determine its own future. It’s a failure pile, and new leadership needs to step up. I expect Steven Seagal will agree.

Write to Jason Gay at Jason.Gay@wsj.com

Appeared in the September 29, 2017, print edition as 'College Basketball Is a Big Mess. Let’s Pay Players..'
 
College Basketball Is a Mess. Let’s Pay Players.

As an epic scandal roils the sport, it’s time to get real about the business of schools playing games


By Jason Gay / Wall Street Journal

Sept. 28, 2017

Before we get into this NCAA basketball scandal, a quick question: Has Steven Seagal weighed in?

Anyone know? Not yet?

I guess we’ll have to wait for Under Siege Stevie to opine from Moscow, as he helpfully did on the Trump-NFL contretemps.





As for the NCAA, by now you’ve heard the stunning news that our multibillion-dollar men’s collegiate basketball economy might not be completely on the up-and-up.

It’s true! The feds have swooped in and busted a high-ranking Adidas executive and a handful of college assistant coaches in what is alleged to be a wide-ranging series of bribery and fraud schemes designed to steer players to collegiate programs, and later onto financial advisers when they depart college and turn pro.



The debacle has already claimed a high-profile name, Louisville coach Rick Pitino, who has been put on unpaid administrative leave by the school, along with the program’s athletic director, Tom Jurich. (The gorgeous euphemism Pitino’s lawyer deployed for his client’s status is “effectively fired.” I like to think of Louisville freezing him in carbonite, hands raised, as the Empire once did to Han Solo.)

Meanwhile, more Adidases (Adidae?) are expected to drop. Maybe even some Nikes. The fallout from this still-ongoing investigation is expected to last many months, if not years. The prospect of a drawn-out caper is so exciting I can hardly contain myself; the farcical NCAA hasn’t even gotten around to punishing North Carolina for allegations now years old.

I get why this is a big story: it’s got major names, a major shoe company, and the potential to spread long tentacles across a massive sport. To be honest, I’m not crazy obsessed with the individual targets, though there’s an interesting question as to why the government is so invested in what is really supposed to be NCAA’s job. The Journal’s Nicole Hong had an excellent story examining whether or not the misconduct alleged in the government’s case actually violates federal law—something Bloomberg View columnist and noted NCAA skeptic Joe Nocera has wondered out loud about as well.

This is what I care about: what happens next. The worst thing that could happen here is what always happens: penalties are handed out, we moralize at the offenders, forget about it, go back to burnishing the images of coaches and programs and then repeat the whole dance when the same shenanigans happen somewhere else.

It’s true madness. We all know the system is broken. Let’s get bold and fix it. Two discussion points:

1. Pay the players. Finally! This should be the come-to-our-senses moment, yes? How is this scandal not a clear byproduct of an economy in which every party (the conference, the school, the coach, the AD, the shoe company, and so on) is allowed to financially benefit except one (the athlete)? How is it not a symptom of what happens when you shut off a key valve in an otherwise open market? “There’s so much money on the table, it just invites black markets and illegal activity,” says Allen Sanderson, an economist at the University of Chicago.

Once more, a scandal shows the monetary value that young players have—a value that extends beyond the incentive of a college scholarship, which, in the case of a player who intends to only stay a season, is basically meaningless. It’s time to get real. Opening the market and compensating athletes may not square with the romantic ideal of college amateurism, but it would likely cut down on under-the-table nonsense. “The incentive goes down,” Sanderson says.

I’m not holding my breath. Paying athletes in high-revenue sports like men’s basketball and football is an idea that remains controversial, and would necessitate major changes—reclassifying college athletes as employees, for example, which would allow schools to circumvent Title IX requirements. Sanderson thinks a more likely scenario is a pair of conferences—the Pac-12 and the Big Ten, for example—breaking off from the NCAA to create their own, compensated system. Intriguing! A real Rose Bowl, baby! But not happening tomorrow.

2. The NBA is going to step in. Why do we let pro leagues stand on the sidelines of these disasters—they’ve been getting a free ride from college sports for decades; don’t they bear some responsibility to reform the system? Donna Lopiano, a former University of Texas women’s AD and a co-author of the recent book “Unwinding Madness: What Went Wrong with College Sports—And How to Fix It,” is skeptical of schools going pay-for-play and even further commercializing sports. “The answer is a minor league system,” she says, pointing to examples like Pacific Pro Football, a developmental league being planned by Tom Brady’s agent Don Yee.


In basketball, it’s possible the NBA will widen its role. The signs are there. League commissioner Adam Silver has publicly acknowledged that the one-and-done set-up (a byproduct of the league’s 19 year old age minimum) is lousy for both schools and the pros, and has been pushing for reform. The NBA is broadening its own developmental league, the G League—it already exists as an option for an 18-year-old prospect (an 18-year-old can play a year of G and then declare for the draft), and “two-way” contracts for players 19 and up allow a player to move freely between a minor-league team and a pro parent. It doesn’t have the glamour of March Madness, but look for the G to develop as a more popular alternative to college.

Down the road, an academy system could blossom. This latest scandal shows how toxic AAU basketball is—how did anyone think giving shoe companies control over national high school player development was a good idea? It’s possible the NBA may want to extend its reach even further down, creating an academy-type system not unlike what’s seen in high-level soccer. The league is already doing this overseas in Africa, as well as countries like China, Australia and India, identifying talent earlier and overseeing their progress.

This isn’t an idea without eyebrow-raising implications—get ready for 15-year-olds paid to play basketball!—but let’s not act like that’s not already happening. An academy system would push more of basketball’s illegitimate economy into the sunlight. It’s unclear what it would mean for big-time college basketball—whether it would hurt the sport by pushing away top-level talent, or if it would be fine, because we’re just rooting for our alma mater’s laundry anyway.

However the legal case shakes out, college basketball has lost the public’s confidence to determine its own future. It’s a failure pile, and new leadership needs to step up. I expect Steven Seagal will agree.

Write to Jason Gay at Jason.Gay@wsj.com

Appeared in the September 29, 2017, print edition as 'College Basketball Is a Big Mess. Let’s Pay Players..'
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Then let them sign 4-year contracts, with penalty for early exit.
 
paying players will not solve the problem.
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Exactly. Naive to believe that the handlers of elite recruiters would be OK with their kids receiving whatever payouts the NCAA would establish. As long as college basketball (and football too) is a multi-million dollar business, there's always going to be greedy slime balls looking for under-the-table payments from win-at-any-cost programs.
 
Column: Pay scale for top basketball recruits set. Now what?

By TIM DAHLBERG AP Sports Columnist


Rick Pitino accomplished at least one thing before being unceremoniously dumped by the University of Louisville.

He set the going market rate for five-star prospects in college basketball.

Turns out it's a cool $100,000, doled out through your favorite shoe company in four convenient payments. A bargain, really, considering an entire starting five would come in at a cool $500,000 — ironically the same figure that Pitino would get as a bonus if his team won a national championship.

Pitino, of course, knows nothing about that. He's shocked that someone in the program was paying for top recruits, just like he was shocked a rogue assistant turned a dorm at Louisville into a brothel — missing only the red lights and satin sheets — for players and visiting recruits.

Plausible deniability can be a beautiful thing. It worked for three decades for Pitino, who won national championships at two schools and was set to contend for another before some pesky FBI agents uncovered a scheme to launder money from Adidas to the family of a star player who suddenly decided Louisville was the place he wanted to be.

Down at the University of Miami, the focus was on future prospects. FBI wiretaps revealed people associated with the school were trying to line up a 2018 high school graduate to wear the Adidas brand while playing for the Hurricanes.

The only problem was another school with a contract with a rival apparel company was reportedly offering $150,000 for the same player.

What's a coach to do?

These are the worst of times for a sport that sometimes brings out the worst in people. Practice begins Friday for a college basketball season that promises to be like no other as millionaire coaches and their (officially) unpaid players hit gyms across the country.

The FBI is deep into a probe of bribery and payoffs that investigators say will likely go much deeper. Already, 10 people — Pitino is not one of them — have been charged with various crimes after being caught on wiretaps scheming of ways cash can be used to get top prospects to commit to the best schools and the worst agents.

The pickings should be relatively easy for investigators armed with subpoenas and great powers of persuasion. This is a sport that insiders have long known as a sordid cesspool inhabited by greedy adults looking to get rich off the talents of teenagers who are skilled at getting the ball in the basket.

The system is broken, and until now no one has seemed willing to step up to fix it.

Not the coaches who make millions, or the athletic administrators who facilitate them. Not the shoe companies, or the "amateur" teams that exist as feeder squads for properly attired athletes.

And certainly not the NCAA, which seems content to take in a billion dollars a year in television revenue while paying lip service to any real reform in the sport.

But there are ways to immediately begin to clean up college basketball, and they shouldn't be that hard to implement. Among them:

—Void all contracts between apparel companies and universities. Louisville is getting $16 million a year to have its athletes wear Adidas shoes and uniforms, money that binds the school and the company into an unholy relationship. With the huge television contracts passed out in recent years, surely the university can buy its own stuff.

—Forbid coaches and recruiters from attending any tournaments or games involving teams sponsored by the shoe companies. The teams and tournaments run by the companies are breeding grounds for corruption as agents, coaches and shoe salesmen jockey for the favor of teen-agers not sophisticated enough to realize they're being bought and sold. Without recruiters in the stands, there will be no super teams traveling the country with players who should be in real schools.

—Cap coaches' salaries at $1 million. The amount of money paid coaches — Pitino is making $5 million a year plus bonuses that could raise that significantly — is obscene, especially schools, under new rules, can pay players only a pittance.

—Eliminate one-and-done. This is an NBA rule and needs changing there first, but there are things the NCAA can also do. Players who want to go straight to the NBA from high school should be welcomed if they're good enough and the others should have to commit to at least two years, preferably three, if they go to college.

No, it won't cure everything, or eliminate all the sleaze from the sport. There will still be people willing to cheat, even if it's tougher to do.

But it's a start at a time college basketball is in desperate need of change.

————

Tim Dahlberg is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at tdahlberg@ap.org orhttp://twitter.com/timdahlberg
 
Stop the unholy alliance between the nba and ncaa the forces 5 star 18 year old players to prove their nba readiness with a minimum of 1 year of college, and more if they are not quite ready for prime time.

To me at least it's really disgusting that the most successful coaches make obscene amounts of money while their best players are one major injury away from saying, "I used to be daryll hill" while never earning a dime.

It's really the (fame and) obscene compensation paid to these coaches that fuel the incentive to cheat. If you don't get the very best players, you end up on the scrap heap, or you become a failed experiment to turn a nba hof'er into a successful college coach.

Once the probnlem becomes endemic, the plague of compensating players and their families forces nearly all programs who win 5 star players to cheat to get them. Call it the Barry Bonds symdrome, who was allegedly so enraged that a washed up former slugger became a roid pumped smasher of the Maris record that he too cheated.

What has been the risk to these fallen icons once exposed? Not a penny of ill-gotten gains. McGwire, Sosa etal got to keep the money they made. Pitino will too.

Fine Pitino and the rest say $20 million or so, bankrupt the assistants who were complicit bag men, and it may send a chilling message. Ah, probably not. For every El Chapo arrested, their are tens of thousands of lower level dealers willing to risk life and limb to attain that kind of wealth.

Drain the swamp? Well, who is going to do that? Higher education, is really big BIG business masquerading as something as pure as preparing students for successful careers. Endowments in the hundreds of millions to billiions is just too much money to avoid corruption.

What do Rick Pitino, Father Harrington, and Cecilia Chang have in common? More than we'd admit, but the reality is that club is much larger than we care to think about.

Just when i was looking forward to a season of a few hours a week to occupy my time and not think of the corrupt realities of business. Instead i will be watching games that are in effect a rigged system
 
paying players will not solve the problem.
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What exactly is the problem? Players getting paid? The corruption of "amateur" athletics?

Consider: if there were no rules, it would be impossible to cheat.
 
Don't pay the players. Spend the money on the G league and make it a real minor league, like baseball. Then put all the one and done kids there and the kids who don't care about school, who think they can make it in 2 years. The rest have to compete in college academically as well as on the court and we get real college basketball. They stay in school at least 3 years unless a real hardship develops.
 
Don't pay the players. Spend the money on the G league and make it a real minor league, like baseball. Then put all the one and done kids there and the kids who don't care about school, who think they can make it in 2 years. The rest have to compete in college academically as well as on the court and we get real college basketball. They stay in school at least 3 years unless a real hardship develops.
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Aside from the fact that G-league is independent from the NCAA and has no relation to the $billions at stake in college athletics - TV, shoes/gear, corporate sponsorship and whatever, that might help negate some of it but not a solution since it doesn't take away any incentive from the NCAA, schools, networks, shoe companies, street agents, etc as long as there is money involved. You'd still have institutionalized cheating. You'd just knock the top talent down a level.
 
My vote would be.....

In addition to the scholarship, players can earn income based on an algorithm that considers the percentage of income generated by their sport and the number of college semesters they complete as a full time student. The income is payable when they leave school and relinquish their "amateur" status.
 
And impossible to compete.
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Impossible for whom to compete at what.
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An unregulated environment would (IMO), make it impossible for the vast majority of schools (including St. John's) to compete in recruiting and thus in game play with the big booster schools.

On another matter, I am of the opinion (quaint, I know) that the kids are compensated in that they are given about $100,000 per year in value in terms of a free education, housing, food, etc. etc. I do not believe paying monetary compensation would change anything but merely make the playing field even less balanced than it is now.
 
And impossible to compete.
Click to expand...

Impossible for whom to compete at what.
Click to expand...

An unregulated environment would (IMO), make it impossible for the vast majority of schools (including St. John's) to compete in recruiting and thus in game play with the big booster schools.

On another matter, I am of the opinion (quaint, I know) that the kids are compensated in that they are given about $100,000 per year in value in terms of a free education, housing, food, etc. etc. I do not believe paying monetary compensation would change anything but merely make the playing field even less balanced than it is now.
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The problem with playing athletes, as reasonable as it appears, couldn't have a reasonable starting and ending point. Do you pay you best fencer? You'd say no, it's not a money producing sport. What about your best baseball players? If you don't, they may opt for a school where it is a money producing sport. Football - only FBS schools? Where do you cut off - Does a bench player in the big east get paid? Walk ons? If you set an even scale in money producing sports, it only becomes the basement where schools would still bribe the best players with cash sent to aau coaches, families ,etc.

Probably best jsut for fans to realize you are rooting for guys who barely attend your school for the most part (there are of course exceptions), and are simply wearing a uniform with your school name on it. If it makes you feel better to think there is more commonality than there really is, so be it. The best players in the NCAA are simply auditioning in front of big crowds, and in effect, unpaid minor league players.
 
Am I wrong that almost all college players receive something between eighty and one hundred dollars a week from a Pell grant while in school?
 
I don't think college athletes should get paid. As was cited in an earlier post, they get their tuition, books and board and an opportunity for a great education. If that is not enough, then let them go to a pay for play league sponsored by the NBA. Any handlers, street agents(leaches) hanging around should policed and handled stringently. If those rules are too onerous, go, leave the school environment and become a pro where compensation is the open and acceptable.
If you created that kind of setting, the quality of play would decrease initially but if everyone was doing it we would get back to real "COLLEGE BASKETBALL". As long as we have one and done kids or just kids who's only purpose to going to school is for exposure, than let them go to the pay league.Just listen to some of the practitioners of of the NBA talk, and they sound like they never cracked a book in their lives.
We have lost sight of what a college athlete should be, and the result is college is nothing more than a developing place for eventual pay for play athletes. The schools should have rules for this, and all sports will once again be played by real student athletes.
The real good recruits will have to make up their minds are they going to college, or the pay league.
A lot would opt for the pay leagues, but I suspect there would be some who would want to go to college, play at that level and get an education, and might also develop over four years into a high quality player capable of playing in the pros.
 
There are approx 350 D1 basketball programs w/ 13 scholarships = 4,563 D1 players...

Even if look at Top 100 programs x 13 = 1,300 D1 players...

How many of these guys ever make a $ at any level of pro-ball (D-League, overseas, NBA) ?

College basketball would survive without paying players... Maybe loose a bit of the best performance, but over time it would all be a wash.
 
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